Tender Buttons

Gertrude Stein is remembered as a Parisian mentor to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Matisse, Picasso, and other members of the Lost Generation. But she was also an author and poet, known for experimental works tat ignored traditional narrative forms and linear convention. This is one of her little-known works, a paean to food, objects, and rooms. Self-published in 1914, this is one of the volumes that solidified Stein's reputation. Dividing the book into three sections—Objects, Food, and Rooms—Stein attempts to form images using repetition and disjointed words. As the average person will find that it makes no sense at all, Stein's exercise in automatic writing remains in the realm of the literati.

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was an American-Jewish writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France. While living in Paris, Gertrude began writing for publication. Her earliest writings were mainly retellings of her college experiences. Her first critically acclaimed publication was Three Lives. Sherwood Anderson in his public introduction to Stein's 1922 publication of Geography and Plays wrote: “For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entirely new recasting of life, in the city of words. Here is one artist who has been able to accept ridicule, who has even forgone the privilege of writing the great American novel, uplifting our English speaking stage, and wearing the bays of the great poets to go live among the little housekeeping words, the swaggering bullying street-corner words, the honest working, money saving words and all the other forgotten and neglected citizens of the sacred and half forgotten city.