and this is your response, this is your rebuttal of gertrude stein. [orange] and it's also, i wouldn't put so much of the weight on gertrude stein as more on people who have sort of misused that quote. because she was just talking about her childhood home. [smith] very specifi bec [orange] and itt talking abo was developed over.e. so in her "everybody's" autobiography, somebody asks her, "why don't you write about oakland?" "there is no there there." she's just talking about her experience. and so peove used it to say oakland has no character. and thats more a reflection on what people think of oakland or are trying to make oakland into an what her thoughts were. [smith] it may be as much a rebuttal of those people than of her. [orange] yeah. [smith] right. and oakland, as we'll come to in a second, is a character in this book. this book struck me, so i thought two thgs about this book. it's a portrait of america that we don't see and it's a portrait of americans we don't see. there is not, as far as it goes, a lot of native american literature or nat

so i didn't actually get the reference until after that this is gertrude stein. [orange] mm-hmm. [smith] right? like you, an oaklander. is that the right way to say it? oaklandite? [orange] oaklander. [smith] oaklander. [orange] yeah. [smith] so gertrude steinndfamk "there's no there there." and this iyour response, this is your rebuttal gertrude stein. [orange] and it's also, i wodn't put so much of the weight on gertrude stein as more on people who have sort of misused that quote. because she was just talking about her childhood home. [sth] very specific. [orange] and it was developed over. so in her "everybody's" autobiography, somebody asks her, "why don't you write about oakland?" "there is no there." she's just talking about her experience. and so people have used it to say oakland has no character. and that is more a reflection on at people think of oakland or are trying to make oakland into than what her thoughts were. [smith] it may be as much a rebuttal of those people than of r. [orange] yeah. [smith] right. and oakland, as we'll come to in a second, is a character in t

. >> gertrude stein came from the west and has thissort of similarity but go ahead . >> it's similar because the responsibility to live up to this country that you've been given becomes very isolating. you can findthat already in massachusetts in the 17th century . god has given you this place which is the richest country in the world and you're a little slug. not quite measuring up. sontag felt that keenly and then she finds in socrates and find in the greek moralist to come back to moralism and she really does feel very strongly that morality and aesthetics are the same thing. this is something that she resists in a certain way because she's an intellectual. but she's trying to kind of be more, and against interpretation she'strying to get away . not change so much, she's basically trying to get away from freud on the one hand and marks on the other hand. they were quite oppressive to people in those generations because they were so dominant and so overarching and so complicated and they did offer you the key to culture. if you could master freud for example or marks, you could und