Tender Buttons

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer who spent most of her adult life in Paris, where she became a central figure in the artistic circles of her time. Tender Buttons, published in 1914, is among her most experimental works. It is often associated with the efforts of modernist writers and painters to rethink how a work of art can represent the world, and many readers have compared its method to that of the cubist painters with whom Stein kept company.

The book is organised in three parts. Objects, Food and Rooms each contain short prose-poems whose titles name something concrete, and whose text then plays freely with sound, repetition and syntax rather than offering a conventional description. The result is a kind of still life made out of language. Sense and nonsense sit side by side, and the pleasure comes from the way sentences turn, hesitate and surprise. It is a book that has divided readers since it first appeared, and it has also inspired many later poets who value play and rhythm over plain statement.

This LibriVox recording is read by Cori Samuel, lasts about one hour and forty-five minutes, and follows the three sections of the original. Because the text depends so much on cadence, hearing it can be easier than reading it silently: the voice gives the repetitions a shape, and the humour becomes audible. It is best approached with an open mind and without any expectation of straightforward meaning. Today, more than a century after its publication, Tender Buttons remains a bracing example of what happens when a writer treats language itself as her subject.