Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews (12)

Intellectual but not a Pleasure to Read
I am a student of poetry and a poet myself. I can't say I am any better than a Gertrude Stein who is a legend, but I didn't find this particular book of poems enjoyable to read.

The collection itseld if quite attractively packaged, is of a comfortable length and is quite inexpensive if you are looking for good points. I find the poems, however, overly experimentative.

The first section of the book I found the most interesting with the word play, but an entire book of word play and little narrative arc could not hold my attention.This is still a must read for a student of poetry as the language poets build, and other poets, from the work Stein did in this book. For the average population? I'd say pass on this one.

The emperor in naked.
I can't believe how complimentary the reviews on here are for these poems. Ugh. When I read them, I want to tear every last hair out of my skull.

proto-fem/experimentalist
advice: read tender buttons as though you've never read before/as though you're a child being introduced to an english language primer- now create (as participant-reader) with aforesaid text allowing the emergence of"un-meaning" as a sort of distilled thingness. what stein attempted with words/pastiche-paralleled the work of analytic?cubists-proto-objectification that made things of words not (not necessarily)in reference to parrticulars but rather retaining a certain concretized essence.

Ms. Stein fires large dusty electronics daily, how satisfying.
Looking for plot, conflict and character developement? Then move on, this is Gertrude's free-flowing automatic writing.
Ms. Stein is crucial reading to round out one's literary experiance and from that vantage point stars are irrelavant; good, bad or indifferent it is literary history. Did I finish it though? No, I did not.

(un)lost generation
Mimic and talk and write like some kind of Gertrude Stein. We don't know what roots are - rootless - my generation is not lost - we're staying put on the couch where we live. No one can say we're not (or are) expatriate because the shores of our big sea end at the edges of a computer screen - are virtual (and not) reality - no one travels to get there. No hurt feelings (disaffected) because we're all equal - a populist nightmare with the volume turned down. The self-leveling society. Every idea is as good as another is as good as none as all are included. Our defects become differences become diversity become democracy become diluted and die. An eye for an eye made the whole world blind or one-eyed and only some (although they don't want to be singled out) try to make something new something cyclopean (formerly one could say at least but that is pejorative) toward the future but that detracts from the past which we defend on principle only but not in actuality so as soon as we can think of it we'll change that name too but don't pressure us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

good service
book as described..arrived on time, etc..but do not like the book..wonder about Gertrude Stein and why she is so well known? ... Read more

Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook contains four works by American avant garde writer Gertrude Stein.Stein (1874-1946) was a collector of modern art and feminist writer, whose long relationship with Alice B. Toklas and whose writings may have introduced the use of "gay" to describe a male homosexual.Stein experimented with stream-of-consciousness writing (like James Joyce); well-known quotes include: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"; "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle"; about Oakland, "There is no there there."

This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents.

Three Lives
Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein
Tender Buttons
Geography and Plays
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Customer Reviews (3)

A Turgid and Difficult Read
If one wanted to read a book about very little to nothing, one could always, I suppose, read 'The Making of Americans' by Gertrude Stein.With little discernible plot and bogged down with seemingly endless pages of repetition, the only reason one would read this work would be to try to understand Miss Stein's literary methodology.As is well known, she was an author who was obviously fascinated by word and sentence rhythms even at the expense of producing a readable and understandable work of fiction.

The narrative itself takes excruciatingly long to really get anywhere in its attempt to tell the story of several American families in pursuit of the American dream (if one could call Stein's interpretation of the 'American Dream' an historically and culturally correct interpretation) and, in the end, a reader with the stamina to finally reach the end of 'The Making of Americans' is surely going to be left perplexed, confused and probably, more than anything else, mentally exhausted.

Nevertheless, Stein's use of words and sentences to form assorted and varied rhythmic structures was quite revolutionary in its day and, for many, continues to be a source of interest.I don't believe many modern day authors use or even attempt to use this sort of methodology in their own work - at least I, myself, have never seen it done and this is probably because most writers of today write for the mass market where little is demanded of readers and where technique must remain simplistic and easily understandable.

If one wants to learn more about the use of rhythms and how they are achieved through various forms of repetition, then 'The Making of Americans' is required reading.

