Three Lives / Tender Buttons

by Gertrude Stein, Diane Souhami (Introduction)

Three short stories and prose poetry by the famous feminist... Three Lives is "a fine new kind of realism." (William James)

Tender Buttons is "to writing what cubism is to art." (W.G. Rogers)

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Classics, Short Stories, American

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 4, 2003

About the author

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.

Reviews

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three Lives is...magnificent, ground-breakingly original, exciting, controversial, ahead-of-its-time...These are just a few adjectives that come immediately to mind when I think of this book.

For those who say that Gertrude Stein is 'difficult' to read, then boy try reading Faulkner or Joyce...Stein is a walk in the park in comparison to those guys. I really loved the Melanctha story, although devastatingly tragic. But Stein is the master at painting the beautiful but complex contradictions in individual human beings. For example, someone is trying to walk the line and be a good moral person, because that is what society expects you to do, but there is also an incontrollable, almost unbridable passion and urge deep inside of us that has a mind, will and determination of its own. Like a knife, it cuts us up and sometimes others. This inner conflict, when observed by an outsider which often manifests itself through a person's behaviour or way of talking is then undoubtedly very difficult and hard to understand. How can we know what is truly going on inside of them? Well, writing about it is one way I guess.

In her seminal work, Three Lives, Stein asks some very complex but vital questions about relationships and love. Is it essential to fully understand someone in order to love them? And is it actually possible to fully understand another person in the first place? This is not only seen in the heart-breaking courting that goes back and forth between Jeff and Melanctha, their love at times reaching a climax only to shrivel back to the pettiness that reigns throughout a typical couple's fight (we have all been there), which at a deeper glance shows that it is a desperate attempt by both people to try and figure out what is 'eating' at the other person. This is also prevalent even in one of Stein's own early stormy relationships which she somewhat fictionalised in Q.E.D., an early story, perhaps even her first. (I probably should mention at this point that I clicked the wrong book here on goodreads. I didn't read Tender Buttons. My copy contains Three Lives & Q.E.D. I will read Tender Buttons anon).

In the other stories, we see main characters each fall in turn, but for different reasons. While Melanctha's problems were internally complex, resulting in her unintentional alienation from people she is trying desperately to love and be loved by, in the other stories we see people slowly decay due to their rigid and unbending moral code or simply because they don't ever stand up for themselves and assert their own place. Therefore, in this light, Stein's 'mission', if we can call it that, as a writer, is a very humanistic one. She is trying to bridge that impossible chasm between the inner heart and the perceptions of the outside world. In a sense, this reminded me of Joyce's ethics of love and about how it is ultimately impossible to completely know another person. All you can do is trust them and respect them - and these two virtues are elements crucial for anyone who is responsible enough to love another human being.

What I think turns people away or off from Stein's work is the repetitiveness of her sentences. However, when you think about daily conversation, about how people actually talk, there is a lot of repetition. Stein's narrative prose, I believe, comes very close to shadowing the actual rhythms and detours that often take place in our vernacular, but of course we must remind ourselves that she is writing in the breath of early 20th Century vernacular and while her prose is heavily steeped in this period, as a true piece of art, like any masterpiece, it is truly and simple...timeless. Highly recommended.

The Q.E.D. story, which was added onto the end of my copy as an appendix (but is actually a fairly nice bonus feature) is not as good. You can tell it was written by a much younger Stein. Here she flounders slightly, still trying to find her original voice - a voice which she did not find until she met up with Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso (one of her best friends) when she went to live in Paris and she tried to emulate their method of painting through her own composition. Once she had found her voice and stepped into her literary shoes, she went on to inspire a whole new generation of powerful (and generally much better-known) writers including Sherwood Anderson, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, and even Kerouac much later on. (Incidentally, Ann Charters, a very famous Kerouac biographer, wrote the Introduction to this book). Will definitely read this again sometime. I have also heard that Lew Welch has done a good dissection of Melanctha in his university dissertation, entitled How I Read Gertrude Stein. All Stein lovers should check it out.

[Paige · Rating 1 out of 5]

So I had to read this for my Modernist Women Writers class and we've already read Three Lives last week and discussed it and now we're going to discuss Tender Buttons so I might change this review if that classroom discussion can somehow save this book for me. I honestly highly doubt that though. Three Lives made me want to jump out of a window. All the repetition, and repetition, repetition, and some more repetition. If you couldn't handle that sentence whatever you do, do not read this book. It was mind numbing. Three Lives definitely made me feel like Stein was saying the only way for women to not suffer is to die. It's the end of the semester, I'm already battling depression like come on. The Good Anna was probably the favorite of the stories. Melanctha and Jeff Campbell's whole relationship was painful to read. Everything is spinning and being repeated and nothing make sense. That brings me to Tender Buttons, I don't even like poetry that means something and I have no clue what even happened with that one. Stein's whole thing reminds me of the idea of women's writing. Cixous is the one that really pushed for it, and she said that women's writing should break all regular literary standards because they're patriarchal. Here's the thing though with oral tradition women told stories that made sense. It's human nature to want a story that makes sense and doesn't feel like your fingernails are being ripped out reading it. You can fight the patriarchy with normal sentences. You don't need to terrorize people with the structure of your writing to get your point across. End rant.

[Nathen]

three lives is excellent and refreshing still to this day.

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

We had to read Tender Buttons for my Modernism class.

"The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur." Gertrude Stein.

Yeah, the whole thing is like that. Or, to put it another way.

Stein is crazy apple roastbeef pink ribbon but maybe crazy good crazy, chicken feeling Gertrude is.

Follow her on Twitter @ImGertrudeStein

[Frankie Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

In honesty, I don't know if it was the best idea putting these two books together. Although I suppose I didn't have to read them back to back, but it's hard to put a book down when you haven't literally got to the end! These are intense works, rich in detail and word play - Stein has the amazing and quite unique quality of creating so much meaning with so little literal sense, it's truly astounding, but you have to work for what you get out of it. Remarkable, but challenging.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fully respect what Stein was trying to do...well, I guess what she actually did and why, but I never want to read the story of Melanctha again in my life. No never no more do I want to read Melanctha. Never no more in my life do I want to read Melanctha. No never no more again.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked one of the lives better than the other two.