When Gertrude Stein was writing "The Making of Americans," a man in California was taking 16mm movies of his family; document the middle-class which Stein was recreating by her exploration of style was being lived by a family in California.

            Gertrude writes, “It is a great privilege, this, of being an American,” and the family in this film, with their new homes, vacations cabin, cross-country trips and their camera, knew this and knew, instinctively, that they were the backbone of the country.

            Gertrude Stein and this family came together when I was given a box of 16mm films and an old projector that had been cleaned out of a Tenderloin hotel.  Watching the film, I thought of Stein’s recurrent themes of family living and family existence and of repetition.  The eight hours of film was edited to 25 minutes and a script was prepared of excerpts from “The Making of Americans.”  A third element – the music of the Mom and Dads – was added.

            This evening is an opportunity to see these three various elements performed together.

- Russell Ellison

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A FAMILY AND ITS PROGRESS

By Russell Ellison

Narrative from "The Making of Americans" by Gertrude Stein

 Reading by sk dunn

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It has always seemed to me a rare privilege, this, of being an American, a real American, one whose tradition it has taken scarcely sixty years to create.

We need only realize our parents, remember our grandparents and know ourselves and our history is complete.

The old people in a new world, the new people made out of the old, that is the story I mean to tell, for that is what really is and what I really know.

Certain men and women and the children they had in them, to make many generations for them, will fill up this history for us of a family and its progress.

And these women and the husbands they had with them and the children born and unborn in them will make up the history for us of a family and its progress.

Some of all these kinds of men and women and the children they had in them will help to make the history for us of this family and its progress.

And so listen while I tell you all about us, and wait while I hasten slowly forward and love, please this history of this decent family’s progress.

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I have it, this interest in ordinary middle class existence, in simple firm ordinary middle class traditions, in sordid, material, unaspiring visions, in repeating, common, decent enough kind of living, with no fine kind of fancy ways inside us, no excitements to surprise us, no new ways of being bad or good to win us.

Yes, I am strong to declare that I have it, here in the heart of this high, aspiring excitement loving people who despise it – I throw myself open to the public – I take a simple interest in the ordinary kind of families’ histories, I believe in simple middle class monotonous tradition.

Middle-class, middle-class, I know of no one of my friends who will admit it, one can find no one among you all to belong to it, I know that here we are to be democratic and aristocratic and not have it, for middle class is sordid material unillusioned, unaspiring and always monotonous for it is always there and to be always repeated, and yet I am strong, and I am right, and I know it, and I say it to you and you are to listen to it.

Yes here in the heart of a people who despise it, that a material middle class who know they are it, with the straightened bond of family to control it, is the one thing always human, vital, and worthy it.

Worthy that all monotonously shall repeat it, and from which has always sprung, and all who really look can see it, the very best the world can ever know, and everywhere we always need it.

Someone was standing and doing something.  He was doing that thing.  He was standing and doing something.  He was doing something and he was standing.  He was one some one was seeing.  Some were seeing him doing something and standing.

Some one has been standing up and is then doing something.  Some one is doing something standing.  Any one will do something standing.  Some one has been standing in doing something.  Certainly any one is standing in doing something.

Any one doing anything is expecting to be one doing or not doing anything.  Any one in any family living is one doing or not doing something, and is one then expecting to be one then doing or not doing something.

When some one has done something, that one might then do that thing again.

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Certain men and women and the children they had in them, to make many generations for them, fill up this history for us of a family and its progress.

It was their children and grandchildren who, later, wandering over the new land, where they were seeking first, just to make a living, and then later, either to grow rich or to gain wisdom, met with one another and were married, and so together they made a family whose progress we have been watching.

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