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"Rose is a rose is a rose"

Among the most influential writers of her time, Gertrude Stein created poetryand prose so radically experimental that her work stood out even in an eracharacterized by unconventional sentiments. Stein's avant-garde approachto writing ignored the traditional confinements of grammar and structureand focused instead on sound, rhythm and texture, and the results were asrevolutionary and mesmerizingly brilliant as the post-impressionist paintingsof her friends Picasso and Matisse.

This sampling of Stein's work, selected and read by the author herself,represents a unique opportunity to experience first-hand all the power,resonance, and astounding creativity of one of the twentieth century's mostimportant and memorable artists.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1874, Gertrude Stein attended Radcliffe Collegewhere she studied psychology under the great William James. After leavingAmerica, Stein finally settled in Paris where she began experimenting withwriting techniques and before long became an important literary figure inthe flourishing Parisian art world of the day. Gertrude Stein also helpedlaunch the careers of other artistic giants and influenced and entertainedthe likes of Hemingway, Pound and Fitzgerald in her famous Paris salon.Gertrude Stein died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1946.


CONTAINS:

• The Making of Americans: Parts 1 & 2
• A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson
• If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso/Matisse
• Madame Recamier: An Opera

Customer Reviews (4)

Gertrude, briefly
Briefly, Gertrude, briefly and succinctly, succinctly is as it was and it was as it was remembered. A golden voice, an only voice a voice is as separate as a letter not sent, a letter not sent, not written not not sent not not delivered. A voice to stop stars, stars as they shine, shine shineas is as it was remembered stars as wars not remembered not remembered toopainfully, not rememebered as succinctly as briefly as this tape is. Awinner in brief, brief as a winner a golden winnner with a voice to stopstars. Miss Stein the secret is still with you.

Of coarse it's worth it.
Gertrude Stein's work is meant to be read. She accomplished the same ends with words as did the cubists with paint.Her work defies linear syntax and conventional gramerical boundaries.She takes an object and strips alltraces of reality from that object and presents it so that only the idea ofthat object remains. And it is the idea that Stein considered the mostimportant. Her writing is frustrating at first and this audio casset makesStein more accessible.You get a feel for the flow of her poetry.Therhyme and timbre that is elusive on the page is brought to life.Althoughthis selection is short and doesn't give a hint as to when or where orunder what circumstances it was recorded it still provides the reader withthe essence of Stein.

Essence of Stein
While this tape is, as already observed, a brief selection of Stein's reading, it is essential to anyone who loves, or would like to learn to love, her work.The cadences and intonations of her readings revealeverything we need to know about her purposes and methods as a writer; eventhemost hermetic and arcane of her work becomes"readable" ifher voice is present as one reads. This is not merely a precious historical document, but the perfect gateway to the treasures of Stein.

Terrible
As the famous review of Anthony Adverse went, similarly goes my review ofthis tedious little tape:"A Huge Mountain of Trash".It,however, is only huge in its trashiness, not in size or content.Perhapsmy review of this would be more accurate as:"A small pile ofgibberish." ... Read more

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Letters to Steward from the famous expatriate pair, dating from the 1930s through 1966, reflect a true friendship amongthe correspondents, the striking personalities of Stein andToklas, and their life in Paris. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

The Public Stein
Daniel, Lucy. "Gertrude Stein", Reaktion Books, 2009.

The Public Stein

Amos Lassen

Gertrude Stein was both a public and private person and she had her own construction of her public self. In turn, the public also constructed its image of the public Stein. Her life was amazing and it seems, even though it is years since her death, that it is constantly being written and changed. She, without question, is one of the most intriguing American writers.
Stein was composed of many parts that came together to give us an enigmatic person. She personified bohemia, she was a powerful patron of modern art (Picasso and Gris), she was a writer, a salon hostess and she coined the term "lost generation". She seemed to know everyone who was anyone and everyone seems to know who she was but have never read anything she wrote. She is/was a legend and she created it by herself at the same time that others were creating it about her. Lucy Daniel in this book looks at Stein's importance and her influence. Stein is considered to be a major modernist writer and she certainly made valuable contributions to avant-garde writing as well as art. However she has been regarded as more of a figure and a salon hostess than a writer. It is easy enough to find what to read about her life but very little has been written about what she wrote. This is what this book does and it does so while integrating the writings w\with the biography. It is well written and a wonderful addition to the works about Gertrude Stein.

