You may have seen our recent Call For Entries on emerging artist zone--but if you were in Greenpoint between Friday, January 20th and Sunday, January 22nd, you may have heard some strange chanting echoing from the 155 Freeman Street locale. No, a new Pagan cult hasn't moved into town (though knowing this city, one actually may have). Rather, the venerable arts organization, Triple Canopy, was celebrating the long anticipated opening of their new location with a three-day reading of Gertrude's Stein's "allegedly unreadable" book, The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress. 

A unique christening ritual to be sure, but one befitting a "hub for the exploration of emerging forms and the public spaces constituted around them." Triple Canopy's current issue, "Negative Infinity," includes a project that pits motion studies, industrial capitalism and mental illness against the power of Buster Keaton as well as six other items that are as penetrating as they are unique. Editor Sam Frank filled us in on the details behind the open house extravaganza.

3W's Perrin Drumm: First off, tell us why is Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress "allegedly unreadable?"

Sam Frank: It's very long--nearly 1,000 pages--quite repetitive in a rhythmic way, like minimalist music, but also in an attempt to be exhaustive and describe everyone who could ever exist as completely as possible. Stein was more than interested in the kind of empiricism you get in the sciences, which in one sense are ultimately concerned with complete description and explanation of everything therein. Long and longer sentences and multipage paragraphs, a plot that vanishes for tens of pages at a time. In part it's just a cliché that Stein's unreadable; the easy thing to say if you haven't tried. 

PD: Do you think this past weekend proved that statement wrong?

SF: Reading the book out loud for 15 minutes (or 3 hours, in the case of Ariana Reines)--in what way is that reading the book as a whole? And what about listening to someone read for 15 minutes or 3 hours? Is the listener reading The Making of Americans or not? No one stayed the whole time. Did anyone read the book last weekend? Or did everyone read the book? And what about the people who "read" it through our live-tweeting?