Synopses & Reviews
Before becoming the patron of Lost Generation artists, Gertrude Stein established her reputation as an innovative author whose style was closer to painting than literature. Stein's strong influence on 20th-century literature is evident in this 1915 work of highly original prose rendered in thought-provoking experimental techniques.
Synopsis
Mentor and guide to the Lost Generation of expatriate American writers, including Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein (1874 1946) is perhaps better known for her Parisian salon than her literary works. Yet her innovative approach to writing and her originality of thought make the impact of her books on contemporary literature enormous.
Tender Buttons, published in 1914, is vintage Stein. She pushes abstraction to its farthest limits by experimenting with words purely as words in a style more akin to painting than literature. Interested in their melody and color, Stein favors verbs and prepositions in unusual combinations and attempts to avoid using nouns. According to Sherwood Anderson, Tender Buttons "gives words an oddly new intimate flavor and at the same time makes familiar words seem almost like strangers For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire new recasting of life, in the city of words."
Often compared with music and Cubist imagery, the exhilarating prose and thought-provoking experimental techniques of Tender Buttons offer readers a rewarding sojourn through one of Stein's most influential works."
Synopsis
This 1915 work exhibits the distinct prose style and thought-provoking experimental techniques for which its author is famous. One of Stein's most accessible and influential works.