Gertrude Stein

Until recently Gertrude Stein was best known as an eccentric collector of modern art, as a hostess - with Alice B. Toklas - of a world-famous Parisian literary salon, and only incidentally as a writer of enigmatic poetry and prose, most of it unread, much of it out of print. In her engaging account of Stein's work, Jane Palatini Bowers elucidates some of Stein's most difficult texts and enables readers to re-evaluate Stein's position in the modernist canon. Stein's deconstruction of genre, language systems and literary conventions made her an extremely radical modernist and accounted for her marginalization by modernist critics and scholars. The world of literary criticism has only recently caught up with Gertrude Stein's literary practice. Recent critical theories (feminist and post-structuralist) have facilitated a reassessment of Stein's work and a recognition of her centrality in modernist and postmodernist literary history. Informed by post-structuralist theory, but refreshingly jargon-free, Bowers's study will guide readers as they negotiate the difficulties and enjoy the pleasures of Gertrude Stein's writing.