Beautifully written!
It is a shame that so much of Gertrude Stein's work is dismissed because of its unconventionality.Though sometimes difficult to read, Stein's writing has a lyrical quality about it unparalleled by the work of other writers.The Making of Americans is probably one of her best, and well worth the effort it might take to read it.I found that after only a few pages, I was moved along by the rhythm and cadence that carries the story.A wonderful read!

The great unsung classic of the twentieth century.
What starts of as an anecdotal recounting of what I imagine is Stein's forefathers and foremothers immigrant experience launches off into a brilliant, highly intellectual examination and rhapsody of individualityand conformity among other things (like death and consciousness and thebattle between the sexes).This book will literally change the way youthink you think. I think it should. ... Read more

Product Description
Intimate, revealing memoir of Picasso as man and artist by influential literary figure. Highly readable amalgam of biographical fact, artistic and aesthetic comments: Picasso as founder of Cubism, associate of Apollinaire, Braque, Derain, other notables; titanic, creative spirit. One of Stein’s most accessible works. 61 black-and-white illustrations. Index.
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Customer Reviews (5)

Very bad writing; some good insights; Picasso paintings
From the beginning sentence, this book is poorly written; it requires great patience to finish it, despite the short length. Many sections require multiple readings simply to discern the meaning of the convoluted and awkward prose. This is not a great stylist breaking a few rules to pioneer a new style. It is bad writing, littered with run-on on sentences, comma splices, neglected semicolons, one sentence paragraphs, and annoying repetition. As a professor, I was tempted to take out the red pen and correct as I went along.

Nevertheless, the author was a friend of the great and enigmatic painter, and, as such, she offers telling insights about the role of his nationality and personality in his art, particularly cubism. (The book was first published in 1938.) We read nothing of Picasso's famous libidinal exploits (for which one should be grateful) and very little about his biography. Those facts are cut to the bone; painting is what Stein addresses.

My older edition of the book (published in England in 1948) features several color prints and many black and white offerings. You will find little detailed analysis of any of these paintings, however. Stein charts Picasso's various "periods" and the development of his thought.

For one interested in Picasso and the meaning of the twentieth century (and not just its art), this slim and nearly unreadable volume discloses a few noteworthy observations about art, war, and Pablo Picasso. But how any editor ever released the book in this form is beyond this writer and teacher.

Charming and brief assessment of Picasso's early work
I've been reading Richardson's Picasso biography, and he refers so frequently to the Steins that I had to buy this book.I found it absolutely charming, witty, and typical Gertrude Stein.Her prose runs in circles, and she's consistently self-focused.She views herself as a pioneering art doyenne and one of the few who truly understood the art movements in Paris in the early part of the 20th century.But her affection for Picasso is undeniable, and that's what makes this book so wonderful to read.

Picasso often felt that Gertrude in fact did *not* get what was going on with cubism and his and Braque's works.But she liked to have artistic company, Picasso liked that she bought so much of his work, so their relationship worked.

This is a quick book to read - contrary to what another review suggests - and makes for a wonderful Saturday afternoon.It helps if you know something of Picasso's history, so read this with a collection of his work on the side.

Stein and Picasso: ..., Getting Modernism: Priceless
In this epochal gem originally published in London in 1938, Gertrude Stein tells of the arrival and rise of Picasso, and through him, Modernism and the 20th century, filtered through her own performance art.By "filtered" I am not suggesting that it is fiction or distorts its subject; in fact, it's a live action postcard from the epicenter of the man and movement.Not only does it inform with fact, it informs with form.

Stein says with characteristic self assurance that she alone understood Picasso and compared what he did in art to what she did with words, and there is merit in the comparison.Picasso, influenced by the Spaniards, came to believe that truth existed in the conceptual realm, it did not come from the material world.Whereas proceeding generations accepted what they saw before them as truth and responded realistically, Picasso chose to portray his inner vision on canvas and backed away from using models.Cubism became his way of signifying how he experienced the significance of the still life or human form.A person, a tableau was not perceived as the whole but as parts, some of them standing out more prominently than others.Similarly, Stein orders her information according to emphasis, with her characteristic tic of repetition--remember, this is the person who gave us lines like "A rose is a rose is a rose" and "there is no there, there."

