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The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

by Gertrude Stein

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 5,426 ratings · 412 reviews

"Largely to amuse herself, [Gertrude Stein] wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1932...using as a sounding board her companion Miss Toklas, who had been with her for twenty-five years. It has been said that the writing takes on very much Miss Toklas' conversational style, and while this is true the style is still a variant of Miss Stein's conversation style. ...S ...more

Paperback , 252 pages

Published March 17th 1990 by Vintage (first published 1933)

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Aug 17, 2013 Diane Librarian rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs , bookishness , classics , france , nonfiction , movie-adaptation

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 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. ...more

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May 12, 2009 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

Hold your forefinger and thumb approximately an inch apart. That was how much I knew about Gertrude Stein prior to reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . I’m certainly no expert now, not even close, but I can safely say that I am completely enamored of both Stein and her life partner, Toklas.

No, it’s not because of the near-constant stream of visiting artists and other members of Parisian society to their home at rue de Fleurus in the early 1900s, though that was impressive. They were ve ...more

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May 16, 2014 Cheryl rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobiography , non-fiction , american-lit , memoirs , classic-lit

"And now I will tell you how two Americans happened to be in the heart of an art movement of which the outside world at that time knew nothing."

I'm ashamed that I haven't delved into Stein's work until now, but quite honestly, at 900+ pages, The Making of Americans seemed daunting. Yet when I saw Stein's character in the movie Midnight in Paris , and I read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , I knew it was time to read the work of one of the few women writers of her time and place. So I started with "And now I will tell you how two Americans happened to be in the heart of an art movement of which the outside world at that time knew nothing."

I'm ashamed that I haven't delved into Stein's work until now, but quite honestly, at 900+ pages, The Making of Americans seemed daunting. Yet when I saw Stein's character in the movie Midnight in Paris , and I read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , I knew it was time to read the work of one of the few women writers of her time and place. So I started with her autobiography.

The title of this memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , is satire. For years Stein had been asked to write a memoir and she refused. Perhaps this is how she could bring herself to write one: write it as if it were coming from her life partner of over twenty-five years.

Sure, she said, as Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

She was an important figure within American literature--especially once you consider how many writers she mentored and introduced to Parisian society (i.e.: Hemingway) and how many manuscripts she read and edited. She told Fitzgerald (even though he didn't believe in himself at the time) that The Great Gatsby would be read "when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten." She wrote numerous novels and plays. She also painted and was a vital figure and host within the artistic world.

She has a way with sentences in this memoir. Short; concise. I've heard that The Making of Americans has longer sentences but I really liked the stylistic choice here: conversational tone and no dialogue quotations. And it really does sound as if someone is telling you a story (at least in the first part).

The first section was my favorite and was an easy four stars for me. I also loved reading about Stein's close relationship with Pablo Picasso. They were best friends and through her you're able to view his lifestyle. Towards the end though, there were too many characters to keep up with and too many mini story lines. You may however, like the inclusion of many writers and artists like: Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Sylvia Beach, Roger Fry, Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso, and more.

She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results.
...more

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Vipassana I landed her thanks to the GR quote of the day and I'm glad that happened. I've watched Midnight in Paris but I was completely unaware that the period ...more
Feb 03, 2015 03:55AM

Cheryl Vipassana wrote: "I landed her thanks to the GR quote of the day and I'm glad that happened. I've watched Midnight in Paris but I was completely unawa ...more
Feb 03, 2015 05:54AM

Jan 14, 2010 Jesse rated it 1 of 5 stars

I don't dispute the book's importance, by Stein's style drives me bonkers. I'd much rather read ABOUT her than actually read her. That said, I'm glad she existed-- I'm also glad I'm not forced to read this all the time.

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Apr 22, 2015 El rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-early , biddles , library-borrow

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 fr ...more

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Jul 04, 2014 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

