Ida - Gertrude Stein

 IDA - GERTRUDE STEIN

It was Gertrude Stein who advised Paul Bowles to go to Tangiers, and from then on in regard to Tangiers and its connection with the Beat Generation, the rest is history. Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, etc, all followed in Bowles' footsteps. 'There is no there there,' Gertrude Stein is famously quoted as saying, and this is true. There is only something you do or do not remember. This would suggest then, that Tangiers isn't so much a place but a state of mind and it's there that Stein advised Paul Bowles to go.

If this doesn't make any sense then Gertrude Stein's book, Ida, will make even less so. You see, Ida is not so much a book but a state of mind and one that I'm not sure I'd like to take up residency in because it's like a mind in a state of shock.

If you can imagine a young girl being held in a psychiatric hospital circa 1950, similar to the one Jack Nicholson entered in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, or Winona Ryder was sent to in Girl Interrupted. If you can imagine that young girl sat on her own, babbling away to herself about all kinds of nonsense that doesn't make any sense though it doesn't really matter because no-one's listening anyway. But then when sat opposite one of the doctors who's trying to diagnose her, she's babbling away in exactly the same manner and that doctor is thinking this might be a case where electro convulsive therapy could be helpful. That's Ida.

If you can imagine the lyrics of Mark E Smith of The Fall in full-on repetition mode but in book form, as in 'I drank a jar of coffee and then I took some of THESE! And I'm totally wired. Can't you see? T-t-t-t totally wired.' That's Ida. 'A butterfly stomach round ground...'

Plot? Story? There is no plot and there is no story. Things just happen and then they don't happen. A twin is born and then not born. Ida has a dog and then doesn't. Ida gets married time after time and then doesn't. Ida is Ida is Ida. Repetition repetition repetition. 'You don't have to be weird to be wired. You don't have to be strange to be strange,' to quote Mark E Smith again. Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Ida is Ida is Ida.

John Serpico