Tender Buttons

By Gertrude Stein

Tender Buttons is the best known of Gertrude Stein's "hermetic" works. It is a small book separated into three sections: Food, Objects and Rooms each containing prose under subtitles. It is sometimes viewed as a modern classic experimental novel made up of prose poems. While living in Paris, Gertrude began writing for publication. Her earliest writings were mainly retellings of her college experiences. Mabel Dodge promoted Gertrude's works in the United States. Foreshadowing Gertrude's later critical reception, Mabel wrote in "Speculations":

In Gertrude Stein's writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting one's reason sleep for an instant, may exclaim: "It is a fine pattern!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781105968365

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist and poet. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Stein was raised in an upper-middle-class Jewish family alongside four siblings. After a brief move to Vienna and Paris, the Steins settled in Oakland, California in 1878, where Stein would spend her formative years. In 1892, following the loss of her mother and father, Stein moved with her sister to live with family in Baltimore, where she was exposed to salon culture. From 1893 to 1897 she attended Radcliffe College, studying psychology under William James. Conducting experiments on the phenomenon of normal motor automatism, Stein produced early examples of steam of consciousness or automatic writing, a hallmark of the Modernist style later practiced by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. In 1897, she enrolled at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine on the recommendation of James, but ultimately left before completing her degree. She moved to Paris with her brother Leo, an artist, in 1903. In the French capital, the Steins gained a reputation as art collectors, purchasing works by Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Renoir. At 27 rue de Fleurus, Stein hosted an influential salon for such artists and intellectuals as Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who recognized her as a leading Modernist and central figure of the so-called Lost Generation. Her influential works include Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1912), and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), all of which exemplify her control over vastly different styles of poetry and prose. Capable of producing experimental, hermetic works that draw attention to the constructed nature of language, Stein also excelled with straightforward narratives, essays, and biographical descriptions. From 1907 until her death, Stein and her life partner Alice B. Toklas gained a reputation as leaders in the international avant-garde, and remain essential to our understanding of the development of twentieth century art and culture.

Reviews for Tender Buttons

[catfantastic_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ah, modernism. The point is that you will not understand. Well, alright, that's not the entire point, but that's part of the point. Stein takes words and arranges them in a deliberately weird way, experimenting with and stretching the confines of language to inspire new ways of looking at words we use every day. It's not about making sense in a logical narrative way, but if you read it aloud there is a sort of sense to the rhythm and the way the words will slide off your tongue and it's intriguing and weird (in a good way) to say the least. I went through it again and again and started highlighting random strings of words that caught my eye, because you wouldn't find these combinations of words elsewhere but they're great, such as:"...a single hurt color." (p.3)"A not torn rose-wood color." (p5)and"...every bit of blue is precocious."(p. 7)or a single frantic sullenness." (p. 13)Some is fantastically nonsense, such as:"The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision." (p 12)"Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolds and reckless reckless rats, this is this." (p 15)and"A receptacle and a symbol and no monster were present and no more." (p. 25)Yet some of it seems to make very good sense, such as:"What is the use of a violent kind of delightfulness if there is no pleasure in not getting tired of it.""...there is some venturing in refusing to believe nonsense."and "A little calm is so ordinary and in any case there is sweetness and some of that." (p. 4)"Kindness is not earnest, it is not assiduous it is not revered." (p. 22)and my personal favourite:"a description is not a birthday." (p.22) - make of that what you will.

[readhanded · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

At the risk of sounding uneducated - this book is gibberish. It reminds me of the old story of the Emperor's New Clothes. Intellectuals all say it's a masterpiece, so everyone else agrees. All the while, even the intellectuals are saying "what the heck?" when they (try to) read it. But nobody wants to admit it because then they'll sound like an idiot.

[ifjuly · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Cutting shade, cool spades and little last beds, make violet, violet when." One of my very favorite books to read aloud for pleasure on sunny lazy weekend mornings over breakfast, or late into the evening with wine. The linguistic equivalent of putting on a jazz album or painting the room a new color--gratifies the senses and as Thoreau put it, "affect[s] the quality of the day" (which is "the highest of the arts"). I have a feeling Stein had a good idea of how to live well in the day to day, no matter what. And if it's any confirmation, the Alice B. Toklas cookbook seems to color everything as well.