Lectures in America
Gertrude Stein · 1935
Stein's lectures are essays in disguise: meditations on composition and the American character. "Poetry and Grammar" and "What Is English Literature" remain weird and alive in ways that more "proper" essays are not.
The case against
Stein repeats herself on purpose, for pages, and explains that the repeating is insistence and the insistence is genius, mostly her own. If her circling sentences hypnotize you, these lectures reward the trance. If they don't, you will read the same clause eleven ways and learn that English literature is what it is.
Essays · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
