In 1926, Gertrude Stein delivered the lecture “ Composition as Explanation” to the Cambridge Literary Club at Oxford University (fig. 1). The talk couches a description of her own evolution as an experimental author within a broader discussion of history, culture, and art as a series of distinct “composition[s].”As Kristin Bergen helpfully explains, the “multivocal term” composition at once designates “the dominant mode of daily life for a given period and also the production of those who...