TENDER BUTTONS: Objects - Food - Rooms by Stein, Gertrude - 1914

New York: Claire Marie, 1914. Very good.. First edition of Stein's great Modernist prose poem that reveals the avant-garde in the ordinary. This composition in three parts divests its words from their expected meanings in order to reach a deeper truth - a quest without a clear answer to see what happens when you disintegrate language. It "relentlessly interrogates language and its conventions, tinkering with sentences, violating grammatical rules, playing with sound" (Peppis, 38). Its verbal iconoclasm is thus an extension of Modernist impulses in other media and it is especially compared to Cubist art.

Stein's third published book, it was issued in an edition of only 1000 copies by the audacious small publisher Claire Marie Press. Founded by Greenwich Village-based poet Donald Evans, the press "believes there are in America seven hundred civilized people only. Claire Marie publishes books for civilized people only. Claire Marie's aim, it follows from the premises, is not even secondarily commercial" (quoted in Souhami). Indeed, most American critics reacted with bafflement at best, but often outright hostility.

Nevertheless, Stein's commitment to push her Modernist impulses to the extreme abstraction of language was impactful not only on other Modernists, but foundational for the work of later Post-Modernists and the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, for whom she was a "major precursor" (Hartley).

An important, unbreakable, unflinching jewel of Modernism. 7'' x 5''. Original yellow boards with printed green title label, green-lettered spine. Publisher's ad at rear. 78, [2] pages. Boards fairly soiled, with a bit of cracking to front joint (still firm), toned and somewhat edgeworn spine. Faint trace of dampstaining at upper edge of front endpapers. Small bookseller label to rear paste-down.