3.75 stars rounded up.
I struggle with Gertrude Stein, as I struggled with this novel. I don’t think this work is typical of Stein as she wrote it very quickly with the idea of being commercial as she needed money; not a problem in itself, but it meant she was also ambivalent about it. It is a novel written as though Stein’s partner Alice Toklas is writing an account of Stein’s life in Paris before and after the First World War. It is also an account of those many famous and not so famous writers 3.75 stars rounded up.
I struggle with Gertrude Stein, as I struggled with this novel. I don’t think this work is typical of Stein as she wrote it very quickly with the idea of being commercial as she needed money; not a problem in itself, but it meant she was also ambivalent about it. It is a novel written as though Stein’s partner Alice Toklas is writing an account of Stein’s life in Paris before and after the First World War. It is also an account of those many famous and not so famous writers and artists who passed through their home: Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Braque, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the Sitwells, Appollinaire, Eliot and many others.
My issues with Stein relate to her support for Franco in the 1930s. She was also a vocal supporter of Petain, even when he was deporting Jews to Auschwitz. There is a certain political naivety and possibly, being a Jew in Nazi occupied France, some self preservation. There is a point in the novel where Paul Robeson visits Paris. Suffice it to say he received a much warmer welcome from the coalminers of the Welsh Valleys. However Stein was a pioneer in terms of writing about same sex relationships; writing some very early coming out short stories. Stein was also one of the first to use the term gay in her writing. I haven’t read enough Stein to make a judgement about her work and feel I need to read much more. She was an early experimenter with stream of consciousness. Modern critics have tended focus on Stein’s limited breadth; she was politically quite right wing and that is a limiting factor for me. And yet this novel does draw you in.
The writing is interesting and managed to offend a fair few of those mentioned (including Hemingway). Jeanette Winterson has argued that this is a development of the type of writing Woolf did in Orlando. This is really an experimental novel. It isn’t clear whether Stein writing as Toklas is expressing the views of Stein or Toklas, or both. Reading it is slightly confusing and you have to think on your feet at times: sometimes it feels as though you are watching Stein as described by Toklas until you remember Stein is writing as Toklas, observing herself. It is also very formally written; Stein is always referred to as Gertrude Stein, never as Gertrude. There is no analysis; it is really a description of domestic manners; dinner parties, buying paintings, moving around France, meeting people etc.
I enjoyed the novel. In itself it isn’t ground breaking and I still feel I need a more rounded appreciation of Stein; and I still have some uncertainty about Stein herself. So it’s a bit of a work in progress and I think I will try to look out a decent biography and put The Making of Americans on my tbr list, as well as her short stories.
...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Madeline rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-list , ugh

During my Modern Poetry class in college, we read some of Tender Buttons (prompting me to write a scathing review of it, which was promptly trolled) and my professor explained Gertrude Stein thus: "Gertrude Stein believed that there was only one great poet of the twentieth century, and it was her. She might admit that Shakespeare was talented as well, but only on a good day."

Having now read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , I fully support this assessment of Miss Stein. Not that I dislike h During my Modern Poetry class in college, we read some of Tender Buttons (prompting me to write a scathing review of it, which was promptly trolled) and my professor explained Gertrude Stein thus: "Gertrude Stein believed that there was only one great poet of the twentieth century, and it was her. She might admit that Shakespeare was talented as well, but only on a good day."

Having now read The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , I fully support this assessment of Miss Stein. Not that I dislike her - in fact, I find Gertrude Stein to be a fascinating person and I like everything I've heard about her. I just. Cannot stand. Her writing.

Based on the description, this book should be amazing: Stein, writing as her companion Alice Toklas, describes how they came to live in Paris, World War One, and the various artists and writers who visited their famous salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Hemingway is here, as is Picasso, TS Eliot, Max Jacob, Henri Matisse, George Braques, and countless others. A story about all of these people living and working and making art together in Paris in the early 20th century should be incredible, right? Wrong.

The main problem is that Alice B. Toklas isn't a very good narrator. Rather than dishing out the dirt on these famous men and women (as Hemingway did in A Moveable Feast ), she chooses instead to just rattle off the names of people who visited her and Gertrude Stein, sprinkled with little anecdotes that are either boring despite themselves (according to this book, World War One really wasn't so bad at all, and Toklas spends the most time telling us how hard it was to go on vacation during the war because she had trouble with her passport), or are just plain boring. ("Glenway left behind him a silk cigarette case with his initials, we kept it until he came back again and then gave it to him.") Hemingway's snippy gossip may not have been true, but at least it was entertaining.

Also there's the fact that Toklas always remains on the fringe of this great group. Stein is right in the middle of it, helping Hemingway with his writing and discussing punctuation with TS Eliot, but Toklas freely admits that she isn't an artist, and always keeps herself apart: "The genuises came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me. How they unroll, an endless vista through the years. I began with Fernande and then there was Madame Matisse and Marcelle Braque and Josette Gris and Eve Picasso and Bridget Gibb and Marjory Gibb and Hadley and Pauline Hemingway and Mrs. Sherwood Anderson and Mrs. Bravig Imbs and the Mrs. Ford Maddox Ford and endless others, genuises, near geniuses, and might be geniuses, all having wives, and I have sat and talked with them all all the wives and later on, well later on too, I have sat and talked with all."

