Gertrude Stein Reader

The literary legacy of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) consists of numerous works in which the traditional restraints of language are abandoned for spontaneous and surprising expression. Her writings challenge the reader, yet also offer an inviting liberation, and because of this they have not only endured but proven highly influential. The Gertrude Stein Reader collects fifty one of Stein's poems, stories, portraits, and plays, along with excerpts from Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein with Two Shorter Stories; A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow, A Love Story; Geography and Plays; An Acquaintance with a Description; and Useful Knowledge. The extensive introduction provides a brief biography and explains the impact her work had on subsequent writers and artists.

There have been many Anthologies, Chrestomathies, and Readers of Gertrude Stein's work, a multiplicity corresponding to the diversity and development of the writings she produced with such astonishing continuity all her life. In his lively selection, Mr. Kostelanetz has successfully represented one aspect of Stein's repertoire and provided a characteristic introduction which surely identifies his particular insight into her work. As Gertrude Stein says in Tender Buttons: 'a line in life, a single line and a stairway.' Congratulations all round!, Richard Kostelanetz is right—again. Gertrude Stein is the great American pioneer of the avant-garde. Kostelanetz shows us Stein in all her bounty, ingenuity, and originality., Kostelanetz does it again, gathering Stein's lively, liberating, and cleansing words (the words, as she says, we hold in our hands) in a fine new anthology that includes 'Many Many Women,' 'Wherein the South Differs from the North,' 'Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters,' and 'How Writing is Written'—testimony all to Stein's prescient originality and Kostelanetz's lifelong commitment to it., Gertrude Stein always did things her own way, with no apologies given. Editor Richard Kostelanetz captures the contradictory aspects of her domineering personality and towering presence. He makes quite clear that Stein was a woman for all seasons and for all times., Avant-garde champion Richard Kostelanetz collects 34 lesser-known works you won't find in Selected Writings, and these 'difficult' pieces—rejected by publishers in their time—are wild, witty, and brilliant. ... In his lively, passionate introduction and in commentary throughout, Kostelanetz elucidates without pretension or condescension. Three cheers.

Richard Kostelanetz has authored and edited over fifty books, including John Cage: Writer, The Frank Zappa Companion: Four Decades of Commentary, and Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism. He lives in New York City.