A Novel of Thank You [Paperback]

Gertrude Stein (Author), Steven Meyer (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 28, 1994

This is the first paperback edition of one of Stein's most revealing novels. Written in 1925-26 (but not published until 1958), it is Stein's midcareer assessment of herself, her writing, and her relationships, composed in the unique style for which she is celebrated. In place of a traditional narrative, Stein explores the nature of narrative, its possibilities, the various genres (historical novels, the novel of manners, adventure stories) available to the writer, the conventions of novel-writing, and the novelist's relation to her materials. In a sense, the novel is about "preparing a novel" (the subject of chap. 50), about everything that goes through a writer's head as she begins to write. Mixed in with her meditations on writing are daily events in her marriage to Alice B. Toklas, visits from friends - including such notable figures of the period as Josephine Baker, Virgil Thomson, Rene Crevel, and a number of expatriate American writers and artists - travels in and around France, memories of the past, inquiries into names and the nature of identity, and virtually anything else that occurs to her. As she writes at one point, "It can easily be remembered that a novel is everything, " so everything of interest to Stein goes into her preparations for the novel that is A Novel of Thank You.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

With four titles back in print since January, Stein is the comeback kid of 1994. Though written in the 1920s, Thank You was first published posthumously in 1958, 12 years after the author's death. In typical Stein fashion, the book is more about the act of writing a novel than it is an actual novel.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A dictator of art." -- Man Ray

"Gertrude was always right." -- Ernest Hemingway

"In Stein's . . . A Novel of Thank You, words lifted from the world and composed on the page are at once as recognizable and as foreign as chairs or sunflowers or boots on a Van Gogh canvas. At her best, Stein defamiliarizes and reanimates the most mundane objects, along with the vocabulary of daily life." -- Boston Phoenix 2-95

"This book shows Stein at her bestusing a nonconventional self-reflective style of writing, reminiscent of H.D.'s. A Novel of Thank You is, in essence and content, a novel about 'preparing for a novel.' An important reprint." -- Feminist Bookstore News July-Aug 94

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press; 2nd edition (June 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156478049X
• ISBN-13: 978-1564780492
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #276,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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