The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder (Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Mo) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300067747 ISBN 13: 9780300067743

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1996

Synopsis

An annotated collection of the writers' correspondence traces Stein's contribution to Wilder's creation of such plays as Our Town and Wilder's support for Stein's famous U.S. lecture tour in 1934 and 1935. UP.

About this title

Review:

Gertrude Stein, the great lesbian modernist, met Thornton Wilder when he was a young writer in search of a mentor. Stein became that mentor and helped Wilder shape his aesthetic into classic American plays such as Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. Begun during Stein's lecture tour of the U.S. in 1934, their friendship lasted until Stein's death 12 years later. These letters record Wilder's attempts to help Stein with publication and Stein's insistence that the writer's work is not teaching or lecturing or seeking fame, but writing. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder records not only a friendship, but also the writers' struggles with the position of their writing in American culture.

From Kirkus Reviews:

By giving both sides of an ongoing written conversation, this useful collection offers an unusual portrait of a long and important literary friendship. From Stein's thank-you note written in late 1934, the month after Stein and Wilder first met in Chicago, to Wilder's 1946 note of condolence to Alice Toklas following Stein's death, the letters record a warm friendship marked by a sharing of ideas, friends, and (perhaps not least significantly) a belief in Stein's genius. Wilder is the chattier of the two, whether reporting from Vienna that he has visited Freud, who informs him that the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's works, or from New York, noting that Mabel Luhan's effort to hold a weekly salon has failed. Wilder is forthright in discussing Stein's influence on his work, and in a 1937 letter says that the third act of Our Town ``is based on your ideas, as on great pillars.'' That Stein in turn appreciates Wilder's talent is apparent in her attempt to persuade him to collaborate on her novel Ida: ``a really truly novel is too much for me all alone we must do it together.'' Throughout, the letters are enhanced by thorough annotations that help make them accessible to a wide audience by supplying details on contemporary events and people, explaining allusions, offering speculations, and even editorializing when, the editors say, ``texts appear to ask for it.'' Likewise, the addition of useful supplementary appendices (on Stein's 193435 U.S. lecture tour; and on what occupied Wilder and Stein during WW II, when they exchanged few letters) help round out the scene surrounding the correspondence. Perhaps the most convincing marker of the success of this collection is that, in addition to conveying so much about these correspondents, it prompts one to regret anew the decline of letter writing. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0300067747
• ISBN 13: 9780300067743
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 486
• Editor: Burns Professor Edward M., Dydo Professor Ulla E.