How to Write

by Gertrude Stein

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First published in 1931, this volume offers Gertrude Stein's reflections on the art and craft of writing. Although written in her distinctive experimental style, the book is remarkably accessible and easy to read. The modernist author's characteristic humor is borne out by some of the chapter titles, "Saving the Sentence," "Arthur a Grammar," "Regular Regularly in Narrative," and "Finally George a Vocabulary." Stein's experimental style features elements such as disconnectedness, a love of show more refrain and rhyme, a search for rhythm and balance, a dislike of punctuation (especially the comma), and a repetition of words and phrases. Those who are unfamiliar with her Stein's work or have found it difficult to understand will discover in How to Write an excellent entrée to a unique literary voice and an imaginative approach to language that continues to inspire writers and readers. show less

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1 review
This book makes a lot of sense. This book makes a lot of nonsense. this book is fun
to wit:

at Shakespeare.
At Shakespeare and company
typing at Shakespeare
typing in stereo
to type them to stereo type them I do
as if a company of lesbians typing at Shakespeare
a company of lesbians monkeying around
aping
those proverbial monkeys typing until Shakespeare appears
on the page in the page in a pageboy
(don't shake a spear at me, boy)
is what Stein is
not a Shakespeare peer but
a mover of peers and a shaker of pages

What she said was too two to
not be railroaded in your reading
toot toot
"Look, Boss, the train, the train!"
of thought
or so I thought she said
As plain as plane as plain as day.

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184+ Works 13,733 Members
Famous writer Gertrude Stein was born on February 3, 1874 in Allegheny, PA and was educated at Radcliffe College and Johns Hopkins medical school. Stein wrote Three Lives, The Making of Americans, and Tender Buttons, all of which were considered difficult for the average reader. She is most famous for her opera Four Saints in Three Acts and The show more Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which was actually an autobiography of Stein herself. With her companion Alice B. Toklas, Stein received the French government's Medaille de la Reconnaissance Francaise for theory work with the American fund for French Wounded in World War I. Gertrude Stein died in Neuilly-ser-Seine, France on July 27, 1946. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Gertrude Stein has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.

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Meyerowitz, Patricia (Introduction)

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Classifications

Genres
Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
DDC/MDS
808.042Literature & rhetoricLiterature, rhetoric & criticismCompositionRhetoric and anthologiesHandbooks for writersEnglish
LCC
PS3537 .T323 .H6Language and LiteratureAmerican literatureAmerican literatureIndividual authors1900-1960
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Statistics

Members
332
Popularity
95,241
Reviews
1
Rating
(3.83)
Languages
English
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
8
UPCs
2
ASINs
9