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Was Gertrude Stein Any Good?

Writer Gertrude Stein declared she was a genius. But was she? – or instead over-rated or even incomprehensible? From 2013.

Gertrude Stein has been called a genius and an idiot. So which was she?

For some Stein is on a literary par with her contemporaries and friends; James Joyce, TS Eliot, Marcel Proust or Ezra Pound, but for others she's a fraud, the 'eminent idiot' of the Modernist period, writing gibberish and passing it off as art.

There's no doubting the importance of Stein as a creative catalyst. She gathered some of the greatest artists of the 20th century into her circle, offering financial, emotional and intellectual support. Picasso and Hemingway in particular cited her importance to their work.

She spent much of her life working on her opus, 'The Making of Americans', a book likened to Joyce's Ulysses in its scale, ambition and incomprehensibility. Does it deserve re-examination? Is it fair that Joyce is lauded and Stein marginalised?

Poet and presenter Ian McMillan asks if Getrude Stein was any good?

Produced at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Salford by Nicola Swords.

First broadcast on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 in March 2013.

Available now

30 minutes

Last on

Wed 28 Jul 2021 02:30

Broadcasts

  • Mon 4 Mar 2013 16:00
  • Tue 3 Dec 2019 06:30
  • Tue 3 Dec 2019 13:30
  • Tue 3 Dec 2019 20:30
  • Wed 4 Dec 2019 01:30
  • Tue 27 Jul 2021 14:30
  • Wed 28 Jul 2021 02:30

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