ABSTRACT
Gertrude Stein was an American icon in the 1930s. As John Malcolm Brinnin observes, “her eminence on the American scene was for a time shared only by gangsters, baseball players and movie stars.” 1 In fact, the vast majority of studies about Gertrude Stein begin by announcing that she is primarily notable as a personality, celebrity or icon and seldom has been, at least until the last several decades, taken seriously as a writer. Frequently described by epithets such as “widely ridiculed and seldom enjoyed” and “most publicized but least-read writer” of the twentieth century, Stein’s reception has been considered somewhat mysterious, particularly because scholars assume that it differs considerably from other modernist writers such as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, who successfully achieved canonical status in their own lifetimes but apparently avoided success with popular audiences. 2