A clearly written account of a challenging writer
Much has been written about the life of Gertrude Stein, not least by Stein herself.136 years after her birth, we still find it easier to grasp Stein as the "saloniste" who drew together influential artists and writers in her Paris apartment, and struggle to make sense of her work as a writer.That Stein herself became best-known for a work of "autobiography" just muddies the waters. Lucy Daniel brings a clear-eyed gaze to both Stein as the center of Parisian "Bohemian" culture, and a solid, non-polemical view of Stein's achievements as a writer.Too much of what has been written about Stein focuses on her life, and leaves the work undiscussed. Daniels has clearly read Stein, and brings insight to her work, without feeling the need to judge either the woman or her writing.While Daniel's book is unlikely to replace works like James Mellow's "Charmed Circle" or Janet Malcolm's recent "Two Lives"as accounts of the Stein/Toklas salon, I welcome it for its integration of biography and informed literary analysis. ... Read more

Product Description
A novel in three parts, written in 1903 and published for the first time in 1950 from the manuscript owned by Carl Van Vechten. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nothing more and nothing less
I read _Blood on the Dining Room Floor_ a couple months ago, during a time when I read almost nothing but sharp, hardboiled pulp detective stories.I might suggest that method -- read some old Sam Spade shorts (contemporary with Stein's writing of this little gem), then read this book, then go back.

Where Hammett and company's tales are sharp, grittily realistic, and driven by swarthy melodramatic plots, Stein's one mysterious foray into the Murder Mystery genre has little discernible plot, is distinctly un-swarthy, lacks melodrama, and for these reasons is perhaps far more realistic than Hammett et al. are held to be; _Blood_ clearly reflects the confusion we (I) feel in the face of traumatic events... the mind reels before the reality (which always lacks cliche and melodrama) of violence and leaves one (me) with nothing but an almost incoherent froth of language in one's (my) head, out of which occasionally bubble moments of "clarity": bits of facts and/or memories of incidents and characters which may or may not be accurate.Sometimes, too, the froth dissolves into moments of almost ritual invocation: "Lizzie do you understand do you understand lizzie": the mind reaching out to (hi)stries of past violence (the fall river axe murders, lizzie borden) to unsuccesfully but compulsively try to order and give meaning to the violence at hand.

Dazzling.The full effect of this book (the composition of "my take" on it which appears above) came only after weeks of letting the book sit in the back of my mind, as I moved back to pulp detective stories and on to other things.

It is classic Stein, a pure uncut jewelled antidote to the false-feeling closures of the usual mystery novel and the journalistic, faux-objective treatments of the violent throughout fiction, film, and (dare I mention) TV.A true refuge for the "thinking" person. ... Read more

Product Description
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, as most everyone knows, and as we might know The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or even "Patriarchal Poetry."But Gertrude Stein is far more than her best known words and works, and this monumental study gives us for the first time a finely detailed, deeply felt understanding of both the music and the mechanics of this great modernist master throughout one of her most productive periods. With The Language that Rises, Ulla Dydo, a reader of Stein without equal, makes apt readers of Stein of us all, and shows us why this unduly neglected and famously difficult writer merits our close attention and appreciation.

Taking up all of Stein's works between the publication of "The Making of Americans" and "Lectures in America," Dydo examines the process of their making and remaking as they move from notepad to notebook to manuscript-from an idea to its ultimate refinement as the author's intentions and concerns assert themselves.Though not a biographical study, The Language the Rises sets each text in the context of Stein's daily life and work, showing how the elements of her immediate worldenter her writing to be enlarged upon, deleted, transformed, or combined with other elements of reading or remembering.The result is an unprecedented view of the development of Stein's work, word by word, text by text, and over time.

