Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946)

Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946)

American poet, novelist, and author of miscellaneous prose, for a number of years one of the leading expatriate American residents of Paris and the subject of wide literary controversy during the 1920's. Her unique and celebrated style, in the development of which she is considered to have been influenced by the psychological theories of William James and 20th-century French painting, is characterized by a use of words for their associations and their sound rather than solely for their literal meaning, an intricate system of repetition and variation on a single verbal theme, an avoidance of conventional punctuation and syntax, an emphasis on the presentation of impressions and a particular state of mind rather than the telling of a story, and concreteness and extreme simplicity in diction, preference for the commonplace and the monosyllabic.

All these elements combine to produce an appealing pattern of sound, occasional flashes of beauty, and frequent vivid, striking images, in a total effect of wit, humor, gaiety, and sensuous immediacy. Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway are considered to have been influenced by the Stein style. John Chamberlain once remarked that "Steinese" style is like "the Chinese water torture; it never stops and it is always the same."

Gertrude Stein's works include Three Lives ( 1909), a novel; Tender Buttons ( 1914), poetry; Geography and Plays ( 1922); The Making of americans ( 1925), a novel; Composition as Explanation ( 1926), lectures; Useful Knowledge ( 1928); Acquaintance with Description ( 1929); Ten Portaits ( 1930); Lucy Church Amiably ( 1930), a novel; Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded ( 1931); How to Write ( 1931); Operas and Plays ( 1932); A Long Gay Book ( 1932); Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude Stein ( 1932); The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ( 1933); Four Saints in Three Acts ( 1934), an opera, music for which was written by Virgil Thomson; Portraits and Prayers ( 1934); Narration ( 1935), lectures; Lectures in America ( 1915); Geographical History of America ( 1936); Everybody's Autobiography ( 1937); Picasso ( 1938); The World Is Round ( 1939), a book for children; Paris France ( 1940), a study of Parisian life before World War II; Ida ( 1941), a novel; Brewsie and Willy ( 1946).

Gertrude Stein, who came of a wealthy family, studied psychology under William James at Radcliffe College and received an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1902. In that year she went abroad, where, except for a lecture tour in America in 1933, she stayed until the defeat of France in World War II. In Paris she became the center of a group of outstanding painters and writers of the period, being especially interested in such artists as Matisse, Picasso and Juan Gris. Her brother, Leo Stein ( 1872-1947), was a leading art critic.