In 1925, thanks mostly to the efforts of Ernest Hemingway and Ford Maddox Ford , Gertrude Stein was finally able to find a publisher for what she considered her most important and “monumental” work: a 900 and change page (52+ hours of listening bliss in the Audible version) history of two fictional families entitled The Making of Americans. She had completed the manuscript in 1911, but this one being such a radical departure from the acceptable mode of telling a story or relating a personal history up till that time — even in ones diagrammatic study of its syntax would it be so perplexing — was unable to find a publisher.
Once published however, it could be considered among the first works of modernist literature (if not the first). Many critics knew not what to make of the novel. The noted critic, Edmund Wilson, admitted that he could not find the patience to read the entire book, but expected not many others would either. He wrote:
“With sen…
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