Tender Buttons - Objects. Food. Rooms.: With an Introduction by Sherwood Anderson
By Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson
()
About this ebook
First published in 1909, Stein’s work Tender Buttons is a modernist classic and a wonderful example of her thought-provoking and highly original style of writing.
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American poet, novelist, art collector, and playwright who famously hosted a Paris salon frequented by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Ernest Hemingway. Before she was a patron to “The Lost Generation” artists, Stein was an esteemed author who influenced many 20th-century writers with her innovative and experimental prose.
Other notable works by this author include: Three Lives (1909), White Wines (1913), and An Exercise in Analysis (1917).
Featuring an introduction by Sherwood Anderson, this volume is an essential read for fans of Gertrude Stein’s work and those with an interest in Jazz Age literature.
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American novelist and poet. Born in Pennsylvania, in 1903 she immigrated to France, where she would live for the rest of her life. The home on the Left Bank of Paris that she shared with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, became a cultural hub as young artists and writers began to gather there. As her salon rose to prominence, Stein befriended several expatriate authors living in Paris, including Djuna Barnes, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway. Stein has been credited with coining the term the lost generation to describe this group of writers. She died in France in 1946.
Read more from Gertrude Stein
The Making Of Americans: Being A History Of A Family's Progress Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Geography and Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Buttons: Objects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Is Round Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTender Buttons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blood on the Dining-Room Floor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree LivesStories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat American Poets: New Hampshire, Tender Buttons, Select Poems, and Selected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Write Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Three Lives Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gertrude Stein Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNarration: Four Lectures Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5GEOGRAPHY & PLAYS: A Collection of Poems, Stories and Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Lives and Tender Buttons Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Three Lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Lives - The Stories of the Good Anna, Melanctha and the Gentle Lena: With an Introduction by Sherwood Anderson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTender Buttons Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tender Buttons (Zongo Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Tender Buttons - Objects. Food. Rooms.
Related ebooks
Geography and Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGEOGRAPHY & PLAYS (Collection of Stories, Poems and Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGEOGRAPHY & PLAYS: A Collection of Poems, Stories and Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Gertrude Stein Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMatisse Picasso & Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories: With an Introduction by Sherwood Anderson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Lives - The Stories of the Good Anna, Melanctha and the Gentle Lena: With an Introduction by Sherwood Anderson Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeography and Plays: “I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to get rich. ” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Short Story, 1920 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassion Play: Lush, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEdwin E. Smith's Quarterly Magazine Summer 2013: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPulphouse Fiction Magazine #11: Pulphouse, #11 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Particular Friendship: Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light Over Broken Tide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bill from My Father: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Best Short Stories of 1920, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngel's Touch: Other World Demonios, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRise: The Liminal Chronicles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConsume: Other World Demonios, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRegarding Amelia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Is All He Asks of You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAurum: A golden anthology of original Australian fantasy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoods and Modes: Vagrant Writings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thirteenth Tale: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jewel Box Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grandpa Steiner Saves the World (from Illegal Aliens (from Space)) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMost Beautiful Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sounds Like Me: My Life (So Far) in Song Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killer Heels: A Molly Forrester Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Carpet Makers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Holding Pen: A Novella Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Reviews for Tender Buttons - Objects. Food. Rooms.
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Tender Buttons - Objects. Food. Rooms. - Gertrude Stein
TENDER BUTTONS
OBJECTS. FOOD. ROOMS.
By
GERTRUDE STEIN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON
First published in 1914
Copyright © 2021 Ragged Hand
This edition is published by Ragged Hand,
an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any
way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.
For more information visit
www.readandcobooks.co.uk
Contents
THE WORK OF GERTRUDE STEIN
By Sherwood Anderson
OBJECTS
FOOD
ROOMS
THE WORK OF
GERTRUDE STEIN
By Sherwood Anderson
ONE evening in the winter, some years ago, my brother came to my rooms in the city of Chicago bringing with him a book by Gertrude Stein. The book was called Tender Buttons and, just at that time, there was a good deal of fuss and fun being made over it in American newspapers. I had already read a book of Miss Stein's called Three Lives and had thought it contained some of the best writing ever done by an American. I was curious about this new book.
My brother had been at some sort of a gathering of literary people on the evening before and someone had read aloud from Miss Stein's new book. The party had been a success. After a few lines the reader stopped and was greeted by loud shouts of laughter. It was generally agreed that the author had done a thing we Americans call putting something across
—the meaning being that she had, by a strange freakish performance, managed to attract attention to herself, get herself discussed in the newspapers, become for a time a figure in our hurried, harried lives.
My brother, as it turned out, had not been satisfied with the explanation of Miss Stein's work then current in America, and so he bought Tender Buttons and brought it to me, and we sat for a time reading the strange sentences. It gives words an oddly new intimate flavor and at the same time makes familiar words seem almost like strangers, doesn't it,
he said. What my brother did, you see, was to set my mind going on the book, and then, leaving it on the table, he went away.
And now, after these years, and having sat with Miss Stein by her own fire in the rue de Fleurus in Paris I am asked to write something by way of an introduction to a new book she is about to issue.
As there is in America an impression of Miss Stein's personality, not at all true and rather foolishly romantic, I would like first of all to brush that aside. I had myself heard stories of a long dark room with a languid woman lying on a couch, smoking cigarettes, sipping absinthes perhaps and looking out upon the world with tired, disdainful eyes. Now and then she rolled her head slowly to one side and uttered a few words, taken down by a secretary who approached the couch with trembling eagerness to catch the falling pearls.
You will perhaps understand something of my own surprise and delight when, after having been fed up on such tales and rather Tom Sawyerishly hoping they might be true, I was taken to her to find instead of this languid impossibility a woman of striking vigor, a subtle and powerful mind, a discrimination in the arts such as I have found in no other American born man or woman, and a charmingly brilliant conversationalist.
Surprise and delight
did I say? Well, you see, my feeling is something like this. Since Miss Stein's work was first brought to my attention I have been thinking of it as the most important pioneer work done in the field of letters in my time. The loud guffaws of the general that must inevitably follow the bringing forward of more of her work do not irritate me but I would like it if writers, and particularly young writers, would come to understand a little what she is trying to do and what she is in my opinion doing.
My thought in the matter is something like this—that every artist working with words as his medium, must at times be profoundly irritated by what seems the limitations of his medium. What things does he not wish to create with words! There is the mind of the reader before him and he would like to create in that reader's mind a whole new world of sensations, or rather one might better say he would like to call back into life all of the dead and sleeping senses.
There is a thing