Primary Stein

Janet Boyd is assistant professor of English at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Sharon J. Kirsch is an assistant professor of English and rhetorical studies at Arizona State University.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. A Primer for Primary SteinSharon J. Kirsch and Janet BoydChapter 1. Make It Plain: Stein and Toklas Publish the Plain EditionGabrielle DeanChapter 2. Woolfenstein, the SequelRachel Blau DuPlessisChapter 3. “Come too”: 1920s Erotic Rights Discourse and Gertrude Stein’s “Patriarchal Poetry”Jody CardinalChapter 4. Long Dull Poems: Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation and Wordsworth’s The Prelude Rebecca Ariel PorteChapter 5. tender buttons, notwithstandingNeil SchmitzChapter 6. How to Read How to Write: Bothering with Gertrude SteinSharon J. KirschChapter 7. Framing Devices: Reading Background in the Sequence of Gertrude Stein’s CompositionLinda VorisChapter 8. Radio Free Stein: Rendering Queen and CountryAdam FrankChapter 9. “A Spare American Emotion” E. L. McCallumChapter 10. “More light!—Electric Light.” Stein in Dialogue with the Romantic Paradigm in Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights Sarah PosmanChapter 11. Gertrude Stein’s Geographical History of LiteratureJanet BoydChapter 12. Modernist and Future Ex-Modernist: Postwar SteinKristin BergenChapter 13. History, Narrative, and “Daily Living” in Wars I Have SeenPhoebe SteinChapter 14. Mrs. Reynolds: Stein’s Anti-Nazi NovelSteven Gould AxelrodAppendix A: A Note on the Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Papers in the Twenty-First CenturyNancy KuhlAppendix B: “The Gertrude Stein Collection” reprinted from The Yale Gazette 22.2 (October 1947)Donald Gallup IndexNotes on contributors

Primary Stein will become a primary source for our reading of Gertrude Stein, among the greatest of modern writers, among the most incessantly challenging. I am grateful for this smart, original book. -- Catharine R. Stimpson, New York University It is great to have an anthology that returns to the writing of Gertrude Stein, since her interesting life and times have often diverted attention from actually reading her work. Stein's work is unlike any other writing-funny, challenging, almost physical in its rhythms, rhymes, and patterns of repetition, and it covers many genres and modes of writing. Sharon J. Kirsch and Janet Boyd's volume Primary Stein: Returning to the Writing of Gertrude Stein is an inspiration to anyone who wants to read Gertrude Stein's work, whether that one is a practiced reader or just beginning to read Stein. And anyone who teaches Stein's writing will find the essays on a selection of works as well as on publication history and the poetics of Stein very useful. -- Tania Orum, University of Copenhagen This is a terrific collection-lucid, wide ranging, and rich. Boyd and Kirsch have assembled a wonderful group of essays on a variety of Stein texts, representing a range of approaches to Stein's work. This collection is an exciting contribution to Stein scholarship and will also appeal to scholars in feminist and gender studies, modernist studies, and other areas. -- Deborah Mix, Ball State University Primary Stein heralds a return to where the impetus of literary critical should lay: with the writing itself, rather than with a character assassination of a nearly 70 year-old Jewish lesbian who was just trying to save her life (as well as the life of her also Jewish lesbian partner, Alice B. Toklas) during World War II. With this collection of essays, Boyd and Kirsch remind us about the scope and sophistication - as well as the playfulness and sensuality - of Stein's writing. Lambda Literary Janet Boyd and Sharon J. Kirsch's Primary Stein: Returning to the Writing of Gertrude Stein fulfils its titular ambitions of sparking a revaluation and rethinking of Stein's accomplishments through greater reference to her texts in published and archival forms while lessening the privileged position often accorded to her personality and coterie... The attention here to the Stein archives, primarily at Yale but also important collections at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the Donald Gallup Collection at the Southern Methodist University, is rich... The individual contributions should have a significant impact on studies of Stein. Year's Work in English Studies