Last Operas and Plays / Edition 1

by Gertrude Stein

Overview

"When I see a thing it is not a play for me, but when I write something that somebody else can see then it is a play for me." —Gertrude Stein

In the more than seventy-five plats Gertrude Stein wrote between 1913 and 1946, she envisioned a new dramaturgy, beginning with her pictorial conception of a play as a landscape. She drew into her plays the daily flow of life around her—including the natural world—and turned cities, villages, parts of the dramatic structure, and even her own friends into characters. She made punctuation and typography part of her compositional style and chose words for their joyful impact as sound andwordplay. For Strin, the writing process itself was always important in delevoping the "continuous present" at the heart of her work.

Long out of print, Last Opera and Plays again makes available many of Stein's most important and most-produced works. As a special feature, it also included her thought-provoking essay "Plays," in which she reflects on the experience in the theater of seeing and hearing, and on emotion and time. "Now nearly a half century after her deathe," writes Bonnie Marranca in her introduction, "it is indisputable that Gertrude Stein is the great American modernist mind. No American author has been more influential for more generations of artists in the worlds of theater, dance, music, poetry, painting, and fiction."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801849855
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	05/22/1995
Series:	PAJ Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	536
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. She was the author of many books, including The Making of Americans, Geography and Plays, Tender Buttons, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and How To Write.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Presence of Mind
Plays
Yes Is for a Very Young Man (1944-45)
The Mother of Us All (1946)
Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938)
An Exercise in Analysis (1917)
A Circular Play (1920)
Photograph (1920)
Paisieu (1928)
An Historic Drama in Memory of Winnie Elliot (1930)
Will He Come Back Better. Second Historic Drama. In the Country (1930)
Third Historic Drama (1930)
Play I [-III] (1930)
They must. Be Wedded. To Their Wife (1931)
A Play of Pounds (1932)
A Manoir (1932)
Short Sentences (1932)
Byron A Play (1933)
Listen to Me (1936)
A Play Called Not and Now (1936)
Four Saints in Three Acts (1936)

Editorial Reviews

To Carl Van Vechten's 1949 selection of some of Stein's most important and most produced plays, this reprint adds the essay Plays, in which Stein elaborates her notion of the play as a landscape and , and a new introduction by Bonnie Marranca.
—American Literature

From the Publisher

To Carl Van Vechten's 1949 selection of some of Stein's most important and most produced plays, this reprint adds the essay Plays, in which Stein elaborates her notion of the play as a landscape and , and a new introduction by Bonnie Marranca.

American Literature

Considering most readers don't understand a thing she writes, Stein's continuing popularity is astounding. Both the plays and the history of America are presented here in her own inimitable style. For the serious literati.

Library Journal

Reprint of the Rinehart & Co. edition of 1949, which was edited by Carl Van Vechten. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews