Steinand The Lost Generation

A detailed Summary of Steinand The Lost Generation

If one wishes to use it properly, the term avant-garde should meet three criteria when used to describe works of art. First and foremost it must defy artistic trends of the time, distancing itself as far as possible from established trends of the time. It also must take considerable time to find a significant audience. Lastly, it will most likely inspire future groundbreaking endeavors, by artists in whatever medium. Gertrude Stein's work as an author and poet satisfies all of these criteria. Her writings were unlike anything written in their time, and still to this day scholars debate their literary merit. The influence and inspiration that her writing lends to later authors gives Stein's work its most weight.

The first task of sifting through Stein's work to find its purpose and value is indeed a difficult one. Her writing looks and sounds primitive, almost as if a child is trying to draw out of her mind some long-buried memory. But like in a child's pure words, it is in her own unsophisticated language that the reader finds the purpose and value of her works: the truth. Sherwood Anderson, a contemporary of Ms. Stein articulated the ultimate accomplishment of her work. "I think that these books of Gertrude Stein do in a very r

Ms. Stein's advice to a young F. Scott Fitzgerald was much the same as the advice she gave Hemingway. Before he sought her out, Fitzgerald's novel This Side of Paradise had already deeply impressed Ms. Stein. She believed of that novel, as well as of The Great Gatsby, that they introduced to the public the new generation of America, the disillusioned young men and women in search of themselves and the aspect of life that makes it significant. Fitzgerald and Ms. Stein met only a few times, and very briefly at that, but her desire to evoke images with words, to speak truth with simplicity, and to write about life as one perceived it rubbed off on Fitzgerald. The works he wrote after he met Ms. Stein, particularly Tender Is the Night (A novel written at Ms. Stein's behest), displayed this effect.

before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster,

All these men, as they found themselves increasingly distanced from the traditional American life sought out Ms. Stein, and the truth they saw in her words. She encouraged them to write about life as they saw it, and write about those truths that were important to them. They all followed Ms. Stein's lead, wherein, despite her expatriation, she was able to write as one both inside and outside the circle; to know life as she experienced it, yet to see it as it was. They all sought as Ms. Stein did the truth that bound the world together, that something in life did indeed exist onto which on could cling and find strength. None articulated the views that they all shared so well as F. Scott Fitzgerald, at the end of The Great Gatsby:

The writer on whom Ms. Stein had perhaps the greatest effect was a young black man named Richard Wright. Wright and Ms. Stein origina

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Approximate Word count = 1180
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: People