The product of over twenty years of intense examination of Stein's notebooks, manuscripts, and letters, this book is the most extensive and detailed study of Stein's way of writing ever written, and as such, suggests answers to the fundamental questions raised by this author's brilliantly opaque works:what kind of writing was Gertrude Stein writing, and what kind of reading does this writing demand?
... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

two gifts
Gertrude Stein isone of the greatest artists of the 20th Century. She has influenced all modern art, literature and theatre. She has often been ignored or set aside as unreadable,unperformable, opaque. Yet when approached with an open mind; the genius is awe inspiring. Ula Dydo, is another gift, someone who has taken the time to sit down and explore, to play in her own scholarly way. Dydo's love of Stein is contagious. She has created an opening that I hope a lot of curious people step into.

An Elucidation
Since I first read Three Lives in high school I became fascinated with the writing of Gertrude Stein.During the past three decades I have read all her work.Because she requires so much effort, so much attention and concentration to detail, I have also tried reading as much about her as I could find; none as enlightening, as lovingly researched, as clearly written as Ulla Dydo's The Language That Rises.Hers is truly an "elucidation!"

Really Getting To Know Gertrude Stein's Writings!
What better way to get to know Gertrude Stein than to be guided through some of her key writings by one of the world's best Stein scholars, Ulla Dydo! It's not "Stein For Dummies," but it certainly is a very readable book which analyzes Stein's texts bringing in information from her life as appropriate to get a clearer picture of not only what she wrote, but why and how she wrote what she wrote. A must-have book for anyone who is really serious about reading and understanding Stein, as well as a great introduction to Stein's other works if the only thing you've ventured to read is THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, which is also, by the way, addressedin this book. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Biography for Young Readers
Traces Stein's career from her girlhood in California to the undergraduate years at Radcliffe, medical school, and on to her years in Europe as novelist, art collector, philosopher.Good introduction for Junior High School readers. ... Read more

Product Description
This book explores the significant intellectual impact the philosopher Jean Wahl had on the directions Gilles Deleuze took as a philosopher and writer of a philosophy of experimentation. The study of this influence also brings to light the significance of Deleuze's emphasis on "la pragmatique," inspired by Wahl's writings and teachings and his fascination with American pluralism and pragmatism, particularly that of William James. This book also attempts to put Deleuze's theories into action, to write in a deleuzian way about American "minor" literature and thought which Deleuze deemed "superior." This text inherently challenges and potentially provides an alternative way of reading/writing to standard critical approaches which Deleuze tells us necessarily reduce and distort a "minor" work's most lively, subtle and micro-politically efficient elements as they abort them from their "minoritarian" fields of meaning to coerce them into already existing, standard and standardizing concepts that belong to and reinforce the "Major Order's" organizational grid. ... Read more

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Gertrude Stein's radical innovations and continual experiments with language were years ahead of her time. This volume of her writings attempts to dispel some of the misunderstanding that surrounds her work, presenting many of her lectures for the first time. Look At Me Now includes portraits of people-Matisse, Lipschitz, Picasso, Henry James, and others-portraits of objects, her poetry, her novel Ida, and her last work, Brewsie and Willie. Her lectures reveal a precise and original scheme behind her writing, drawing on concepts from William James's theories of the aesthetic to Bergson's notion of time. Originally published in 1971 (Penguin) and out of print for a number of years, this accessible anthology presents some of the best of her startling achievements. ... Read more

Product Description
While living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, expatriate American writers Edith Wharton (1862–1937) and Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) never crossed paths. Even so, they did rub shoulders in print, in autobiographical essays published by The Atlantic Monthly in 1933. Noel Sloboda shows that the authors pursued many of the same professional goals in these essays and in the book-length life writings that grew out of them, A Backward Glance (1934) and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). By analyzing the personal and cultural contexts in which these works were produced, as well as subjects common to both of them, Sloboda illuminates a previously unrecognized solidarity between Wharton and Stein. The relationship between the authors is built upon careful analysis of A Backward Glance and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and it is framed by a consideration of the markets into which their life writings were first released. The alignment of Wharton and Stein as life writers will be of interest to those studying autobiography, modern literature, and American women writers. ... Read more

