The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder (Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Mo) [Hardcover]

Professor Edward M. Burns (Editor), Professor Ulla E. Dydo (Editor), Mr. William Rice (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 25, 1996 | Series: Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Mo

The friendship and correspondence of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder encompassed the last 12 years of Stein's life and a period of major work by Wilder. A generation apart in age, the two writers met during Stein's American lecture tour in 1934-35, during which they shared the experience of lecturing to audiences in the wake of great success. They quickly became mentor and pupil as well as friends, and Wilder passed on what Stein taught him through his introduction to her books. While Wilder supported Stein's efforts at publication, she held him to his vocation as a writer, urging him to ignore the distractions incurred by family and fortune. The letters between Stein and Wilder contain ideas and plans about publications, attitudes towards fame and work and thoughts about artists and people near to them. They also refer to European-American cultural relations prior to and through World War II, show how Stein and Wilder responded to critical reception of their new work, and above all, examine how the two writers affected one another's progress. It is clear from the letters that without their friendship, Stein's "Narration" lectures would not have come about, "The Geographical History" and the novel "Ida" would have become different books and Wilder's "Our Town" might not have become the play we know. The edition, fully annotated by Edward M. Burns and Ulla E. Dydo, includes a detailed chronology of Stein's lecture tour prepared by William Rice, staging histories of "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" and an account of Stein in World War II with documentation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gertrude Stein, the great lesbian modernist, met Thornton Wilder when he was a young writer in search of a mentor. Stein became that mentor and helped Wilder shape his aesthetic into classic American plays such as Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. Begun during Stein's lecture tour of the U.S. in 1934, their friendship lasted until Stein's death 12 years later. These letters record Wilder's attempts to help Stein with publication and Stein's insistence that the writer's work is not teaching or lecturing or seeking fame, but writing. The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder records not only a friendship, but also the writers' struggles with the position of their writing in American culture.

From Publishers Weekly

Lovers of modern American literature will be delighted to read this correspondence between the noted lesbian avant-gardist and the closeted homosexual playwright who wrote Our Town and the Skin of Our Teeth. Wilder wrote to Stein from 1934 to 1946 with some interruptions, usually in a blithe mood, addressing Stein and her lover, Alice Toklas, as "Dear Gertralicitude." Stein's letters are like all her prose, a combination of the cryptic and the colloquial, with expressions like "xcited" and "xhausted." The only flaw in this literary delight is in the editorial presentation, which is often too detailed and burdened with descriptions of interest only to textual scholars, while missing some perceptions that would be of broader interest. For example, Stein introduced Wilder to the gay pornographer and tattoo artist Samuel Steward, and the two got along so swimmingly that Wilder later destroyed all of Steward's letters to him: however, the present editors completely ignore the sexual subtext. Further, as ardent Stein-ites, they praise her at Wilder's expense, saying "to many, Wilder's stage cannot contain the great movements of Stein's ideas." There are some small problems like two letters in which Wilder says he's just read a book by the French philosopher Alain (Emile-Auguste Chartier), one dated October 30 by Wilder, and the other which the editors place in the following July: either Wilder spent ten months reading one book, or the dating is confused. This highly enjoyable material would have benefited from more careful and less pedantic presentation.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 486 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (December 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300067747
• ISBN-13: 978-0300067743
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)