Reseña de Publisher's Weekly
What was Gertrude Stein, that inimitable Jewish-American doyenne of experimental writing, doing translating for American audiences the speeches of Marshal Philippe Petain, the head of the WWII collaborationist Vichy regime? In this brilliant and fascinating study, Stein specialist Will (Gertrude Stein, Modernism, and the Problem of "Genius") answers this question through a close reading of Stein's writings, a detailed examination of Stein's and Bernard Fay's attraction to Petain's conservative politics, and Stein's friendship with Fay, a Frenchman who moved in both artistic and far right-wing circles and collaborated with the Nazis. Will demonstrates that the pair were reactionary modernists who believed that the democratic ideas of the French Revolution ushered in the decadence characteristic of the early 20th-century French Republic and that the U.S. was going through a similar decline. Petain captured the pair's imagination and allegiance by articulating a program for returning France to the vitality and pioneering spirit of its pre-Enlightenment agrarian roots. Will shows that Stein never publicly affiliated herself as a Jew, especially after she moved to Paris in 1903. This exceptional study provides new insights into previously hidden corners of Stein's life. Photos. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Reseña de Choise
In the period between the two world wars, Gertrude Stein supported France's Vichy government, made anti-Semitic remarks, and disdained male homosexuals. These positions have caused scholars to ask how an artistic modernist such as Stein could be a political reactionary. That is the question Will (Dartmouth) engages by focusing on Stein's friendship with French writer and scholar Bernard FaY, a Vichy collaborator, whose influence helped protect Stein and Alice Toklas from persecution and deportation during the German occupation. Will illuminates the two writers' shared views on politics, history, religion, and race; their nostalgia for the preindustrialized 18th century; and their celebration of literary and artistic experimentation. Focusing on Stein's aesthetic choices starting in 1926, when the two first met, until her death in 1946, Will sets Stein's writings in the context of such earlier pieces as The Making of Americans (1906-08). Although Stein devoted herself to translating Philippe Petain's propaganda speeches for, she hoped, an American audience, her attitudes after the war moderated to more liberal and democratic views; Fay remained unrepentantly reactionary. Exceptionally well researched and elegantly written, this book is certain to make an important contribution to and beyond Stein studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. L. Simon Skidmore College
![Imagen de portada para Unlikely collaboration [electronic resource] : Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy dilemma / Barbara Will.](/client/assets/5.1326/ctx//client/images/no_image.png "Imagen de portada para Unlikely collaboration [electronic resource] : Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy dilemma / Barbara Will.")