Gertrude Stein

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Revision as of 21:25, 29 October 2020 by imported>Pat Palmer (starting a discussion of Four in America, Stein's obtuse 1947 novel)
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Gertrude Stein (1874 - 1946) was an American author who lived in Paris, France, and is best remembered for creating deliberate linguistic conundrums.

Stein's most famous work was a best seller, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, published in 1933. Stein's possibly least known book was published in 1947 and was entitled Four in America. As of 2020, Four in America is out of print, has never been digitized, and is likely to be found in only two or three libraries in the United States[1]. Even used copies via the internet are difficult to come by. But this book is now of interest because a single phrase in it has become a much misquoted and fully misunderstood internet meme. Some claim that Stein that she admired Ulysses S. Grant, others that she could not “think of Grant without weeping”.

  1. A copy of Four in America exists in the Philadelphia Free Library, and also in the Princeton University Library