Challenging the assumption
that modernist writer Gertrude Stein seldom integrated her Jewish identity and
heritage into her work, this book uncovers Stein’s constant and varied writing
about Jewish topics throughout her career. Amy Feinstein argues that Judaism
was central to Stein’s ideas about modernity, showing how Stein connects the
modernist era to the Jewish experience.
Combing through Stein’s scholastic writings, drafting
notebooks, and literary works, Feinstein analyzes references to Judaism that
have puzzled scholars. She reveals the never-before-discussed influence of
Matthew Arnold as well as a hidden Jewish framework in Stein’s epic novel
The Making of Americans.
In Stein’s
experimental “voices”
poems,
Feinstein identifies an explicitly Jewish vocabulary that expresses themes of
marriage, nationalism, and Zionism. She also shows how
Wars I Have Seen
, written in Vichy France during World War II,
compares the experience of wartime occupation with the historic persecution of
Jews.
Affirming
the importance of Jewish identity and modernist style to Gertrude Stein’s
legacy as a writer, this book radically changes the way we read and appreciate
Stein’s work.