news | Thursday April 21, 2016

Annotating Gertrude Stein, a century later

Difficult writing has its way of illuminating the part of the world that counts. One such difficult text is Gertrude Stein’s highly experimental Tender Buttons: objects, food, rooms – long considered the single most groundbreaking literary work of twentieth-century art, literary criticism, and art history.

Now, a century after the original publication of Tender Buttons, Dr. Carl Peters offers a sustained reading of the 1914 edition. In his annotations, he responds to the eccentric sounds and rhythms of Stein’s long prose-poem, bringing understanding, in particular, to the composition’s syntax, which is noted for its defiance of conventional norms. Peters demonstrates the ways in which Stein’s thought questions everything, underlining reasons that her work has long served as the wellspring for generations of experimental writers.

We are pleased to announce the arrival of Dr. Peters’s much-anticipated work, Studies in Description: Reading Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons!

Order your copy of Studies in Description today for $24.95, and come hear excerpts from this new book read by Dr. Peters at our spring poetry launch next week in Vancouver.