Stein does not overindulge herself, however, and imparts a generous amount of lucid thought on how Picasso created and from what and whom he drew his influences.She progresses chronologically through his periods-the blue, the rose, the harlequin, Cubist, calligraphic, etc., up to the point she was writing. This plus salient insights into society, war, creative artists and the 20th century in general make the volume quite a deal in a small package.

Seeing The World Through The Eyes Of An Infant
As has been written elsewhere (Try Hemingway's A MOVEABLE FEAST, for instance) Gertrude Stein possessed a tremendous ego.She did not express opinions, she stated facts even when the basis for her facts existed onlyin her head.She also had the irksome habit of repeating the sameinformation many times, often approaching it from slightly differentdirections.Again, I am certainly not the first to comment on thispeculiarity of her writing.That this book is filled with examples of bothof the above does not take away from its excellence in revealing much aboutPicasso and his art.

Stein's fame comes more from her position in theintellectual and artistic community of early to mid twentieth century Paristhan from her ability as a writer or poet.It was because of this positionthat she came to know Picasso so well, and it was as an outgrowth of thispersonal relationship that this book came to be written.

One area that Ifound very informative in PICASSO was Stein's analysis of the alternatinginfluences of Picasso's Spanish soul, Paris, and Spain itself, on thevarious periods of Picasso's artistic development.In this respect, Steincontrasts Spain and France in the following manner:Spain was a sadcountry with a monotony of coloring while France was the country ofToulouse-Lautrec with vivid colors and images.

With that as a background,she introduced Picasso, as a young man in Spain, painting realistic worksin the late nineteenth century manner.This was followed by his firstvisit to Paris during which he was influenced by the paintings ofToulouse-Lautrec.(See illustration #3, "In the Cafe")He thenreturned to Spain in 1902, staying until 1904.During this period, histemperament returned to that of his native Spain and he produced thedarker, more somber paintings of his "blue period."This periodended with his return to Paris in 1904.Throughout the balance of PICASSO,Stein traced his painting cycles and the people and experiences thatinfluenced them.

Picasso revealed to Stein, and she passed on to us, oneof the main secrets of his later styles.He saw as a very young child saw,and painted what he saw through those infantile eyes.An infant sees whatit sees from very close up and, consequently, only sees one or two of itsmother's features at a time.An infant can't focus at a distance andprobably couldn't recognize its own mother from across a room.That infantwould probably recognize an eye or a nose, or one or two other features. That same child would probably only recognize its mother in profile, andonly from one side at that, i.e., left or right profile, but not both. This was the vision that Picasso brought to his art:a recognizable eye, anose in profile, and these not necessarily connected in any way that makessense to the eye of an adult viewer.It was one of the geniuses of Picassothat he could utilize this vision in his art, and it was as a gift thatGertrude Stein let us in on the secret.

I have visited the Picassomuseums in Barcelona and Paris, and through their displays, have tracedPicasso's evolution as an artist.Neither museum was as instructiverelative to Picasso's thought processes as was this small book with itsmany black and white illustrations.For having providing these insights, Ican forgive Gertrude Stein for all her mannerisms and displays ofego.

Much more information about Picasso and the literary and artisticpersonages of his era can be gained by reading this book.I do recommendit.

A brief life of Picasso by the gatekeeper of Modernism
Gertrude Stein's fifty-odd page remembrance of Pablo Picasso is brief in page length only.Her convolved writing style challenges the reader to think within the context of Picasso's own creative processes.This is nota quick read, but I was struck by how Stein had her finger on the pulse ofPicasso's drive and desire in painting.Her scope is concerned with theRed and Blue Periods and the start of Picasso's role in the invention ofCubism.As much of a literary challenge as it is a close reading ofseveral important Picasso paintings, including Stein's own famous portrait. ... Read more