Product Description
Comic, erotic, and richly imagined, Allan Stein follows the journey of a compromised young teacher to Paris to uncover the sad history of Gertrude Stein's troubled nephew Allan. Having been fired from his job because of a sex scandal involving a student, the teacher travels to Paris under an assumed name - that of his best friend, Herbert. In Paris, "Herbert" becomes enchanted by Stephane, a fifteen-year-old boy. As he unravels the gilded but sad childhood of Allan Stein, "Herbert" is haunted by memories of his own boyhood, particularly his odd, flamboyant mother. Moving from the late twentieth century back to the 1900s, effortlessly blending fact and fiction, Allan Stein is a charged exploration of eroticism, obsession, and identity.Amazon.com Review
Here are some facts: "Allan Daniel Stein was born November 7,1895, in San Francisco, the only child of Michael and SarahStein. Mike, the older brother of Leo and Gertrude, sold a streetcarbusiness in 1903 and moved with Sarah and Allan to Paris. Gertrude andLeo had preceded them." Here are some fictions: Three missing Picassosketches may establish that Allan was the model for the paintingBoy Leading a Horse. An initially unnamed narrator, fired froma teaching position for having sex with a 15-year-old student beforehe'd actually seduced the boy, assumes the identity of his closefriend Herbert, a Seattle museum curator, and goes to Paris to lookfor the drawings. There, he becomes obsessed with Stéphane, another15-year-old boy.

Like Nabokov's Lolita, Allan Stein depicts humansexuality in a way that is as captivating as it is disturbing. But thepedophiliac element--and its graphic manifestations--should notnecessarily frighten readers away. Matthew Stadler's ornate, twistingsentences show strong sensitivity to place and setting, whether he'sdescribing the streets of Paris, the French countryside, or acluttered bar in Seattle. There's also a strong undercurrent of ironichumor, particularly in the exchanges between the narrator and the realHerbert and in the narrator's memories of adventures shared as a boywith his mother. Allan Stein is a book (and Matthew Stadler anauthor) one might be tempted to ignore as "difficult." In doing so,however, one would be overlooking a unique gem.--Ron Hogan ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Pleasurable , entertaining and titillating
Matthew, our narrator, has been accused of seducing one of his students, a fifteen year old boy, at the Seattle school where he teaches. Innocent of the crime, and believed by his superiors, he is nonetheless given a full years severance pay. Thinking he now has nothing to loose he promptly proceeds to seduce the boy, much to the boy's delight.

Now at a loose end he concocts a plan with his friend Herbert, curator of a local art museum, to go to Paris in search of some early Picasso sketches supposedly of Allan Stein, nephew of Gertrude Stein. Posing as Herbert, Matthew departs for Europe where he stays with a local family and their fifteen year old son Stéphane, who soon captivates Matthew with his beauty, with the inevitable consequences.

Well written and frequently very funny, Allan Stein is an imaginative interweaving of fact and fiction. Descriptive passages abound, from the beauty of the scenery in Europe to the beauty of Stéphane's youthful body. Unfortunately Matthew does not come over as endearing as one might like, but rather as a little arrogant and shallow; it is yet a most pleasurable, entertaining and titillating, even enlightening, read.

Brilliantly Perverse
The comparisons of Allan Stein to Lolita are inevitable:
The obsession with the adolescent, the furtive criminal
inevitability, the bathetic conclusion all call one to mind
from the other.
Aside from Stadler's prose being more engaging than Nabokov's
and his protagonist less sinister, these are books with
very different purposes. Stadler plays extensively on the
duplicity of identity: he almost induces a mild vertigo
in the process. His eroticism is sincere and the fidelity
to place in his descriptions is evocative.
Paradoxically, by keeping the self-reflection to a minimum,
we learn more about the protag's motivation in this story than
we ever do in Lolita. The perversity is that Stadler's protag
ends up being less vocal but still more fully human than Nabokov's.


