Saturday, November 19

Paragraphs from Stein, 5

"Once upon a time there was a garden. It was an old garden and everybody who had ever been in it had been religious. In their way they had been religious. Even so there had been families. And this family as a history of the family had been famous. That is to say as the town knew about itself it learned to know about them. Not that in a way they were important. In a kind of way they were of no importance of no importance at all but they had come to be known to be of enough important that they were important anywhere. As I said there were eight of them, four brothers and four sisters. The four sisters and three brothers exactly resembled the eldest brother and the mother. But of course this is not possible. It is foolish to think such a thing is possible since there was only two years difference between every brother and every sister until the youngest. And he was to be a priest."

--Gertrude Stein

fr. Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery
[Berkeley, California: Creative Arts Book Company, 1982]

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