Gertrude Stein's How to Write, as much about how to read as about how to write, is one of the great "unreadable" modernist classics. As a student of the psychologist/philosopher William James, she could predictably want to approach the task of explaining how to write from an observational/laboratory perspective rather than as a problem of providing discursive information. The reflexive style of the book has made it something of an underground favorite (thought the fact that Amazon.com lists it on the "available in 24 hours category suggests that it is considerably more above ground) for people of a post-structuralist bent. Its value is both philosophical and mental/calisthenic. Her fragmented sentences force one back on all one's language-processing resources, providing a kind of linguistic stress-test, while reminding one of the philosophical depths of language experience. One finds many crossed wires as one traverses the field of her writing: psychology and society, orality and writing, image and discursion, grammar as form and grammar as experience-just for starters. It is one amazing textual trip whether you bus in for a segment or sign on for the whole course. And as a small cheap book it can be lived with forever.