Stein, Gertrude

斯坦的技巧的突出特点之一是她对字词的重复使用。她觉得这样可以去掉它们的表面意思，而显示出它们的真正内涵。她的作品里还充满了难解的语言和模糊的抽象概念。她认为这些有助于描述现实的真相。她的遣词造句，注重声音效果，她对字词的味道、气味及节奏感的敏感，这一切都很有让人揣摩的余地。

1874–1946, American author and patron of the arts. A celebrated personality, she encouraged, aided, and influenced—through her patronage as well as through her writing—many literary and artistic figures. After attending (1893–97) Radcliffe, where she was a student of William James, she began premedical work at Johns Hopkins. In 1902, relinquishing her studies, she went abroad and from 1903 until her death lived chiefly in Paris. For many years her secretary and lover was Alice B. Toklas. In Paris, Stein became interested in modern art movements; she encouraged and purchased the work of many new painters, including Picasso and Matisse. During the 1920s, she was the leader of a cultural salon that included such writers as Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, all of whose works she influenced. It was she who first coined the phrase “lost generation” for those post–World War I expatriates. During World War II she remained in France, and after the war her Paris home became a meeting place for American soldiers.

Stein’s own innovative writing emphasizes the sounds and rhythms rather than the sense of words. By departing from conventional meaning, grammar, and syntax, she attempted to capture “moments of consciousness,” independent of time and memory. Her first published work was Three Lives (completed 1905, pub. 1909), short stories in which she explored the mental processes of three women. But her most characteristic and probably most difficult narrative is The Making of Americans (completed 1911, pub. 1925). The famous Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), a linear narrative written in relatively ordinary language, is the story of her own life presented as that of her companion. Stein’s critical essays were published as Composition as Explanation (1926), How to Write (1931), Narration (1935), and Lectures in America (1935).