SOURCE: “Gertrude Stein: The Pattern moves, the Woman behind Shakes It,” in Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 13, Nos. 1 and 2, 1986, pp. 33-47.

In the following essay, Mizejewski explores the Whiteheadian consciousness of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons.

Since Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons was published in 1914, its colorful chunks of language and imagery have been shaken in the kaleidoscopes of a dozen critical modes to produce a myriad of readings, designs, and explanations. The multitude of critical approaches attests to its brilliance and obscurity at once: readers presented with this wild, semi-verbless appraisal of objects, food, and rooms are justifiably intimidated but also challenged to find the “key” to a work in which “A Piece of Coffee” is “More of a double. A place in no new table,” and in which “Red Roses” are “Cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little...