Stein, Gertrude. (1874 - 1946).
L i f e
- born in a cultured and sophisticated family of German-Jewish origin
- travelled Europe, received university education (Radcliffe College), studied medicine and psychology x but: abandoned these for literature
- moved with her brother Leo to Paris = the centre of post-impressionism and cubism, collected paintings, and made Paris her adopted home and their apartment a meeting place for painters and writers
- a long-time lover of Alice B. Toklas
W o r k
- a famous hostess, entertainer, collector, writer, and author of clever aphorisms: ‘You are all a lost generation.’
< modern painting
- style: a literary cubism = non-mimetic, abstract, emphasised the method rather than the theme
- language: experimental, playful, broke most rules governing punctuation and syntax, and many governing diction
- made the reader pay attention to even the simplest, familiar, often monosyllabic words
- dismissed the sentence, abolished the paragraph x paid attention to the word, rejected the noun, and made gerund her favourite form
- celebrated the ‘thing seen at the moment it is seen’, presented the ‘continuous present’
- delighted in rhythmical repetition of images
=> her portraits of people and objects often whimsical in the extreme
F i c t i o n :
Three Lives (1905):
- 3 stories of 3 very different Baltimore woman-servants
- stylistic innovations: present tense narrative = the method of ‘continuous present’
The Making of Americans (1908):
- intended to tell ‘everybody's history’
- drew on the history of her family x but: minimised action and avoided dialogue
Tender Buttons (1914):
- a series of paragraphs
- some playful and witty x others brief prose poems on different subjects
A u t o b i o g r a p h y :
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933)
Everybody’s Autobiography (1937)
C r i t i c i s m :
Composition as Explanation (1926)
Narration (1935)
Basics
(Photo: Carl Van Vechten. 1935. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
Gertrude Stein. (1874 - 1946). American. -
Work
Novelist. Poet. Critic. Author of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). -
Genre
Modernism. Literary cubism. Non-mimetic representation.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.
Quote
"Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything".
From The Making of Americans (1908).