The Public Is Invited to Dance: Representation, the Body, and Dialogue in Gertrude Stein

by Harriet Scott Chessman

This is a scholarly yet playful investigation into the sensual aspect of Gertrude Stein's writing, including her "caressing of nouns" and her quiet, cunning way of bringing lesbian sexuality into the text of her experimental poems, plays, and novels. As Stein says, "Lifting belly is a spectacle"! Chessman models a way of reading Stein's gorgeous experiments, from TENDER BUTTONS to the late novel IDA. To read these works is to "twin" with their author, and to make sense of them is also a kind of making love.

247 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

Harriet Scott Chessman's acclaimed novels include The Beauty of Ordinary Things, Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper, Someone Not Really Her Mother, The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas and Ohio Angels. Her fiction has been translated into eight languages, and featured in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Good Morning America.

She has also created the librettos for two operas, "My Lai" and "Sycorax."