Tender Buttons

Tender Buttons is the best known of Gertrude Stein's "hermetic" works. It is a small book separated into three sections: Food, Objects and Rooms each containing prose under subtitles. It is sometimes viewed as a modern classic experimental novel made up of prose poems. While living in Paris, Gertrude began writing for publication. Her earliest writings were mainly retellings of her college experiences. Mabel Dodge promoted Gertrude's works in the United States. Foreshadowing Gertrude's later critical reception, Mabel wrote in "Speculations": In Gertrude Stein's writing every word lives and, apart from concept, it is so exquisitely rhythmical and cadenced that if we read it aloud and receive it as pure sound, it is like a kind of sensuous music. Just as one may stop, for once, in a way, before a canvas of Picasso, and, letting one's reason sleep for an instant, may exclaim: "It is a fine pattern!"