Semansky is an instructor of English literature and composition. In this essay, Semansky considers the representation of experience in Stein's book.
Conventionally, the relationship in autobiography between language and experience has been one in which the author uses words to describe events, chronicle change, and mark emotions. This is evident in most fiction and biography as well. Stein's book, however, complicates this relationship, as it is founded on a lie: it is not what it says it is. Stein, of course, confesses as much in the book's last sentences, but her narrative "trick" is more than simply a joke played on unsuspecting readers. Along with the style in which the book is written, the use of a narrator who is not what she seems to be underscores the notion that human experience is, at root, beyond.....
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