Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.
In "The Making of Americans," Gertrude Stein sets out to tell "a history of a family's progress," radically reworking the traditional family saga novel to encompass her vision of personality and psychological relationships. As the history progresses over three generations, Stein also meditates on her own writing, on the making of "The Making of Americans," and on America.
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.
Gertrude Stein was at heart an artist¿s writer. She became well-known to the literary mainstream with "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," and was at her most accessible with her speech and autobiographical writing of her later years.
It is with collections such as Geography and Plays, however, that Stein showcased the possibilities of the English language to transcend beyond literature into the realm of modern art. The page was her canvas, and as the Cubist painters of her time treated their subjects, Stein re-assembled words in an abstracted form to present them in a greater context, a context un-tethered by a singular viewpoint.
This modern edition contains a massive collection of over 50 different works by Gertrude Stein. In addition to the daring and cheeky Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, "Literary Cubism ¿ Geography and Plays ¿ Selected Works of Gertrude Stein" contains many of her most radical and influential works. There is Ada, one of Stein¿s many word portraits of famous personages, this one written of Toklas. There is Every Afternoon: A Dialogue, a conversation between two unnamed people that highlights the writer¿s playful, often humorous style. Also included is Sacred Emily, in which the reader finds Stein¿s most often quoted line, ¿Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," a line that employs her trademark use of repetitive language to express that things are what they are, but at the same time, so much more. In Stein¿s view, the simple naming of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions associated with it¿the writer does not need to manipulate the word any further.
Gertrude Stein began the creative work that was to earn her the reputation as one of the most original writers of this century with the three pieces in this volume. Fernhurst, a fictional episode based on a Bryn Mawr scandal of the early 1900s, explores the labyrinth of love between man and woman and between woman and woman; Q.E.D. fictionalizes an early Stein romance (doomed finally by a rival); and the third selection is an early draft of The Making of Americans, which records Stein's struggle toward maturity as woman and artist. Essential works of a significant twentieth-century literary voice.
Gertrude Stein’s radical innovations and continual experiments with language were years ahead of her time. More than any other writer, Stein reflects the last century’s revolt from the fine arts. Gertrude Stein was one of the most colorful personalities of the literary world during the interwar years. This volume of her writings attempts to dispel some of the misunderstanding that surrounds her work, presenting many of her lectures for the first time. Look at Me Now includes portraits of people (Matisse, Lipschitz, Picasso, Henry James, and others), portraits of objects, her poetry, her novel Ida, and her last work, Brewsie and Willie. Her lectures reveal a precise and original scheme behind her writing, drawing on concepts from William James’s theories of the aesthetic to Bergson’s notion of time. This accessible anthology presents the best of her startling achievements.
The unforgettable stories of three women, told with poignancy and compassion by one of the most important writers of our century 3 Lives consists of three character studies of women; "The Good Anna"-a kind but domineering German servingwoman; "Melanctha"-an uneducated but sensitive black girl; "The Gentle Lena"-a pathetically feebleminded young German maid.
