Look at Me Now and Here I Am: Writings and Lectures 1909-1945

Gertrude Stein’s radical innovations and continual experiments with language were years ahead of her time. More than any other writer, Stein reflects the last century’s revolt from the fine arts. Gertrude Stein was one of the most colorful personalities of the literary world during the interwar years. This volume of her writings attempts to dispel some of the misunderstanding that surrounds her work, presenting many of her lectures for the first time. Look at Me Now includes portraits of people (Matisse, Lipschitz, Picasso, Henry James, and others), portraits of objects, her poetry, her novel Ida, and her last work, Brewsie and Willie. Her lectures reveal a precise and original scheme behind her writing, drawing on concepts from William James’s theories of the aesthetic to Bergson’s notion of time. This accessible anthology presents the best of her startling achievements.… (more)