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More About This Textbook
Overview
From the author of Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner comes a fascinating dual biography of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo, the sister-and-brother team of eccentric and compelling American expatriates who collaborated in the great art and literary adventures of this century. Photos.
Editorial Reviews
New York Times Book Review
“Ms. Wineapple does an impressive job of setting down the facts of the Steins' eventful lives. . . . [An] ambitious biography.”—New York Times Book ReviewWashington Post Book World
“Wineapple tells a dramatically compelling story; her analysis is insightful, her meticulous documentation unobtrusive. She has written an absorbing account of two extraordinary siblings.”—Washington Post Book WorldSan Francisco Chronicle
“Brenda Wineapple brilliantly disentwines the record of Stein's life from the image of it that Stein and her allies created. . . . Wineapple's narrative is fluent and clear . . . fascinating.”—San Francisco ChronicleBooklist
“Wineapple illuminates the distinct and tremendously influential personalities of Gertrude and Leo Stein as well as the intricate nature of their intense but doomed relationship.”—BooklistBoston Globe
“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”—Linda Simon, Boston Globe
— Linda Simon
Toronto Globe and Mail
“Sister Brother is a beautifully even-handed and penetrating treatment. This biography is indispensable for students of Gertrude Stein and of modernism, and will be a delight to lovers of art and to all those interested in what Wineapple calls ‘the romance of families.’”—Toronto Globe and MailElle
“A riveting joint profile of Gertrude and Leo Stein. . . . A wild, Fauve-like canvas of a time before emotional color was muted by Prozac.”—M. G. Lord, ElleDaily Telegraph
“Wineapple’s book explores their partnership with humour and panache. Not the least of its virtues is that, while paying ample homage to Gertrude, it does justice perhaps for the first time at length and in detail, to Leo. . . . Scrupulous, sensitive, marvellous.”—Daily TelegraphForward
“Eloquent”—ForwardThe Guardian
“A rewarding read.”—GuardianChicago Tribune
“Brenda Wineapple could have called this book ‘Scenes from a Marriage’. . . . An absorbing picture.”—Chicago TribuneRichard Howard
“A luminous, harrowing achievement for which all students of literature and art, as well as of families, are in Brenda Wineapple's debt.”
Patricia Bosworth
“Brenda Wineapple’s meticulous, scholarly, and affectionate double biography of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo gives us the fascinating story of two glorious animals.”
Boston Globe - Linda Simon
“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”—Linda Simon, Boston GlobeRichard Howard
“A luminous, harrowing achievement for which all students of literature and art, as well as of families, are in Brenda Wineapple's debt.”—Richard HowardPatricia Bosworth
“Brenda Wineapple’s meticulous, scholarly, and affectionate double biography of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo gives us the fascinating story of two glorious animals.”—Patricia BosworthForward
“Eloquent”
Chicago Tribune
“Brenda Wineapple could have called this book ‘Scenes from a Marriage’. . . . An absorbing picture.”
Toronto Globe and Mail
“Sister Brother is a beautifully even-handed and penetrating treatment. This biography is indispensable for students of Gertrude Stein and of modernism, and will be a delight to lovers of art and to all those interested in what Wineapple calls ‘the romance of families.’”
Booklist
“Wineapple illuminates the distinct and tremendously influential personalities of Gertrude and Leo Stein as well as the intricate nature of their intense but doomed relationship.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Brenda Wineapple brilliantly disentwines the record of Stein''s life from the image of it that Stein and her allies created. . . . Wineapple''s narrative is fluent and clear . . . fascinating.”
The Guardian
“A rewarding read.”
Elle
“A riveting joint profile of Gertrude and Leo Stein. . . . A wild, Fauve-like canvas of a time before emotional color was muted by Prozac.”
—M. G. Lord, Elle
Daily Telegraph
“Wineapple’s book explores their partnership with humour and panache. Not the least of its virtues is that, while paying ample homage to Gertrude, it does justice perhaps for the first time at length and in detail, to Leo. . . . Scrupulous, sensitive, marvellous.”
Boston Globe
“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”
—Linda Simon, Boston Globe
New York Times Book Review
“Ms. Wineapple does an impressive job of setting down the facts of the Steins'' eventful lives. . . . [An] ambitious biography.”
Washington Post Book World
“Wineapple tells a dramatically compelling story; her analysis is insightful, her meticulous documentation unobtrusive. She has written an absorbing account of two extraordinary siblings.”
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Just before WW I, the suffocating brother-sister relationship of the Steins ended in Paris. They never again spoke to each other. Gertrude Stein's gift for self-promotion has largely created her image. Now Wineapple (the biographer of Janet Flanner-Gent) looks behind it. "It was I who was the genius," Gertrude claimed, "there was no reason for it, but I was, and he was not." Siblings of German-Jewish ancestry with inherited incomes, Gertrude and Leo Stein showed little motivation to succeed at anything. Leo would drop out of law schol, Gertrude out of medical school. From their teens in Cambridge and Baltimore into their late 30s on the Continent, they remained close, often living together. In France, they collected bohemian friends and avant-garde art while trying to find themselves. Gertrude grew fat and sloppy while bullying her lesbian set; Leo became neurotic and anorexic, his sense of inadequacy growing in proportion to his sister's success. By 1913, her experimental prose built upon repetition and rhythm was already being parodied. Going nowhere when Alice Toklas moved in, Leo moved out of the already famous Paris flat hung with Picassos, Matisses and Renoirs to a cottage in Italy, taking half the pictures. Leo's loyal-but desperate-mistress would follow him. Finally, just before his death in 1947, Leo published the single book on aesthetics by which he would be remembered. The year before, he had heard about Gertrude's death only from a newspaper. Their years together are not inspiring reading, but Wineapple's account evokes their lives as never before. (Apr.)Library Journal
Despite the interwoven lives of Gertrude and Leo Stein, this biography by Wineapple (literature, Union Coll., Schenectady) is the first to use the sister-brother relationship as the central focus. Wineapple chronicles the symbiotic lives, personalities, intellects, and temperaments of Gertrude and Leo from childhood through death. She explores the siblings' idiosyncrasies and speculations about their relationship while offering details of their educational pursuits and college lives. In the process, Wineapple reveals the era's prejudices against Jews and women and specifics about Leo's relationship with Nina Auzias. While Linda Wagner-Martin's recent biography, Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family (Rutgers Univ., 1995), offers a more generally appealing, anecdotal writing style and emphasizes the Stein family experience, Wineapple provides a more detailed, authoritative account of the personal and intellectual lives of Gertrude and Leo. Her work is a good scholarly companion to James Mellow's standard biography, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company (1974). For literature collections.-Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.Product Details
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Meet the Author
Table of Contents
Disorder and Early Sorrow
Bes Almon 6
Tempers We Are Born With 30
Too Darn Anxious to Be Safe 47
Both Ones That Quite Enough Are Knowing
To Know Thyself 64
The Feminine Half 84
Evolution 100
Respectability 116
New Americans 134
Speech Is the Twin of My Vision
Gilded Cages 156
Brother Singular 170
Quod Erat Demonstrandum 188
Toward a More Quintessential Method, 1903-1905 208
In the Thick of It 227
An Alarm Has No Button
Quarreling 248
Banquets 266
I Could Be So Happy 286
A Fine Frenzy 304
Myself and Strangers, or The Inevitable Character of My Art 323
Ripeness Is All
Two 338
The Disaggregation 356
Of Having a Great Many Times Not Continued to Be Friends: A Finale 376
Epilogue: A Family Romance 393
Appendix 409
Acknowledgments 415
Notes 421
Bibliography 487
Index 501