Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition
by Gertrude Stein
The Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions has awarded Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition its Seal of Approval.
2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the original publication of Gertrude Stein's groundbreaking modernist classic, Tender Buttons. This centennial edition is the first and only version to incorporate Stein's own handwritten corrections—found in a first-edition copy at the University of Colorado—as well as corrections discovered among her papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Editor Seth Perlow has assembled a text with over 100 emendations, resulting in the first version of Tender Buttons that truly reflects its author's intentions. These changes are detailed in Perlow's "Note on the Text," which describes the editorial process and lists the specific variants for the benefit of future scholars. The book includes facsimile images of some of Stein's handwritten edits and lists of corrections, as well as an afterword by noted contemporary poet and scholar Juliana Spahr. A compact, attractive edition suitable for general readers as well as scholars, Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition is unique among the available versions of this classic text and is destined to become the standard.
City Lights Books, 2014
Praise for Tender Buttons: The Corrected Centennial Edition
Tender Buttons is the touchstone work of radical modernist poetry, the fullest realization of the turn to language and the most perfect realization of 'wordness,' where word and object are merged. For the centennial of this masterpiece, Seth Perlow has given us much the best edition of the poem, based on Stein's manuscript and corrections she made to the first edition. Punctuation, spelling, format, and a few phrases are affected and most especially the change in the capitalization of the section titles. 'The difference is spreading.
— Charles Bernstein
Happy 100th birthday, Tender Buttons. You are as explosive, tantalizing, and delicious as you were on the day you were born. Your birthday gift from Seth Perlow and Juliana Spahr is a beautiful new edition that will carry you into your next century, the best edition ever. Your birthday gift from all of us who love literature and culture is to buy this edition for ourselves and all our friends. Congratulations to all.
— Catharine R. Stimpson
The publication of an authoritative edition of Tender Buttons, with Stein's hitherto unpublished corrections and editions, is a splendid way to celebrate the centennial of this influential modernist work. Scholars will benefit from the full documentation, and readers will appreciate its convenient format, which resembles the original publication.
— Jonathan Culler
This radical multi-dimensional generative cubist text with the simplest words imaginable continues to alter and shape poetics into the post post modernist future. We have Gertrude Stein’s “mind grammar” operating at full tilt, with unpredictability, wit and sensory prevarication. Look to the “minutest particulars,” Blake admonished, and here she does just that: “it is a winning cake.” Salvos to the editor and salient “afterword” that give belletristic notes and political perspective as well. A unique edition.
—Anne Waldman