Gertrude Stein: Woman Without Qualities

The book offers a composite portrait of Gertrude Stein at the junction of textual, visual, and theoretical realms. Examining Stein's career as a progress toward the podium, the study covers Stein’s appropriation of European modernity, her access to language, culture, and writing, and assesses her achievement in American letters. Discussion dwells on the influence on Stein's writing of her understanding of identity as thoroughly immersed in history, the body, geographical location, and interpersonal and power relations, and it shows that, perhaps to a greater extent than that of her modernist colleagues, Stein's work bridges the distance between art and life, inviting a productive questioning of the dynamics of reading and reception.