7 best short stories by Gertrude Stein
By Gertrude Stein and August Nemo
()
About this ebook
Check out this seven short stories by this author carefully selected by critic August Nemo:
- Ada.
- Miss furr and Miss Skeen.
- France.
- Americans.
- Italians.
- A Sweet Tail.
- In the Grass.
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
Tender Buttons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three LivesStories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tender Buttons: Objects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Is Round Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making Of Americans: Being A History Of A Family's Progress Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Women Who Wrote: Stories and Poems from Audacious Literary Mavens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeography and Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Lives Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Great American Poets: New Hampshire, Tender Buttons, Select Poems, and Selected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blood on the Dining-Room Floor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMatisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein With Two Shorter Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE MAKING OF AMERICANS (Modern Classics Series): A History of a Family's Progress Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gertrude Stein Collection Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5How to Write Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Three Lives and Tender Buttons Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tender Buttons (Zongo Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to 7 best short stories by Gertrude Stein
Titles in the series (100)
7 best short stories by Herman Melville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Arthur Machen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by H. G. Wells Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Oscar Wilde Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Jack London Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by H. P. Lovecraft Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/57 best short stories by Rudyard Kipling Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/57 best short stories by Edgar Allan Poe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/57 best short stories by Bram Stoker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Talbot Mundy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Joseph Conrad Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Guy de Maupassant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Ambrose Bierce Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/57 best short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Katherine Mansfield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Leo Tolstoy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Maxim Gorky Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Washington Irving Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Anton Chekhov Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Edgar Wallace Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Charles Dickens Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Zane Grey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by D. H. Lawrence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/57 best short stories by G. K. Chesterton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Abraham Merritt Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related ebooks
GEOGRAPHY & 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 ratingsThree Lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpring and All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Write Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sour Grapes A Book of Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Making Of Americans: Being A History Of A Family's Progress Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paris Spleen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFive Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Poets in the 21st Century: The Poetics of Social Engagement Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Second Words: Selected Critical Prose 1960–1982 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlood on the Dining-Room Floor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst Fig and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Madwoman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tulips & Chimneys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Essays of Virginia Woolf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poet and His Book: The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gertrude Stein Collection Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Sonnets from the Portuguese Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Year of the Dog Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Virginia Woolf's Nose: Essays on Biography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Portable Anais Nin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Virginia Woolf: The Complete Novels + A Room of One's Own Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSonnets to Orpheus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntinous: A Poem Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lady from the Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Weary Blues: A Collection of Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnd the Stars Were Shining: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The King James Version of the Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for 7 best short stories by Gertrude Stein
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
7 best short stories by Gertrude Stein - Gertrude Stein
Publisher
Preface
By Sherwood Anderson
––––––––
The Work of Gertrude Stein
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 Livesand 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 one might call the extension of the province of his art
one wants to achieve. One works with words and one would like words that have a taste on the lips, that have a perfume to the nostrils, rattling words one can throw into a box and shake, making a sharp, jingling sound, words that, when seen on the printed page, have a distinct arresting effect upon the eye, words that when they jump out from under the pen one may feel with the fingers as one might caress the cheeks of his beloved.
And what I think is that these books of Gertrude Stein's do in a very real sense recreate life in words.
We writers are, you see, all in such a hurry. There are such grand things we must do. For one thing the Great American Novel must be written and there is the American or English Stage that must be uplifted by our very important contributions, to say nothing of the epic poems, sonnets to my lady's eyes, and what not. We are all busy getting these grand and important thoughts and emotions into the pages of printed books.
And in the meantime the little words, that are the soldiers with which we great generals must make our conquests, are neglected.
There is a city of English and American words and it has been a neglected city. Strong broad shouldered words, that should be marching across open fields under the blue sky, are clerking in little dusty dry goods stores, young virgin words are being allowed to consort with whores, learned words have been put to the ditch digger's trade. Only yesterday I saw a word that once called a whole nation to arms serving in the mean capacity of advertising laundry soap.
For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire 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