Tender Buttons (book)

Tender Buttons is a 1914 book by American writer Gertrude Stein consisting of three sections titled "Objects", "Food", and "Rooms". While the short book consists of multiple poems covering the everyday mundane, Stein's experimental use of language renders the poems unorthodox and their subjects unfamiliar.

Stein began composition of the book in 1912 with multiple short prose poems in an effort to "create a word relationship between the word and the things seen" using a "realist" perspective. She then published it in three sections as her second book in 1914.

Tender Buttons has provoked divided critical responses since its publication. It is renowned for its Modernist approach to portraying the everyday object and has been lauded as a "masterpiece of verbal Cubism". Its first poem, "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass", is arguably its most famous, and is often cited as one of the quintessential works of Cubist literature. The book has also been, however, criticized as "a modernist triumph, a spectacular failure, a collection of confusing gibberish, and an intentional hoax".

Rather than using conventional syntax, Stein experiments with alternative grammar to emphasize the role of rhythm and sound in an object's "moment of consciousness". The disconnect between the familiarity of the objects and the manner in which they are described results in the defamiliarization of the familiar while simultaneously familiarizing the unfamiliar. Rather than explore the means in which the signified and the signifier interact, Stein's avant-garde approach to writing deconstructs this relationship and instead obstructs a systematized process of meaning. By both redefining and undermining meaning merely through experimental grammar, Stein is able to displace everyday objects into new contexts, resulting in the reader's redefinition and reassessment of the reality of the mundane.

Like Stein's syntax of poems in the book, the title juxtaposes two familiar concepts to alienate their familiar meanings. Rather than use an expected collocate, Stein frequently associates two familiar but independent ideas in order to challenge their established authenticity. Many of the titles of the individual poems likewise use similar juxtapositions: "Glazed Glitter", "A Piece of Coffee", etc.

While the word "tender" and the word "buttons" are two ordinary words in the sense that they both have familiar meanings to the average reader, their displacement from a usual context and their subsequent synthesis ruptures a usual understanding of their meanings and implications. By displacing these words into an unfamiliar context, Stein challenges the reader's notion of what these words actually mean. In establishing the phrase, "tender buttons", as the title of the series, Stein defines her series of poems to be both familiar and foreign in their context.

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