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joeduncan 's review for:
Tender Buttons
by Gertrude Stein
I am going to be generous with this book, as it is the first I have read from Stein, and withhold harsher criticism until I have experienced her other work.
For background, I have a soft spot for experimental and avant-garde fiction; I typically enjoy pieces bordering on the unintelligible. For me they create portals beyond language, allowing examination of literature's many functions, which can be exciting and brings fresh experiences to reading. Tender Buttons was not interesting to read, but it is interesting to talk about.
By her own admission, Stein was working toward establishing a cubist literature. The work of this involved selecting a subject, and creating a portrait of that subject in short prose-poems. The actual language of these poems is intentionally disjointed, absolutely nothing connects in a traditional way, its fractured to the extent that a clause rarely has any literal meaning. Instead the words form little paintings. If that sounds interesting to you, then you're in good company, I thought so too.
Unfortunately, though this work is quite short, reading it becomes a drag after around 20 of these prose-poems. Stein avoids conventional meaning because, for her, language is too stale to capture the experience of an object. And as experiencing in the moment is non-linguistic and somewhat absurd, she tries to conjure that absurdity by removing each term's past, context, and conventions. She rigorously cuts every word free. No term holds any sense beyond how it appears in that exact moment, and the result is that you start to look for patterns where there are none, attempt to find something that isn't there, and eventually succumb to the abstract, letting the language roll over you. It's like sitting through an unpleasant medical examination in a dream. Or like the meme "never let them know your next move." Turns out, style without substance is boring and a bit of a downer.
There are positives here. The flow of the prose is pretty smooth, though if you are looking for a language that flows well and has a loose attachment to meaning, many others have done it better (Finnegan's Wake being the best).
Maybe I would recommend this if you read only one page per sitting, it would provide a better experience. but don't struggle to make sense of anything, it'll just bring you down, think of it like contemporary visual art.
For background, I have a soft spot for experimental and avant-garde fiction; I typically enjoy pieces bordering on the unintelligible. For me they create portals beyond language, allowing examination of literature's many functions, which can be exciting and brings fresh experiences to reading. Tender Buttons was not interesting to read, but it is interesting to talk about.
By her own admission, Stein was working toward establishing a cubist literature. The work of this involved selecting a subject, and creating a portrait of that subject in short prose-poems. The actual language of these poems is intentionally disjointed, absolutely nothing connects in a traditional way, its fractured to the extent that a clause rarely has any literal meaning. Instead the words form little paintings. If that sounds interesting to you, then you're in good company, I thought so too.
Unfortunately, though this work is quite short, reading it becomes a drag after around 20 of these prose-poems. Stein avoids conventional meaning because, for her, language is too stale to capture the experience of an object. And as experiencing in the moment is non-linguistic and somewhat absurd, she tries to conjure that absurdity by removing each term's past, context, and conventions. She rigorously cuts every word free. No term holds any sense beyond how it appears in that exact moment, and the result is that you start to look for patterns where there are none, attempt to find something that isn't there, and eventually succumb to the abstract, letting the language roll over you. It's like sitting through an unpleasant medical examination in a dream. Or like the meme "never let them know your next move." Turns out, style without substance is boring and a bit of a downer.
There are positives here. The flow of the prose is pretty smooth, though if you are looking for a language that flows well and has a loose attachment to meaning, many others have done it better (Finnegan's Wake being the best).
Maybe I would recommend this if you read only one page per sitting, it would provide a better experience. but don't struggle to make sense of anything, it'll just bring you down, think of it like contemporary visual art.