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Title: Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein ISBN: 0-486-29897-3 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 30 October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: (un)lost generation
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Modernist Classic That's Fun to Read
Comment: The playfulness & intellectual rigor of the best of the
Modernist movement unite in this small book of exquisite
prose poems that may be read, on one level at least, as
an extended allegory of eroticism (e.g. "tender buttons"
are nipples); & on another, as a manifesto of what was
to become L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. But you don't really need
to be a scholar to appreciate the freshness & lovely
rhythms of the poems. They are like nothing else that
existed at the the time they were written (not even the
great Victorian "nonsense" poets dared to be this non-referential)
& though they have cast a long shadow across late 20c. PoMo,
there really has been nothing quite like them since.
Rating: 3
Summary: Stein's dance of words
Comment: "Tender Buttons," by Gertrude Stein, is a short work (52 plus ix pages in the Dover edition) which one could classify as a collection of prose poems. The Dover edition includes a short introduction; it notes that the book was initially published in 1914.
"Tender Buttons" is divided into three sections: "OBJECTS," "FOOD," and "ROOMS." The first two sections are further subdivided into short entries: "A RED STAMP," "A BOX," "A PLATE," etc. Thus it seems like Stein is presenting the poetic version of a series of still lifes.
Stein often uses repetition, alliteration, and other rhythmic techniques. She totally liberates her compositions from standard syntax and punctuation. Words are strung together in odd combinations. Ultimately she creates a playful, even musical dance of words across the pages.
But I must admit I found this dance largely incoherent. It often reads like some pidgin variant of English, or like the writings of someone who has suffered a neurological trauma to the language center of her brain. I could also compare it to some sort of secret code language of an occult society.
Examples of the style in this book: "Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece a little piece please" (from "APPLE"); "A curving example makes righteous finger-nails" (from "ROOMS").
The book as a whole has an experimental feel, and while I'm not sure how successful the experiment is, "Tender Buttons" is nonetheless quite a remarkable work. At times it's even fun. My suggestion: read sections of the book aloud to someone who does not speak or understand English, and ask them how the pure musicality of the language strikes them.
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Title: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein ISBN: 067972463X Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: How to Write by Gertrude Stein ISBN: 0486231445 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 June, 1975 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Three Lives (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Gertrude Stein ISBN: 0140181849 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress (American Literature Series) by Gertrude Stein ISBN: 1564780880 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein by Gertrude Stein, F.W. Dupee, Carl Van Vechten ISBN: 0679724648 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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