For God's sake. It's like if Diane Keaton's character from The Godfather wrote a book about her experiences with the mob. She was there for some of it, and she saw everybody who was important, but then the door slams shut in her face at the end and we realize that she doesn't really know anything at all, and won't ever know. ...more

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Madeline I never really had issues of Alice as a narrator because she's so clearly not a narrator proper but a puppet mouthing the words for Stein, the true na ...more
Jul 27, 2011 11:00AM

Elias Back in a Modernist Lit class I had to read the Melanctha section of "Three Lives". Never before had I caught myself reading the same line multiple ti ...more
Feb 04, 2015 01:57PM

Oct 28, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century , read-in-2014

I feel that if I had the chance to meet one person from the 20th Century it would be Gertrude Stein. She was friends with anyone who was anyone in the artistic and literary circles of early 20th century Paris. The sheer amount of name-dropping in this book is immense; Picasso, Braque, Man Ray, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Pound, Beach, et al. Although don't go into this book expecting something along the lines of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast , this majorly focuses on the artists of Paris, not th ...more

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Jun 25, 2011 K.D. Absolutely rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to K.D. by: Top 10 Gay and Lesbian Novels; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006-2010)

Shelves: 1001-core , memoirs

What makes this book memorable for me is this interesting idea: a pseudo-autobiography. Gertrude Stein wrote this book from the perspective of her lover, Alice B. Toklas. It is like an autobiography yet Stein put herself in Toklas' shoes. I am still to read Stein's first novel, Three Lives and her long The Making of the Americans both of which were mentioned a lot of time in this book but I have an inkling that Stein's writing style or voice here is different from what she used in those two book What makes this book memorable for me is this interesting idea: a pseudo-autobiography. Gertrude Stein wrote this book from the perspective of her lover, Alice B. Toklas. It is like an autobiography yet Stein put herself in Toklas' shoes. I am still to read Stein's first novel, Three Lives and her long The Making of the Americans both of which were mentioned a lot of time in this book but I have an inkling that Stein's writing style or voice here is different from what she used in those two books. Her intention was to mimic the speaking style of Toklas: crisp and very conversational.

A couple of months back, i.e., prior to reading this book, I saw an old cookbook written by Toklas herself. In the book's intro, she said that one of her fondest dreams was to write her own book. I thought of buying it but when I leafed through the pages, I saw that it had nothing except French food recipes with exotic ingredients that obviously will not be available in a third-world country like the Philippines. So, I did not buy it and now I am regretting it big time. I forewent the chance of having a memento from a fascinating literary non-fiction character. The better half of a self-proclaimed genius: Getrude Stein.

Based on this book, it is too early for me to say that Stein is really a genius. The idea of her writing and describing herself as one using Toklas just sounds presumptuous to me. However, as I said it is early for me to say since I am still to read her other works. However in her rented house in Paris before, during and after WWI, she and Toklas hobnobbed with world-renowned artists: painters and writers. These includes the likes of Pablo Picasso (who Stein said to be the other genius), Ernest Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, T. S. Eliot and many, many others (I will not mention them because I don't know them yet). From reading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer , I am just wondering how come Stein and Toklas did not meet him and his lover, Anais Nin. They could have a foursome date and that would be interesting the drunkard Miller mentioning Stein in his book and genius Stein doing the same to Miller.

Aside from being a 1001 book, this is also one of the Top 10 Best Gay & Lesbian Novels in one of the legit surveys I found in the web. However, it has no sex lesbian scenes and if you don't pay close attention to the narration, it might even escape you that Stein and Toklas were lesbian and lovers. My point is that a gay or lesbian novel can be great even if there are no sex scenes. This just reminds me of Augusten Burrough's Running with Scissors that is written nicely like a autobiography but he included disgusting in-your-face homosexual acts that are so distasteful I almost threw the book against the wall.

I will surely read Stein's other works and see for myself if she is really a genius.

And hey, GR says that this is my 500th read book! Another reason why this book is memorable for me! ...more

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Dec 29, 2012 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-and-memoir , lost-generation

This is a must-read for anyone interested in artists and writers in Paris in the early part of the 20th century, because every writer and artist of any note who was in Paris at that time encountered Gertrude Stein at some point. Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Magritte, Apollinaire, Gide, Pound and Hemingway: all of them and many others attended Stein's celebrated Saturday evening salon.

Stein wrote this work in the conversational style of Toklas, who was her life partner. Ostensibly Toklas' autobi
This is a must-read for anyone interested in artists and writers in Paris in the early part of the 20th century, because every writer and artist of any note who was in Paris at that time encountered Gertrude Stein at some point. Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Magritte, Apollinaire, Gide, Pound and Hemingway: all of them and many others attended Stein's celebrated Saturday evening salon.

