increasing meaning, increase mean, mean crease, ease

After finishing Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons, much meaning eluded my literary radar--the "poem" required a more philosophical and etymological approach to written language than most novels and poems. While the words appear sonorously related and stylistically matched, it is unlikely that her intentions were purely aesthetic, as the work as a whole appears to make no sense. In 1914, Stein really did pioneer modernism, with this non-treatise treatise on the nature of words, punctuation, and prosody.

Divided into three parts, the work supposes (a word Stein favors) a coherent understanding of what may possibly be a home, if anything at all. The first section, titled "Objects," attempts to redefine a variety of mundane things, while the second section, titled "Food," describes those words associated with eating, and, since she describes them in somewhat longer paragraph form, one may understand the section as the substance or meat of the work. The somewhat scattered spatial relations of each object and food bit then finds a containment in the final section, "Rooms." Her meaning seems to expand as the work lengthens. Similarly, the recurring convention of building upon previous phrases to create a final "meaning" supports a possible philosophical base in the work. For example:

A no, a no since, a no since when, a no since when since, a no since when since a no since when since, a no since, a no since when since, a no since, a no, a no since a no since, a no since, a no since.

As words develop connotations sideways as time goes on, so do her reinterpretations of words, but not without the possibility of becoming stripped once again. In addition, the placement of particular syllables and punctuation marks can vary the meaning indefinitely. Thus, history has its own language, increasingly connotative and eventually destructive. Unfortunately, Tender Buttons seems somewhat impenetrable upon first glance, and even second glance lends only tiny glimpses into Stein's mind--a mind that was trying to first say something rather than please anyone with artistry, however, one cannot deny her masterful use of sound to elicit some sort of pleasure from the reader. It is a work to be studied rather than enjoyed, perhaps, but that's modernism. Like a cubist painting, she comes at a subject from all angles, creating a synesthetic mess on the surface, with a particularly strong matrix of ideology underground.