Tender Buttons

Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein (1914) I read this book years ago, at which time I was pretty excited about it because I'd never seen anything like it. When I recently reread it, I found it oddly comforting. I still have not read anything about how Gertrude Stein wrote this—which might be illuminating—but it's fun to guess. An object makes you think of a phrase connected to the object, maybe a memory. But if you try to eliminate that, then what? What if you try to eliminate nostalgic connections to words and ideas? If there is no narrative, as you read along, is it possible to connect what you're reading now to what you just read? It's a lot of fun and, for a book that's over a hundred years old, feels oddly contemporary. If I live long enough, I'll probably read it again. One funny side note—I just realized there is a subtitle near the beginning: “A PIECE OF COFFEE.” When I saw that, this time, I remembered that I wrote, in my novel, “The Doughnuts,” about a character in a donut shop writing in his notebook, writing about a character “drinking a piece of coffee.” I must have “stole” that from “Tender Buttons,” I realized. Without a conscious memory of it, of course—but the stuff goes in your brain, and who knows where it will come out. Of course, it's likely my “character” stole that from Gertrude Stein, without realizing it. On the other hand, it's possible that my character and I stole it (unconsciously) from some noir passage, either a book or a movie—whose author may have stolen it from Gertrude Stein, whether consciously or unconsciously. I guess we have this relatively tiny palate of words to work with, and we put them in order, and it creates meaning, maybe no meaning—and each person reading the words is going to interpret them in their own way, anyway. It's a lot of fun.