Going through historical and biographical details, Gertrude Stein American Modernist: Writing Painting and the Feminist Other draws parallels between the concerns and methods of modernist painting, and those that preoccupied Gertrude Stein. Using principles of the semiotics of writing and painting, the book develops a general framework for reading some of the major works of Stein, and examines her importance as a writer.

The book discusses Gertrude Stein’s representative works in different genres and provides a new introduction both to the writer and to her works. It also offers a fresh look into subjects like modernism, painting and literature, feminist writing, autobiography, and detective fiction.

“Just as cubist painting evolved through a series of experiments in the analysis of vision and of its depiction in art, Gertrude Stein’s work can be seen to pass through a series of experiments in human perception and its representation in writing. This book suggests a framework for a study of the one through the other.”

“When writers employed the ‘stream of consciousness’ mode in narration, it was an attempt to give the written equivalent of a character’s thought processes. Stein’s writing experiments had their primary focus on the writer’s perception of reality and ways of rendering it in writing.”

“With … the variety of literary forms that she redefined in her attempts to represent as well as re-present reality, and with the number of writers and artists who had their careers overseen by her, Gertrude Stein has reasonable claims to be regarded as a writers’ writer.”

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