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An annotated collection of the writers' correspondence traces Stein's contribution to Wilder's creation of such plays as Our Town and Wilder's support for Stein's famous U.S. lecture tour in 1934 and 1935. UP. Amazon.com Review
Gertrude Stein, the great lesbian modernist, met ThorntonWilder when he was a young writer in search of a mentor. Stein becamethat mentor and helped Wilder shape his aesthetic into classicAmerican plays such as Our Town and The Skin of OurTeeth. Begun during Stein's lecture tour of the U.S. in 1934,their friendship lasted until Stein's death 12 years later. Theseletters record Wilder's attempts to help Stein with publication andStein's insistence that the writer's work is not teaching or lecturingor seeking fame, but writing. The Letters of Gertrude Stein andThornton Wilder records not only a friendship, but also thewriters' struggles with the position of their writing in Americanculture. ... Read more

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"How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?” Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master “whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness” and “thin, plain, tense, sour” Alice B. Toklas, the “worker bee” who ministered to Stein’s needs throughout their forty-year expatriate “marriage.” As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couple’s charmed life in a village in Vichy France, her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. “The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties,” she writes. 

The portrait of the legendary couple that emerges from this work is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas  lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat.

Two Lives is also a work of literary criticism. “Even the most hermetic of [Stein’s] writings are works of submerged autobiography,” Malcolm writes. “The key of  'I' will not unlock the door to their meaning—you need a crowbar for that—but will sometimes admit you to a kind of anteroom of suggestion.” Whether unpacking the accessible Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which Stein “solves the koan of autobiography,” or wrestling with The Making of Americans, a masterwork of “magisterial disorder,” Malcolm is stunningly perceptive.

Praise for the author:

“[Janet Malcolm] is among the most intellectually provocative of authors . . .able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight.”—David Lehman, Boston Globe

“Not since Virginia Woolf has anyone thought so trenchantly about the strange art of biography.”—Christopher Benfey

Customer Reviews (11)

A great opportunity to learn more about two great lesbians
At the December 2008 meeting of the NYC LGBT Center book discussion group, the consensus was that almost everyone liked "Two Lives" and appreciated learning more about Gertrude and Alice.

There were some reservations expressed that book was not a conventional biography, but more like a collection of "New Yorker" stories, which is where much of the book was originally published. There was some criticism that some of the writing appeared shallow. The biggest surprise for the group was finding out that both Stein and Toklas managed to stay in occupied France during World War II without coming under scrutiny by the Germans. There was some intense discussion as to whether Gertrude Stein even really knew what was happening to Jews in France or whether she was simply in a state of denial.

Several attendees were fascinated by the "expatriate" life that both women lead in Paris in the 1920's and 1930's and the lively salons they held which attracted so many artists and other famous people. There was some speculation as to what motivated people to come to these, making them so attractive. It was suggested that perhaps aside from the sparkling conversation and good food, the opportunity to rub shoulders with famous people was irresistible.

Additionally, a few felt that Stein was a real self-promoter who used people, discarding them when they had no more use for her. Others pointed out that many artists--notably Picasso, who was a member of Stein's circle--were also self-promoters and had to be in order to be successful.Several felt sorry for Alice who clearly was the person who served Gertrude, kept house, cooked for her, assisted with her writing and for all practical purposes was her servant. It was agreed that Alice was not well-served by Gertrude's will, practically forcing into penury at the end of her life.

More interestingly, the group was fascinated to learn of the sex life between the two ladies, specifically how Gertrude was adept in giving "cows" to Alice.

Janet Malcolm, TWO LIVES: GERTRUDE AND ALICE
Dianne Hunter's Review
This tabloid-fodder, skeptical reportage borders on despicable. Part I recycles a NEW YORKER essay on Stein & Toklas getting on with apparent imperturbability in Nazi France, and their friendship with B. Fay, whom Toklas later helped to escape from prison. Part II examines THE MAKING OF AMERICANS, retails gossipy findings by and about Stein scholars Katz, Dydo, Rice, Burns et al., and discusses treacherous researchers, narrative theft, and Malcolm's struggle with her ignorance of Stein. Malcolm zaps Stein for publicizing her cheerfulness, genius and confidence but not her Jewishness, depression or lesbianism. Part III starts by mollifying the book's previous malice, but then turns its baleful gaze on Toklas as a poor relation, and ends by mocking her Roman Catholicism. This (2007) quasi-biographical search for dirt and lies centers on questions about what it means to be Jewish and about what on earth could have made Stein, a fat Jewish lesbian, lovable. (Malcolm's answer: Stein was a youngest sibling).

