The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas (1990) - Plot & Excerpts
This is timely. There's an article about Gertrude Stein today in the Huffington Post. Others thought she was an asshole (as I describe below) as well. Except I don't think they appreciated the genius part I recognized after reading this book...Here's what I know about Gertrude Stein: She was an asshole.I say that in a joking way. I actually learned more about her from this book than I learned about Alice B. Toklas (whoever she was) because this "autobiography" was written by Stein, supposedly from Toklas's perspective and should, for all intents and purposes, be about Toklas. Except it's all about Stein, as though Toklas wrote it about her? You with me so far?If you are, you'll agree Stein was sort of an asshole. But also a genius because who thinks to do all this. It seems overly complicated, right? Just write an autobiography about yourself if you want to write about yourself; it would actually look less arrogant that way. The way she did it was to pretend like it's all about Alice, but that Alice only wrote it about Stein, even though Stein's name is listed as the author... I mean, really. Thinking about this all too much is enough to cause a brain aneurysm.So what did I learn about Alice?:*She did not like hot weather. Or walking. Gertrude Stein, apparently, loved walking and hot weather. Freak.*St. Anthony of Padua was Alice's favorite saint. Gertrude Stein preferred some other guy, some St. Francis of Assissi because animals.*Alice was forgetful. This seems like an especial jab at Alice. Remember, this is Stein writing as though from Alice's perspective, right, so the comment about being forgetful is really Stein calling Alice forgetful. *Alice would go to bed early. Stein was a night owl.Annnd that's about it. In 252 pages, that is all the reader really discovers about Alice B. Toklas. I don't even know what her middle name was. (I lied; her middle name was Babette, but I found that out from looking on Wikipedia. While there is some Alice-related information in the very first chapter, her middle name was not one of the things listed. And people who first pick up the book will inevitably read that first chapter as though it's Stein talking about Stein, because she's the damn author of the book, so it's all very misleading and disorienting at first.)On the other hand, we know so much about Stein, as if there's not enough information about her life out there in the world. What I did learn is that she lived in Pittsburgh for way less amount of time than I ever thought she did. People here love to say "Gertrude Stein lived in Pittsburgh!" Sorry, yinzers, she moved away when she was 6 months old and, according to this book, has never stepped foot on Pittsburgh soil again. That is a bummer, I agree. For about a year or more, I lived a block away from the house where she was born. You can see it here: House.Having just re-read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast recently, it was definitely cool to read Stein's account of the same time and place. They wrote about a lot of the same people, including each other, and it's interesting to see how their views matched or differed. Stein was much more interested in the visual artists of the period than I think Hemingway was (or at least she wrote about it more than he did, being such good friends with some guy called Picasso and others), but still covered a lot of similar territory. In some ways, her description of the early 1900s is more vivid to me reading the account now than Hemingway's was, but I think he was even more interested in exposing gossip than she was (which is hard to believe because she put up a good fight).I'm intrigued that while she talked about the war years in Paris, there's still little emotion behind it, or any real sense how the war caused any significant disturbance in her life. I got the impression that she (or Toklas, or both, or whatever, I give up) wanted to do something good for the cause, but it was mentioned only briefly, and then the topic shifted away from that, returning to more good ol' days with more buddies.I have never been more interested in reading more by Stein. She-Toklas referred to Stein's writing quite a bit, and one day hopefully soon I will tackle The Making of Americans which, I understand, has no real punctuation? Or something like two commas in the entire book? See. Asshole. But, again, also genius. I want to be more pissed at Stein, but I have to admire the way she really seems to be poking fun at the reader.Well played, Stein, well played.Seriously, though, don't read this book if you actually want to know anything about Toklas. You won't find it here, I promise you that.
