Letter: Gertrude Stein’s phrase video games take some beating

Studying your article on the language of The Simpsons TV present (“A language for my technology”, Spectrum, FT Weekend, August 27) jogged my memory of what Gertrude Stein as soon as mentioned of Oakland, California, referring to her former hometown as “there isn’t any there”. What was the there, that was not there? Was it lack of neighborhood id and sense of place, or simply misplaced childhood?

Stein, who died in 1946, lived in a world that, though significantly troubled, nonetheless had its rituals and values for ordered communities.

She would doubtless name the world in the present day an atomised all over the place with no there anyplace.

Reiner Jaakson
Oakville, ON, Canada