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Everybody's Autobiography
This sequel to Stein's Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas has been long misunderstood and neglected. An account of her experiences resulting from writing a bestseller, Everybody's Autobiography is funny and engaging, but also a seering meditation on the meaning of identity, success, and America. Stein at her most accessible and her most serious. Rejacketed and reprinted.
Paperback
,
328 pages
Published
February 1st 2004
by Exact Change
(first published 1937)
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After all one is brought up not a Christian but in Christian thinking and I can remember being very excited when I first read the Old Testament to see that they never spoke of a future life, there was a God there was eternity but there was no future life and I found how naturally that worried me, that there is no limit to space and yet one is living in a limited space and inside oneself there is no sense of time but actually one is always living in time, and there is the will to live but really
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This was probably the most lucid of Gertrude Stein's writing. I am not sure if that is a good thing, though, because it made me dizzy. Stein did have medical training, so maybe most of her writing was crafted to work a certain way on the brain. Perhaps the woman was the genius she claimed to be.
Even if one has a knack for arresting observation, referring repeatedly to oneself as a genius will annoy yes it will annoy one's readers even if the readers like the book yes they like it.
"Outros povos dizem que entendem ou não entendem alguma coisa mas os americanos realmente se preocupam com entender ou não entender alguma coisa. Afinal você está mais ou menos em comunicação e de qualquer maneira se você muda você continua a dizer isso mais uma vez, e afinal a mecânica é uma coisa empurra outra coisa mas quando acontece de ficarem juntas sem empurrões isto é apenas ficar juntas dizendo alguma coisa é claro que isso não tem nada a ver com entender. A única coisa que qualquer pes
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I took this book from our castle in Ireland after it became clear that I wasn't going to have enough books to read on the plane home (plus my five-hour layover in Newark). I will now send it back, because I don't want bad book karma. It was interesting to know how bewildering it was for her to achieve widespread success with The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I enjoy the flow and rhythm of how she writes, and/but it takes some time to catch it. And some of what she says could be said no other
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i have lent this book to a friend, and we were recently discussing how reading it is like learning to read again. (especailly if you've never read stien before, which i had not.) the strange, long rhythm of stein's sentences forces you to slow down, and you discover that you need to re-read sentences (or entire paragraphs) to discern the meaning. i guess this is why some people say reading stein is difficult, but being generally quite a fast (and perhaps arrogant?) reader, i was really pleased a
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Her sentences still make my head hurt sometimes, but I found myself captivated by Gertrude Stein and her account of what her sudden celebrity meant to her. Moreso than in "Alice B. Toklas," I can understand how she could have been a much-liked and sought-after personality. Her account of her trips to Chicago and tour of the Midwest particularly resonate. Now I have to find out the identity of the St. Paul newspaper reporter who almost lost his job by opening his story about her visit with an hom
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Only Gertrude Stein would have the sheer balls to write a book with this title. Oh, Ms. Stein, the issues I have with your attitude are legion, but you sure can write. I find Stein's non-fiction more compelling than her fiction; the authorial chutzpah of it all is part of what interests me. And this is an interesting book full of name-dropping and puffery and Stein's usual fabulously pell-mell circuitous circular prose.
This is the bk where she supposedly says "there's no there there" about Oakland. She's actually referring to the house she grew up in.
The bk describes her coming back to Oakland and discovering that the house she grew up in has been torn down. That's what she is referring to. Read this bk and I bet you can figure it out.
The bk describes her coming back to Oakland and discovering that the house she grew up in has been torn down. That's what she is referring to. Read this bk and I bet you can figure it out.
Philosophy, psychology, politics, history, literary and artistic criticism...all packaged in a seemingly endless stream of "linear" observation and amiable, anarchic writer-to-reader conversation. Simply a delight.
Eh. This wasn't as fun as the Autobiography of Alice B Toklas - it got a bit much. It was less about the gossipy doings of her circle and more and more about the nature of art and genius.
This book was unique in that it talks about a lot of the famous people of the time and is written in a very unique way.
There is no there there.
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Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with
Alice B. Toklas
, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo an
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More about Gertrude Stein...
Aug 21, 2011 01:29PM
++++++
Anything is an autobiography but this was a conversation. ...more
Aug 21, 2011 01:49PM