Pablo Picasso! Henri Matisse! Ernest Hemingway! F. Scott Fitzgerald! Sherwood Anderson! T. S. Eliot! Djuna Barnes! Ezra Pound! Georges Braque! Ford Madox Ford! Jean Cocteau!All of these artists and writers were bumping into each other in Paris in the 1920s, often at Gertrude Stein's apartment, the famous salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. (And if you're wondering who the hell Alice B. Toklas is, she was Stein's longtime partner and lover, and calling it an autobiography but yet it was written by Stein was Stein's idea of a joke.) I'll be honest and say I was keen to read this book because I had hoped for some delicious gossip about these famous people, and while there were some good stories, Stein's writing was more difficult to read than I expected. This was my first Stein book, and I would describe her style as a conversational stream of consciousness that frequently turns into babble.Here is a good example of her style: "This was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing through the press Three Lives which she was having privately printed, and she was deep in The Making of Americans, her thousand page book. Picasso had just finished his portrait of her which nobody at that time liked except the painter and the painted and which is now so famous, and he had just begun his strange complicated picture of three women, Matisse had just finished his Bonheur de Vivre, his first big composition which gave him the name of fauve or a zoo. It was the moment Max Jacob has since called the heroic age of cubism. I remember not long ago hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talking about various things that had happened at the time, one of them said but all that could not have happened in that one year, oh said the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did a great deal in a year. There are a great many things to tell of what was happening then and what had happened before, which led up to then, but now I must describe what I saw when I came."I did not change anything about that quote -- you get a sense of Stein's run-on sentences and her laissez-faire punctuation. Often when I was reading this book I felt as if I was listening to a confused storyteller, someone who just kept talking and talking and rambling and trying to convey a message, but that they themselves had forgotten what the message was. There were some nice quotes and turns of phrase, such as: "[Stein] was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, of a very respectable middle class family. She always says that she is very grateful not to have been born of an intellectual family, she has a horror of what she calls intellectual people." But I had to slog through quite a few pages before I found a quote worth marking.So, why would someone read this book? Maybe you would be brought to it, as I was, by the Woody Allen movie "Midnight in Paris," which had scenes that were inspired by this memoir. Or maybe you want to hear more about Picasso and Matisse and Hemingway, which were my favorite parts of the book. Maybe you want to read about Paris during World War I, and how empty of men the world had seemed then.For me, I'm still fascinated by the Lost Generation and will read more Hemingway and Fitzgerald (because I didn't fully appreciate them when I was younger), but I may have had my fill of Stein for now.
What do You think about The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas (1990)?
An absolutely fascinating read. This was the first book by Gertrude Stein that I have read, that I have read. No, I will stop there.It was written in a very accessible style, something for which Stein is not known usually to do when she writes but I believe this was her potboiler, i.e. her attempt to make some cash. I think it is a true classic. I could not put it down.Not only does the prose sweep you along in the tide of Stein's imagination but also you feel like you are right there during an incredible time in history when a large number of super-creative people all seemed to converged on Paris around the same time. Well that's the way it seems. Stein, posing as Alice B. Toklas (you find out why right on the last page so I won't spoil it), does of course give you the highlights but this gives the reader the 'illusion' that everything is happening extremely fast and I think it is both the accessible prose and the pace of the novel which made it an overnight success.In this book you will discover Stein's close friendship to Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris (whom I had never heard of before), Braque, Matisse, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson and many others. Pablo Picasso called Gertrude Stein at one point 'his only friend'. Although their creative disciplines were altogether different, I think it was wonderful how artists like this could come together to appreciate each other's art. And as it turns out, some of Stein's ideas in Three Lives, perhaps her most famous book and the book I will read next!, came from Pablo himself. I also loved the final section of the book when Gertrude is driving around the French countryside during WWI, picking up soldier hitch-hikers. Yet another great thing about this book is the details about her other books, She talks about how she came to write Three Lives, The Making of Americans, Tender Buttons and other famous books of hers. The only reason I give this book four stars and not five stars is due to the large number of spelling mistakes on the Kindle version which I was reading. At one point I wondered if they were intentionally put in there by Stein but I doubt it. They don't add anything to the text, except for the fact that they occasionally make the reader pause and wonder what the word is. If these are mistakes, I hope Kindle comes out with a new edition in future. If Stein's other books are anywhere as good as this one, Stein will definitely shoot right up into my Top Five Authors list, I have no doubt. This is not just a good read, it's a superb one!
—Mat
Gertrude Stein writes her partner's fictional autobiography which turns out to be more a biography of Gertrude Stein and her friendship with Picasso and Matisse loaded with gossipy accounts of her Salon she ran in Paris just before and during these painters rise to fame. While Stein is, as she boasts, often annoyingly, a genius, her crisp conversational prose makes the book a fascinating rendering of an art subculture during a time of modern(ist), and futurist breakthroughs, it really left me a little cold. Clever, yes, but it lacks an emotional undertoe. I found many of the antidotes, though funny and interesting, a little presumptuous and braggy, if you will. We are swept too readily from topic to topic (for my taste, this is, of course, part of the work's intent-to be gossipy), I was too often left wondering... what did Stein say in response to that? what did Picasso say next? Why can't we have a real SCENE?
—Becky
This is really great. I was expecting it to be inaccessible but it wasn't - the prose took a little getting used to, that's all, but I began to find it very satisfying and beautiful quite quickly. It's mostly this great picture of being part of this arty, intellectual circle in prewar and wartime Paris, and living through the first world war, and being an ex-pat American. A lot of the book is about the circle of cubists (har har) that Stein and Toklas were hanging with, and I feel like I miss a lot by not really knowing anything about most of these artists and writers and film-makers and composers they were friends with. It's very much not actually about Toklas - it's about Stein, and Stein's friends, but it's such an interesting way to position it. It was very interesting to read in opposition to the Alice B Toklas Cookbook. I'm going to read more Stein for sure. Next up - Everybody's Autobiography.One interesting thing about this is that there is almost nothing about sexuality in it. Lots about the affairs of the various artists with women, and a few people who appear who are clearly gay, but not what I was expecting. Interesting!
—toft