I Actually Want to Read Gertrude Stein Now (Though I Probably Won't)
Why would I read a book on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two writers (well, probably one) I have sedulously avoided reading in the past? Well, first off, the book was on sale -it was half price, more or less- at the Strand Book Store ("Eight miles of Books") in New York City and I went down to the Strand to replenish my book larder.(That's not all I picked up. I left the Strand with a first rate experimental novel by a guy I'd never read before at all -David Markson's This Is a Novel; a novel I hadn't read by Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl; David Cesarini's Becoming Eichmann; Paul Fussell's latest reflection on the experience of soldiering in World War II, The Boy's Crusade; a new history of the Trojan War by Barry Schwartz; Philip Roth's Everyman; and a novel written almost exclusively in the first person plural (that means "we") about office life, Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.) Second, while I don't know much about Stein, I do know she's some kind of genius of the English language. ("Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," she wrote. It works for me. Reading that actually makes me see something about roses I hadn't seen before.)(And I like her characterization of Oakland, California, the town where she grew up: "There's no there there." That's really, really cool.)Third, the few times I tried to read Stein I came up with a big Goose Egg, but I know she's a major writer, though a particularly thorny one, of the modernist variety, a Picasso of prose, so to speak. Fourth, I read the first few sentences of Malcolm's lively study of Stein and I was ... hooked.: "When I read The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book for the first time, Eisenhower was in the white House and Liz Taylor had taken Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds. The book, published in 1954, was given to me by a fellow member of a group of pretentious young persons I ran around with, who had nothing but amused contempt for middlebrow American culture, and whose revolt against the conformity of the time largely took the form of patronizing a furniture store called Design Research and of writing mannered letters to each other modeled on the mannered letters of certain famous literary homosexuals, then not known as such. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book fit right in with our program of callow preciousness; we loved its waspishly magisterial tone, its hauteur and malice....."What emerges from this engaging study is a picture of complicated but mutually beneficial relationship. Gertrude dearly decided that she was a genius, a nonpareil, and that, ergo, everyone around her should cater to her needs. "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing," she reported in Everybody's Autobiography. Everyone loved Gertrude but very few people really cared for Alice but it was Alice's careful, jealous, fussy caring for Gertrude that made it possible for Gertrude to exercise her genius --which, in Malcolm's eyes, was considerable, though exceedingly difficult of access. Horribly difficult of access, one might say. Malcolm doesn't shortchange the barriers in the way of reading and appreciating Stein's long, indulgent but at the same time terribly revolutionary prose wanderings. There are many pleasures to this short but acute study: Malcolm traces the path of Steinian criticism and studies, she has good things to say about Gertrude and Alice's life in Vichy France during World War II, seemingly oblivious to the horrors going on around them. She has telling things to say about the blank spots in Gertrude's perception of the world (where did she stand on the Jewish question? Why was one of her closest confidants in the later years of the war a vicious anti-Semite?)She understands and accepts Stein's "heartlessness" to ordinary people's suffering. ("But she is not writing [about their lives]; she is writing a book about how amusing life around Gertrude Stein is. The heartlessness is essential to the amusement...") This is a fine book, discerning and amusing, and it ultimately makes you feel better about the grotesque near-monster that was Gertrude Stein and her equally grotesque lover and minder Alice B. Toklas.

the author inserts herself
This short book rounds out a few pieces of the Gertrude/Alice relationship. I liked the way she gives a flavor of Stein's first book, relieving me of any desire to read it myself. Malcolm is a good writer and she touches on subjects relating to her own drama being sued for fabricating quotations and she inserts her own biases as in, "Wills are uncanny and electric documents. They lie dormant for years, and then spring to life when their author dies, as if death were rain. Their effect on those they enrich or disappoint is never negligible, and sometimes unexpectedly charged. They thrust living and dead into a final fierce clasp of love or hatred. But they are not written in stone--for all their granite legal language--and they can be bent to subvert the wishes of the writer. Such was the case with Stein's will."