Lynn Hoffman author bang BANG: A Novel

"It was simply the boy - the boy was sufficient"
Startlingly intelligent, 'Allan Stein' is a literary novel rich in descriptive detail, imagery and flowing prose which merges the past and the present in a simultaneously witty and poignant search for identity.

Our narrator is a school teacher 'on leave' following a (false) accusation concerning a teenage pupil by the latter's parents. Ironically, the accusation gives rise to a genuine relationship with the boy. As this subsequent relationship wanes, the narrator becomes caught up in the fantasy of the long-deceased subject of a Picasso portrait. He sets off to Paris, under the guise of being a museum curator, searching for some Picasso sketches of the boy in question. Initially comfortable with this liberating change of identity, the narrator becomes infatuated with the teenage son of the family with whom he is lodging in Paris. The novel then charts the course of his relationship with the boy, the boy's family, and the myriad of other enigmatic characters that he encounters.

Indeed, Matthew Stadler's gift for characterisation is partly what draws the reader so deeply into the narrator's world. The intimate portrayal of the 15 year old boy, Stéphane, is particularly honest and vivid. There are no delusions here - the boy may be stunningly beautiful (the moment of meeting him "made a tear in the fabric" of the narrator's day) but equally (referring to Stéphane's 'digestive problems') it proves "alarming that such an exquisite surface could contain all that flatulence"). The author's descriptions of the boy's mother, Miriam, and the narrator's own mother, are equally realistic and clear - which serves as a stark contrast with the narrator's own, more fluid, personality and sense of self. It is a testament to the author's skill that this self-insight grows in such an organic way that, by the end of the novel, the realisations that our narrator achieves are natural and just. It is thus not so much a journey of self-discovery, as a gradual transfer of self-knowledge from the subconscious to the conscious.

If you are seeking a light-hearted plane-journey read, you might be advised to look elsewhere. Matthew Stadler's novel deserves active, thoughtful participation. You will be well-rewarded, however, as his expertly-drawn characters, enchanting dialogue and erotic, humorous prose, combine to make 'Allan Stein' an exceptionally insightful work that will undoubtedly withstand any test of time.

A Tom Jonesque romp en reversis

"...I'm threatened by the boy as a site of divinity and spiritual deliverance." -Matthew Stadler

This is not only "a haunting testament to unfulfilled desire" but to UNFULFILLABLE desire: very young yet nubile men possess an hermetic quality, an inaccessible psyche that makes them more desirable, less attainable. This reality, and the narrator's growing desperation--the boy's emotional immaturity acts as a kind of spiritual chastity belt, no matter how much sex they enjoy together--are very, very amusingly evoked in this sensual, very well-written picaresque.

15, by the way, is the age of consent in most European countries, 14 in Spain.

Allen and his horse
I agree that this a just another version of "Lolita". But in contrast to "Lolita", the descriptions are much more subtule and less confusing. The author has a sense of reality which he desrcibes and smooths over with romaticism.

I am sorry to say that I did not find this book to be so absolutely shocking as others did. It is really not that bad, and honestly, now-days this stuff probably is more common than a few years back. If girls are willing to have an affair with an older man, why is it so difficult to imagine that boys might too?

But what touched me deeply was the author's shyness with the matter. Don't get me wrong, he describes things almost fully, but he does it in a manner that seems chaste to me. He says things like, "If the reader cannot stomach more of this, turn to page 47 for resumed dialouge" and "much to some readers pleasure, and to some reader's horror" (when he says that he slept with the Turkish boy).

Of course, pedophilia is not very right, but it does happen. He deals with it beautifully, and his character pretty much beds only boys that are willing. He doesn't force them, so that also makes it forgivable.

