Here, Gertrude Stein writes to playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder, telling him about the photos of Our Town that she and Alice Toklas saw in a Life magazine article, and urging him to visit Paris. In true Stein correspondence style, the entire letter is one sentence.
[? March 1938]
5 rue Christine.
My dearest Thornton
How we wish you were here, there are the banks of the Seine more banks than ever, come Thornton come, and we saw the photos of the play and we liked them in Life, out at the Bromfields, and Alice said that they said there was no scenery and there are all those props, but we did like it, and it goes on, and we wish you were here, we would like to tell you about something else but there is only our apartment and our quarter, we even have our municipal counciller and xchange calls, we are full of projects, an opera, a ballet, a cinema, and you will do the novel yet yes we will, you know Thornton I find so many on the quays and I read them all and I begin to really know what a novel is, come Thornton come and I’ll tell you and do you like the Picasso and do you like everything, Sammy wrote charmingly about you and lots of love
Gtrde and Alice
From The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Stein, Gertrude, et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.