In any theory of a scene, Stein’s writing would be canonical, although she herself didn’t have the word ‘scene’. Until finally, in 1933, she published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and a new era of celebrity began. When Stein eventually showed the manuscript to Toklas, ‘Toklas was silent. Only through a close study of the notebooks and manuscripts, she argued, could Stein’s work be read as it was written. But it seems to ignore or at least betray an essential element of Stein’s writing, which is its devotion to the cut.