... Read more

Product Description
Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio re-visits the best known work of the influential American writer, Sherwood Anderson. This book served as the doctoral dissertation of Duane Simolke at Texas Tech University, December 1996.Dr. Simolke examines Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, as it relates to Gertrude Stein, gender roles, gay subtext, failed communication, and the machine in the garden.Anderson’s friendship with and admiration of Stein greatly affected the contents and writing style of Winesburg.Simolke also looks at how Winesburg reflects Anderson’s concerns about mechanization, loneliness, and the mistreatment of many people.

Dr. Simolke has also written The Acorn Stories, also published by toExcel, acollection of fiction that was influenced by Stein, Anderson, and various other writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Looking Back
Simolke, Duane. "New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio: Stein, Gender, Isolation", toExcel, 1999.


Amos Lassen and Literary Pride

One of the topics that interested me greatly when I was in graduate school was Gertrude Stein and the theories of gender that we associated with her writings. I was mad for Gertrude Stein and my library of first editions of most of her work are somewhere that Katrina took them. Frankly I have been so busy that I have not thought about Stein for a while. In the process of reviewing I cane across Duane Simolke and it emails with him, I discovered that he had researched Stein and had published a book about his research. He was kind enough to send it to me.
His approach to Stein differed from mine but we both discovered some commonalities in reference to gender. Simolke's book deals primarily with the relationship between Stein and Sherwood Anderson and his analysis of "Winesburg, Ohio" relates to Stein and gender roles and gay subtext among other themes. "Winesburg, Ohio" was published in 1919and deal with the industrialization of the small town and how it affected the lives of the people. He shows the influence Stein had on Anderson's writing as well. We learn the motivation for the writing of the book as well of the homoeroticism of his other works. He gives us, basically, an outline for the writing of a short story.
Simolke brings fresh outlooks on the works he writes about. And as he explores the sexual subtext of Anderson's writings, some of you may be surprised at what he found. Within the sexual subtexts, there is no writing about sex per se but rather with human contact.
The book is refreshing, interesting and educating. I have always loved books that take on established works of literature and look at them with a new and different slant. As I read "Winesburg" the novel. I was amazed at how much I have missed.Its relevance is especially important today when we hear about the way immigrant workers are treated and we may compare that a bit to the way industrialism overtook America and changed the way we did everything. It is also interesting to note that this industrial takeover has been overtaken, itself, by the technological revolution, which owes a great debt to the industrial takeover which preceded it.
Perhaps I have scared some of you by going off on a literary tangent. That was not my intention. Rather, I think the importance of gender roles is so pervasive today that it would do us all a great deal of good to see how it has been treated historically. It's an easy book to read, clear and concise and it opens your eyes to a new way of thinking.

Gertrude Stein Lives on!
Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio
by Duane Simolke
Reviewed by Joe Wright
This book is the work of Dr Simolke. It served as his doctoral dissertation. It shows the relationship between Sherwood Anderson, his work and Gertrude Stein. In Dr Simolke's own words, "I consider Gertrude Stein, gender roles, the machine in the garden, feelings of isolation, and attempts at communication, as they all relate to Sherwood Anderson's masterpiece."

Of course the masterpiece he is talking about is the story cycle, Winesburg, Ohio. Published in 1919 about a small town in Ohio becoming industrialized and what that does to the lives of the people of Winesburg.
New Readings would be a great companion to go along with Anderson's Winesburg. It gives you not only the history of Mr. Anderson, but also the history of his stories. In Chapter 4 Men and Women, Dr. Simolke talks about how Mr Anderson's 1923 novel Many Marriages was banned by many libraries and book stores due to the fact that the book mainly focuses on nudity and sex.
If your a tried and true fan of Gertrude Stein or Sherwood Anderson New Readings is a must have!

