The Back Story Behind Titling “The Vitality of the Struggle”
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Raindrops pour down the statue of late U.S. author Gertrude Stein in New York’s Bryant Park. (photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)
“You always have in your writing the resistance outside of you and inside of you, a shadow upon you, and the thing which you must express. In the beginning of your writing this struggle is so tremendous that the result is ugly…but the essence of that ugliness is the thing which will always make it beautiful. I myself think it is much more interesting when it seems ugly, because in it you see the element of the fight … the vitality of the struggle.”
—Gertrude Stein, How Writing Is Written
Naturalist and author Terry Tempest Williams used the phrase “the vitality of the struggle” in our interview to explain that she doesn’t have the answers to the broad rhetorical questions (e.g., “What do we do?”) people sometimes bring to her.
This phrase resonated with our senior editor, and Krista soon supplanted the show’s working title with this instead. Williams noted on our reflections page that this phrase is inspired by American writer and thinker Gertrude Stein. Williams writes:
“I have always held that phrase close. It does feel like poetry because it holds the paradox of our human condition.”
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