Free Narration by Thornton Wilder, Gertrude Stein, Liesl M. Olson Page B

things he has to tell has to tell this thing as if it were happening and it never is happening, the one is not one, the two are not one, the three are not one, and still in violent living, inthe thing that makes history what it is in the telling, the two although they are not one still again are not two and the three although they are not one are again not three.
     
    We talked a great deal all this time we talked a great deal how hard it is to tell anything anything that has been anything that is, and that makes a narrative and that makes history and that makes literature and is history literature.
     
    Well how far have we come.
     
    Can history be literature when it has such a burden a burden of everything, a burden of so many days which are days one after the other and each day has its happening and still as in the newspaper what can make it matter if it is not happening to-day, the best thing that can happen about that happening is that it can happen again. And that makes the comfort of history to a historian that history repeats itself, that is really the only comfort that an historian can have from anything happening and really and truly it does not happen again not as it used to happen again because now we know really know so much that has happened that really we do know that what has happened does not happen again and so that for poor comfort has been taken away from the historian.
     
    Of course if you like anything does happen again but when one does know as the historian now does know all the things that happened every day while it was happening then for the purpose of the historian history is no longer repeating and so the historian has now no comfort really none left to him.
     
    And what is he to do, well that is a question, what is anybody to do about writing, well that is the question.
     
    I personally think that the solution is that anyone must amuse himself with anything and not think to recognize anything beside this thing, besideplaying with what he is playing with as he is writing what he is recognizing while the writing is being written by him.
     
    What I mean is this, history has gotten to be so that anybody can if they go on know that everything that happened is what happened and as it all did happen it is a very serious thing that so much was happening. Very well then. What can be the addition to anything if everything is happening, look out of any window, any window nowadays is on a high building if it happens right and see what is happening. Well enough said, it is not necessary to go on with recognition, but soon you do know anybody can know, that it is all real enough. It all is all real enough, not only real enough but and that is where it is such a difficult thing not real enough for writing, real enough for seeing, almost real enough for remembering but remembering in itself is not really an important enough thing to really need recalling, insofar as it is not seeing, but remembering is seeing and so anything is an important enough thing for seeing but it is not an important enough thing for writing, it is an important enough thing for talking but not an important enough thing for telling.
     
    That is really the trouble with what history is, it is important enough for seeing but not important enough for writing, it is important enough for talking but not important enough for telling. And that is what makes everybody so troubled about it all about what history is, because after all it ought to be important enough for telling for writing and not only important enough for talking and seeing, it really ought to be, it really ought to be, but can it be. Cannot it really be.
     
    I feel about history the way I do about crime stories they ought to be they really ought to be they really ought to come to be literature but do they.
     
    And so we always come back to what literature is.
     
    What is literature.
     
    Literature is the telling of anything but in telling that thing where is the audience.