Every Day is To-Day: Essential Writings

(Paperback)

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In this collection, readers will rediscover Gertrude Stein as the bearer of a joyfully radical literary vision. A bold experimenter, her writing sparks with vitality, relishing in rhythm, repetition, sound and colour in its central vision: to prise apart language and association and find thrilling new ways to express the true essence of her subject with charming joie de vivreStein considered her shorter writings to be the truest expressions of her enrapturing style. Her fascination with people and personalities can be located in expressive portraits of close friends such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Juan Gris, whilst her decades-long relationship with Alice B. Toklas is immortalised with shimmering eroticism. There are also playful meditations on her unique writing process, conveying her serious delight in meddling with conventions of grammar and composition.

Reviews

'A Stein-shaped sentence is a very bespoke thing-you need an espresso martini to recover' - Deborah Levy

'We are convinced by the truth of her observations, and are still astonished by the beautiful bluntness with which they're stated' - New Yorker

'Stein created the first indubitably modern literary style' - New Yorker

Author Bio

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was a writer, art-collector, and advocate for the avant-garde. Born in Pennsylvania, she studied psychology at Harvard and attended medical school, dropping out in her fourth year to move to Paris with her brother Leo. Here she played a crucial role in shaping the burgeoning European avant-garde, hosting literary salons that counted Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Ernest Hemingway among the visitors. She was the author of countless poems, plays and shorter works, as well as books including Three Lives, The Making of the Americans, Tender Buttons and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas - a memoir written in the voice of her life partner of many decades, Alice.