Please work with what is left

Have you ever seen a photograph of Gertrude Stein? Or looked at that portrait of her, painted by her buddy Picasso? Some people's faces don't match their names, but she really looks like someone named "Gertrude Stein." She's got the visage of a stern German aunt, or a Jazz Age Grumpy Cat. Stein didn't even have to grow into it -- she looked like that as a teenager.

Maybe this is why, among all of Stein's accomplishments, she's best remembered in American culture for something curmudgeonly: Stein coined the phrase "There is no there there," a line widely interpreted as a dis to her hometown of Oakland, California. (William Safire called it a "classic slander of the city of Oakland.") Even if you didn't know it was Stein who originated that phrase, or that she said it about Oakland, you've probably heard "There's no there there" used as a dismissive insult. Politicians tend to break it out when they want to accuse something of being without merit or substance, a big ol' nothingburger. It sounds like a Mensa-fied way of saying "ya basic."

Oakland isn't fond of being labeled the Nothingest Place in America. The city has installed at least two massive sculptures that were basically designed to flip Stein the bird. (One, named "HERETHERE," can be found at the Berkeley/Oakland border. Another, named "There," lives in the City Center plaza.)

Other peeved Oaklanders have taken a different tack, by attempting to argue that the whole thing is a Frost-caliber misunderstanding. The line "There is no there there" comes from Stein's 1937 autobiography, Everybody's Autobiography, from a passage in which Stein describes the experience of returning to her hometown after four decades away. When you look at the line in context, these people insist, you see that Stein isn't calling the whole city of Oakland a bereft wasteland; she's actually referring to her childhood home -- like, the physical house -- which had been razed in the intervening years. When she says, "There is no there there," what she means is, "There's no home there," as in, "My childhood has been demolished." Stein's words have simply been misconstrued, and the fine city of Oakland was besmirched for no reason.


My official ruling: That second group of Oakland-defenders are on to something, but they haven't quite pieced together the whole story, either.

Let's look at the passage in question. A Bay-area friend is showing Stein and her partner Alice Toklas around town. They go out for oysters, and then they visit a convent in San Raphael, and then:

...we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.

Uh, okay. FYI, Stein's writing is always like this -- kind of rambling, non-grammatical, associative. The offending line comes at the end of a run-on sentence, but her wording is so weird it's impossible to say for sure what she means by it. The best thing to do is keep reading. After a page or so of digression, Stein gets back to talking about Oakland, and she describes visiting the site of her old house:

Ah Thirteenth Avenue was the same it was shabby and over-grown the houses were certainly some of them those that had been there and there were not bigger buildings and they were neglected and, lots of grass and bushes growing yes it might have been the Thirteenth Avenue when I had been. Not of course the house, the house the big house and the big gardens and the eucalyptus trees and the rose hedge naturally were not any longer existing, what was the use; if I had been I then my little dog would know me but if I had not been I then that place would not be the place that I could see...

This is probably the section the Oakland Defenders are referring to. Stein at first seems tickled to recognize her old street. But then, when she acknowledges that the house isn't there, it sends her mind spinning in a melancholy direction: Even if her house was there, what would it change? She's not the same person she was when she was young, when her dog greeted her at the gate. She continues on this train of thought:

...I did not like the feeling, who has to be themselves inside them, not any one and what is the use of having been if you are going to go on being and if not why is it different and if it is different why not. I did not like anything that was happening. Later much later... I wrote, what is the use of being a little boy if you are going to grow up to be a man. Well some do and some do not.
    If I remember what I remember then why do I remember that. I did remember that but it did look like that and so I did not remember that and if it did not look like that then I did not remember that. What was the use.

It gets intense, fast. Oakland, the house -- it's forcing Stein to think about the nature of memory. If our present selves grow out of our past selves, she asks, doesn't this mean we're kind of trapped? And if we're not slaves to the past, what's the point of remembering anything at all? And when you consider the fact that our memories are often distorted and prone to lapses, it all starts to feel like a house of cards. The experience bums Stein out. By the end of it she sounds deflated: "well anyway I had been in Oakland again."

The phrase "there is no there there" is tied to this whole emotional complex. (Arguably, it kicks it off.) It's not really about Oakland, but it kind of is. It's not really about her house, but it kind of is. It's sort of a lament for youth, but it's also terrified of the idea that our youths define us. When you try to pin down what the phrase really means in context, the best you can do is gesture vaguely to these paragraphs and the melancholy feelings they're intended to generate. (Also, Stein would like to remind you that nothing ever means the same thing to two people.)

That's the best I can do, Oakland.