Tender Buttons: Objects
By Gertrude Stein and Lisa Congdon
3.5/5
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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.
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Reviews for Tender Buttons
149 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I'm into some pretty "out there" stuff, but this just made me stressed out.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Inesperado. Esa es la mejor palabra con la que puedo describir esta obra. No me atrae la poesía, pero esta obra es diferente a lo que esperaba y diferente a todo lo que leí de poesía anteriormente.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ah, 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.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5"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.
3 people found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5At 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.
2 people found this helpful
Book preview
Tender Buttons - Gertrude Stein
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.
GLAZED GLITTER.
Nickel, what is nickel, it is originally rid of a cover.
The change in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming very charming is that clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.
There is no gratitude in mercy and in medicine. There can be breakages in Japanese. That is no programme. That is no color chosen. It was chosen yesterday, that showed spitting and perhaps washing and polishing. It certainly showed no obligation and perhaps if borrowing is not natural there is some use in giving.
A SUBSTANCE IN A CUSHION.
The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable.
Callous is something that hardening leaves behind what will be soft if there is a genuine interest in there being present as many girls as men. Does this change. It shows that dirt is clean when there