Editing Gertrude Stein (section)

==Literary style==
[[File:Gertrude stein.jpg|thumb|right|[[Carl Van Vechten]], ''Portrait of Gertrude Stein'', 1934]]
Stein's writing can be placed in three categories: "hermetic" works best illustrated by ''[[The Making of Americans]]: The Hersland Family''; popularized writing such as ''[[The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas]]''; and speech writing and more accessible autobiographical writing of later years, of which ''Brewsie and Willie'' is a good example. Her works include novels, plays, stories, [[libretti]], and poems written in a highly idiosyncratic, playful, repetitive, and humorous style. Typical quotes are: "[[Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose]]"; "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle";<ref>{{cite web |last1=Stein |first1=Gertrude |title=Tender Buttons [Objects] |url=https://poets.org/poem/tender-buttons-objects |website=poets.org |access-date=December 24, 2021}}</ref> about her childhood home in [[Oakland, California|Oakland]], "There is no there there"; and "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Stein |first1=Gertrude |title=A Substance in a Cushion |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51214/a-substance-in-a-cushion |website=Poetry Foundation |date=February 27, 2018 |access-date=December 24, 2021}}</ref>

A reader wrote to Stein in 1933 asking her to explain the rose quotation received a reply from Toklas as her secretary: "The device rose is a rose is a rose is a rose means just that. Miss Stein is unfortunately too busy herself to be able to tell you herself, but trusts that you will eventually come to understand that each and every word that she writes means exactly what she says, for she says very exactly what she means, and really nothing more, but, of course, nothing less."<ref>"Author! Author!" by Doris Schneider, ''New York Evening Post'', November 6, 1933</ref>

These [[stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream-of-consciousness]] experiments, rhythmical essays or "portraits", were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as literature's answer to visual art styles and forms such as [[Cubism]], plasticity, and [[collage]]. Many of the experimental works such as ''Tender Buttons'' have since been interpreted by critics as a [[feminist]] reworking of patriarchal language. These works were well received by avant-garde critics but did not initially achieve mainstream success. Despite Stein's work on "[[automatic writing]]" with [[William James]], she did not see her work as automatic, but as an 'excess of consciousness'.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Batoréo |first=Hanna |date=2010 |title=Was the birth of modern art psycholinguistically minded? |url=https://repositorioaberto.uab.pt/bitstream/10400.2/9328/1/HBatoreo%20%282010%29%20Was%20the%20Birth%20of%20Modern%20Art%20Psycholinguistically%20Minded.pdf |journal=Studies in the Psychology of Language and Communication |publisher=matrix |pages=149–164 |isbn=978-83-932212-0-2}}</ref>

Though Stein collected cubist paintings, especially those of Picasso, the largest visual arts influence on her literary work is that of [[Cézanne]]. Particularly, he influenced her idea of equality, distinguished from universality: "the whole field of the canvas is important".<ref>[[#Grahn|Grahn (1989)]], p. 8.</ref> Rather than a figure/ground relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes multiple viewpoints. Stein explained: "[T]he important thing... is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Stein |first1=Gertrude |title=Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas |publisher=Ryerson University |location=Toronto |page=162 |url=https://openlibrary-repo.ecampusontario.ca/jspui/bitstream/123456789/734/3/Autobiography-of-Alice-B.-Toklas-1562677830.pdf |access-date=August 8, 2021}}</ref>

Her use of repetition is ascribed to her search for descriptions of the "bottom nature" of her characters, such as in ''The Making of Americans'' where the narrator is described through the repetition of narrative phrases such as "As I was saying" and "There will be now a history of her." Stein used many Anglo-Saxon words and avoided words with "too much association". Social judgment is absent in her writing, so the reader is given the power to decide how to think and feel about the writing. Anxiety, fear, and anger are also absent, and her work is harmonic and integrative.{{citation needed|date=March 2012}} Stein's work was included in the second issue of [[0 to 9 Magazine|0 to 9 magazine]], a journal which explored language and meaning-making during the 1960s avant garde movement.

Stein predominantly used the present progressive tense, creating a continuous presence in her work, which Grahn argues is a consequence of the previous principles, especially commonality and centeredness. Grahn describes "play" as the granting of autonomy and agency to the readers or audience: "rather than the [[psychological manipulation|emotional manipulation]] that is a characteristic of linear writing, Stein uses ''play''."<ref>[[#Grahn|Grahn (1989)]], p. 18.</ref> In addition, Stein's work is funny, and multilayered, allowing a variety of interpretations and engagements. Lastly, Grahn argues that one must "''inster''stand... engage with the work, to mix with it in an active engagement, rather than 'figuring it out.' Figure it in."<ref>[[#Grahn|Grahn (1989)]], p. 21.</ref> In 1932, using an accessible style to appeal to a wider audience, she wrote ''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas''; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was actually Stein's autobiography. The style was quite similar to that of ''The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook'', which was written by Toklas. Many critics speculated that Toklas actually had written ''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', despite Toklas repeatedly denying authorship.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Neuman |first1=S. C. |title=Gertrude Stein: Autobiography and the Problem of Narration |date=1979 |publisher=English Literary Studies, Dept. of English, University of Victoria |location=Victoria, B.C}}</ref>

Several of Stein's writings have been set to music by composers, including [[Virgil Thomson]]'s operas ''[[Four Saints in Three Acts]]'' and ''The Mother of Us All'', and [[James Tenney]]'s setting of ''Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose'' as a [[canon (music)|canon]] dedicated to [[Philip Corner]], beginning with "a" on an upbeat and continuing so that each repetition shuffles the words, e.g. "a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose."<ref name="''A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Round'' (1968)">{{Cite book|last=Wannamaker|first=Robert|title=The Music of James Tenney Volume 2: A Handbook to the Pieces
|url=https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c043680|pages=81–84|publisher= University of Illinois Press|date=2021}}</ref>