Stein wrote this work in the conversational style of Toklas, who was her life partner. Ostensibly Toklas' autobiography, it is in reality Stein's memoir written as if Stein were Toklas. Whether the voice which emerges is authentically that of Toklas I don't know, but the conversational style is very convincing and comes complete with non sequiturs and digressions. It's an interesting device, but it doesn't make the book - a relatively short one - easy to read. At least, I didn't find it so. If Stein accurately reproduced the rhythm and content of Toklas' conversation, then Toklas was probably best taken in small doses.

Writing about herself as if her partner were the one doing the writing allowed Stein to blow her own trumpet more than would have been seemly in a straight memoir. There was nothing shy and retiring about Stein and her high opinion of herself never faltered. Here's what she wrote - in Toklas' voice - at the end of the first chapter:

I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead*. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken.

I initially suspected that the not infrequent references in the text to Stein's genius were meant ironically, but I was rapidly persuaded that Stein was serious. She was convinced that her writing had great merit and could not understand why her literary genius went so long unrecoginsed.

One of the reasons I wanted to read this book was for Stein's impressions of Ernest Hemingway, who held Stein up to ridicule in A Moveable Feast . They had initially been good friends, but fell out when Hemingway disparaged Sherwood Anderson , whom Stein considered had been a great influence on Hemingway's writing. Reading what Stein had to say about Hemingway in this book - almost all of it extremely unflattering - made me realise that Hemingway's portrait of Stein in A Moveable Feast was effectively his revenge.

This is unlikely to be enjoyed by anyone not interested in the writers and artists with whom Stein was acquainted and in that particular period in the history of Paris. Stein, of course, would have wanted the book read for the pleasure of reading the work of a literary genius. Sadly, I think I would prefer to read more about Stein than more of her writing. As it is, this is worth in the region of 3-1/2 stars.

*Not being of a mathematical or scientific bent, I'd never heard of Whitehead before. This is what Wikipedia says about him. ...more

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Gary the Bookworm Sorry about that. I meant to suggest a book which features Stein and Toklas told from the perspective of their Vietnamese cook. The link is posted abo ...more
Dec 29, 2012 06:56PM

Kim Gary wrote: "Sorry about that. I meant to suggest a book which features Stein and Toklas told from the perspective of their Vietnamese cook. The link ...more
updated Dec 29, 2012 07:11PM

Mar 18, 2011 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had seen them during my mother's 75th birthday celebrations last January 2011. Both old women, lifetime companions. C. is the more "manly" of the two, short haircut, never wears a skirt. B. is my distant relative, very feminine in her deportment, said to have been the former girlfriend of another relative of mine (now deceased, God bless his soul). They brought with them to the party their three-year-old adopted girl, begot out-of-wedlock by a prostitute in our hometown, father unknown. Years I had seen them during my mother's 75th birthday celebrations last January 2011. Both old women, lifetime companions. C. is the more "manly" of the two, short haircut, never wears a skirt. B. is my distant relative, very feminine in her deportment, said to have been the former girlfriend of another relative of mine (now deceased, God bless his soul). They brought with them to the party their three-year-old adopted girl, begot out-of-wedlock by a prostitute in our hometown, father unknown. Years before, they had another adopted girl who died of leukemia before she was a teen.

They are my Gertrude Stein (GS) and Alice B. Toklas (ABT). GS and ABT, however, never adopted a child. What they had was a succession of dogs. The last was a white poodle named Basket who outlived GS for many years, went blind and deaf, and died of old age. ABT never got another dog after that.

Gertrude Stein is Gertrude Stein is Gertrude Stein (a play with her "rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"). Alice B. Toklas, however, was not dumb bimbo (though she was pretty). She was GS's able collaborator and critic. Well into her 80's she was reading ponderous titles and heavyweight authors and even translating books. She only stopped when her eyes started to fail her (in one of her letters--see my other review today--she said she couldn't read Durrell (Lawrence?) anymore because of her eyes). In this other book I will review today she dismissed Francoise Sagan's "Bonjour Tristesse" as an "abomination" (I noted this with amusement as I gave this book 2 stars although I missed using this perfect word, "abomination').

Here at goodreads we are all very fond of discussing authors. Hemingway this, Steinbeck that. In "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" there are also a lot of artists, poets and writers mentioned. The difference is that GS and ABT did not just read them or see their work. They hobnobbed with them in flesh and blood, several of them were even their close friends(or at least they were first name basis with them): Picasso, Matisse, Juan Gris, Thorton Wilder, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Capote, Faulkner, Jean Cocteau, Dos Passos, T.S. Eliot, Steinbeck, H.G. