Near the beginning of The Making of Americans, Stein breaks off abruptly to address her reader—“ but truly,” she adds, “I never feel it that there ever can be for me any such a creature, no it is this scribbled and dirty and lined paper that is really to be to me always my receiver.” She knew the novel was long, repetitive, and unwieldy; that it was wholly unlike anything written before. But as the novel progressed, her desire for affirmation only swelled. Throughout, Stein—or her narrator—contemplates the future of her work. “I write for myself and strangers,” she admits, lamenting the indifference of those around her—thinking, perhaps, of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, which still languished in his studio, disdained and unsold. She implores her readers to be patient and eager, to trust her intuition, and follow her in her quest. At this early point, Stein was already setting herself up as a kind of Cassandra, harbinger of a significant message yet doomed to be misunderstood and ignored. “I want readers,” she reiterated, “so strangers must do it.”
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