Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms - Softcover

Stein, Gertrude

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1614271771 ISBN 13: 9781614271772

Publisher: Martino Fine Books, 2011

Synopsis

2011 Reprint of 1914. "Tender Buttons" is the best known of Gertrude Stein's "hermetic" works. It is a small book separated into three sections - Food, Objects and Rooms each containing prose under subtitles. "Tender Buttons" is one of the great Modern experiments in verse. Simultaneously considered to be a masterpiece of verbal Cubism, a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax, the book is perhaps more often written about than actually read. Divided into three sections-"Objects," "Food," and "Rooms"-the book contains a series of descriptions that defy conventional syntax.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The first publisher of Tender Buttons described the book’s effect on readers as “something like terror, there are no known precedents to cling to.” Written in pencil in a small notebook and barely revised after its first composition, the text caused a sensation and was widely reviewed and discussed on its publication. This edition of Gertrude Stein’s transformative work immerses the text in its cultural context. The most opaque of modernist texts, Tender Buttons also had modernism’s most voluminous and varied response.

This Broadview Edition uses the response to Tender Buttons as a way of understanding this spectacular moment in publishing history. Stein’s text is published alongside its parodies, defenses, publicity brochure, and selections from the hundreds of responses to it in American daily newspapers, which placed it in the context of Cubism, fashion shows, and celebrity culture.

About the Author:

Gertrude Stein, born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1874, is a renowned American writer, poet, and art collector. The author of more than a dozen books and countless works of criticism, Stein died in France in 1946.

About this edition

• Publisher: Martino Fine Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1614271771
• ISBN 13: 9781614271772
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 60