Smarty pants!
Interesting, but I fear the author seems to set out to defend an agenda rather than seeking to a rational conclusion from the evidence at hand. She also falls prey to a need to appear very clever which she may well be. Is she more clever than profound? ... Read more

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Stein's memorable "play" MEXICO was first printed in thegroundbreaking 1922 collection GEOGRAPHY AND PLAYS, a book whichrepresents one of the best of the modernist experiments. Stein wroteMEXICO in 1916 upon her and Alice Toklas's return from the Mallorcancountryside where they had gone to escape the war. Although clearlywithout plot of sustained narrative, the play -- seldom actually aboutMexico -- does present images of travel, making the quick linguisticleaps and associations that Stein became known for. ... Read more

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One way perhaps of winning is to make a little one to come through them little like the baby that once was all them and lost them their everlasting feeling. Some can win from just the feeling the little one need not come to give it to them. ... Read more

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Collecting 36 poems, stories, plays, and essays by the pioneering modernist Stein, this compilation includes an extensive introduction examining Stein's impact on subsequent writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Between a Stein and a hard place!
Though not the first Stein reader, this edition presents some additional selections from the works of one of the 20th century's most influential writers. It gives readers a taste of some of her less familiar works with brief comments beginning each selection from editor, Richard Kostelanetz. His introduction also gives readers a good perspective of Stein's life and the development of her writing. Many still view Stein's work as difficult or hard to comprehend, but exposure to her works in this kind of reader format, allows for re-reading and comparison, which after a time makes her work more and more accessible and enjoyable. The publisher's decision to print editions simultaneously in paper and hardcover was a very good idea, making copies available for both the collector and classroom use. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Carelessly cobbled together
Text is marred by numerous errors, not just of spelling, but of dates, too. To wit: Foyot's was demolished in 1937, not 1933 (p.72). Cafe Voltaire was at #1, not 21, Place de l'Odeon (p. 67). Modigliani died 1920, not 1926 (p.121). Nathaniel West was killed 1940, not 1944 (p.120). Ezra Pound never lived in the rue de Seine (p.22). It is a fiction produced by Hemingway himself that he once rented an attic room at 39, rue Descartes, where Verlaine died (p.130). There's no such thing as rue St. Germain in Paris. It's 'boulevard' (p.20). And so on... Author also borrows/copies heavily, at times almost verbatim (but w/o acknowledgement) from Brian N. Morton's "Americans in Paris". Now there's a book to own!

great walking tour of Left Bank of Paris
Excellent way to tour bohemian Paris.Gertrude Stein owned a bookstore on the Left Bank in the early 1900s, which was the heart of the literary and artistic scene.This book includes 5 great half-day walking tours of the Left Bank.Among the sites on the tour are Helen Rubenstein's mansion which she had decorated with Picassos and Van Goghs, and which was ransacked by German troups in 1940; the bars and restaurants where Ernst Hemingway hung out, and scenes which appear in "The Sun Also Rises"; and the studios and residences of Picasso, e. e. cummings, Colette, Matisse, etc., etc.Each site is described in one or more paragraphs.I highly recommend experiencing Gertrude Stein's Paris.(This book was published in 1988, and is currently out of print.) ... Read more

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"IT IS A RATHER CURIOUS THING..."
"It is a rather curious thing..." so begins the first lecture by Gertrude Stein in this book.It has been 75 years since these lectures were first presented by Stein at the University of Chicago, one stop on her 6-month U.S. lecture tour in 1934-35. The book is a reprint of the original from 1935.

Yet the four lectures presented here are as fresh and provocative as if they were part of a university's creative writing curriculum in the 21st century.

Stein's use of language, her humor, her strong opinions, her unwavering beliefs, and yes, even some things that don't make sense are all here in 96 pages. "Can I say it more than often enough, " she intones in one of the lectures. And in another: "That is something that is really not anything and I have found out that it is made up of anything and that anything is that one thing."

Enjoy these lectures. Read them aloud to get their full effect.

The book contains the original Introduction by Thornton Wilder who invited Stein to the university to lecture and would become a very good friend, as well as a new Foreword by scholar Liesel Olson which gives the historic background of how these lectures came about.

And though it may be "a rather curious thing," it is Gertrude Stein at her best - "can I say it more than often enough."

It is too bad, however, that for such a slim volume, the book was not published in hardcover, as was the original. ... Read more