Learn why "twisted" apples are sweet
Pour yourself a little brandy, pull your chair up to the fire, and read Duane Simolke's Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio. Better yet, dust off your copy of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and then read Simolke's remarkable explication of Sherwood Anderson, the influence that the great Gertrude Stein had on his writing style, and the equally important effect of turn-of-the-century industrialization on Anderson and the stories he tells. In this straightforward, yet literary accounting of Anderson's Winesburg narratives, you will come to a fuller understanding of what motivated Anderson to write his story cycle, what part homoeroticism and homophobia played in the story "Hands" and "The Untold Lie." This work should be required reading in any college course involving the art and craft of short-story writing as well as in courses on Sherwood Anderson, himself. I found the greatest pleasure in reading a while from Simolke's work, then reading from Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Simolke's book is a great reading guide, as well as a thoughtful and measured reading experience all by itself. ---Ronald L. Donaghe, author of Uncle Sean

Refreshing and original
What a pleasure to read a dissertation embracing the poetry and passion of simple language as well as the art of old-fashioned story-telling exemplified by the often underrated Sherwood Anderson.

In seven chapters Dr. Simolke (whose lyrical collection THE ACORN STORIES was clearly influenced by Stein and Anderson) examines themes of alienation, sexuality and gender in Anderson's masterpiece WINESBURG, OHIO.

Bringing fresh perspective to Anderson's best known work (considered by critics to be a forerunner of modern fiction with its focus on "real folks" and small town America of the early 20th Century), Simolke candidly explores sexual subtext.

In "More Than Man or Woman" he writes, "I call attention to all this terminology because Anderson transcends those societal perceptions of gayness; his use of gay themes has little to do with sex and everything to do with human contact."

Do we need still one more analysis of the work of another dead white guy?Yes, most certainly, when it is as refreshingly and unabashedly enthusiastic as Simolke's.Criticized as being sentimental and outdated, WINESBURG becomes relevant again in this unapologetic and insightful re-reading. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: New York : The Grafton PressPublication date: 1909Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

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In spite of all the recent interest in the writings of Gertrude Stein, the novel LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY has remained one of the least known of her major works. The first edition, pubished in Paris in 1930, was never widely distributed in the United States and the American edition (published in 1969) stayed in print for only a short time.

It was written in the summer of 1927, a very special year for avant-garde writing. Many writers composed their most lyrical works in that year--Joyce, for instance, wrote the Anna Livia Plurabelle episode of FINNEGAN'S WAKE. The pages of such magazines as "transition," which reflected the taste of the vanguard, and which had just begun to appear in Paris, show this development.

Lucey itself is a small village in central France, located over the hill from where Miss Stein was staying, and over another hill from where the distinguished French playwright Paul Claudel was staying, which explains the references to Claudel and to the hills in the text. It seemed lyrical to Miss Stein to name her character Lucy Church for the church at Lucey. This is the source of many of her names and images--they are puns from French to English.

Nothing much happends in the book. It would be impossible to prepare an outline of the plot (as opposed, say, to THE MAKING OF AMERICANS). The action is purely interior: a great deal is noticed, digested, absorbed, compared. The result can be read simply as an account of being in the countryside, or more complexly, as an investigation into the interlocking nature of things and into the ways that language can be used for description. LUCY CHURCH AMIABLY is finally, in Miss Stein's own words, "A Novel of Romantic beauty and nature and which Looks Like an Engraving."Amazon.com Review
There is no summarizing or explaining the writings of Gertrude Stein. With the exception of her fledgling efforts like Three Lives or her funny, successful memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, her fictions are without conventional plot, setting, or character. They are intellectual flowers, each sentence growing or receding from the one before it, repeating its main points with subtle, telling changes. In Lucy Church Amiably, first published in Paris in 1930 and long out of print, Stein describes the landscape and pastoral life of central France (while writing, she was staying near a small village named Lucy) in and through her character Lucy Church: "Gradually remembering a lake. Gradually. Remembering. A lake. In gradually remembering a lake by the shore of the lake where they were sitting." Yet Stein is not opaque or purely musical: she always provides solid details in unexpected places, specializing, as the critic Fred Dupee put it, in "the mingling of apparent conviction with transparent nonsense." She is a central figure in the modernist movement, but her relentless pleasure in her quirky, handmade idiom can repel the unwary reader. Although it is a delight to have this reprint, a brief introduction would have been useful for the uninitiated. Those interested in Stein should also turn to her Selected Writings, or, for a painless entrée to her work, begin with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. --Regina Marler ... Read more