About this eBook
A witty, provocative, prescient novel about a woman who is famous for being famous, from the visionary author of Tender Buttons and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
“Odd, sad and happy events populate the novel’s pages, while doppelgängers lurk everywhere: Ida becomes Winnie, because she’s winning; characters like parents to Ida come and go, and men who may, or do, become her husbands appear, disappear, reappear. . . . Release from textual and narrative tension comes, in part, through [Gertrude] Stein’s remarkable voice. . . . I enjoy Stein most as a theorist: her ideas startle me, in whatever form they appear.”—Lynne Tillman, The New York Times Book Review
“The strangest book I read was Ida, by Gertrude Stein, which my mom gave to me without much fanfare. This must have been when I was in high school. It’s an odd book, with a telescoping narrator and that new-brain prose of Stein’s. My first encounter with very simple sentences looted of sense. I loved it.”—Ben Marcus
“Odd, sad and happy events populate the novel’s pages, while doppelgängers lurk everywhere: Ida becomes Winnie, because she’s winning; characters like parents to Ida come and go, and men who may, or do, become her husbands appear, disappear, reappear. . . . Release from textual and narrative tension comes, in part, through [Gertrude] Stein’s remarkable voice. . . . I enjoy Stein most as a theorist: her ideas startle me, in whatever form they appear.”—Lynne Tillman, The New York Times Book Review
“The strangest book I read was Ida, by Gertrude Stein, which my mom gave to me without much fanfare. This must have been when I was in high school. It’s an odd book, with a telescoping narrator and that new-brain prose of Stein’s. My first encounter with very simple sentences looted of sense. I loved it.”—Ben Marcus
About the author
Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1874. At Radcliffe College she studied under William James, who remained her lifelong friend, and then went to Johns Hopkins to study medicine. Abandoning her studies, she moved to Paris with her brother Leo in 1903. At 27 rue de Fleurus, Gertrude Stein lived with Alice B. Toklas, who would remain her companion for 40 years. Not only was she an innovator in literature and a supporter of modern poetry and art, she was the friend and mentor of those who visited her at her now-famous home: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Her body of work include Three Lives, Tender Buttons, The Making of Americans, and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
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