SOURCE: "Gertrude Stein's Self-Advertisement," in Raritan, Vol. XII, No. 2, Fall, 1992, pp. 71-87.

In the following essay, Schultz discusses Stein's ruminations on her writing career in "Stanzas in Meditation" and her autobiographical prose works.

 I often think how celebrated I am.
It is difficult not to think how celebrated I am.
And if I think how celebrated I am
They know who know that I am new
That is I knew I know how celebrated I am
And after all it astonishes even me.

All this is to be for me. 

Gertrude Stein defies the attempts we make at describing her career historically; the antihistorical historian par excellence, Stein wrote two autobiographies in 1932 alone. The first purports to be history, albeit the history of another's life; The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is one of Stein's most ostensibly accessible works. The second, "Stanzas in Meditation," records the process of...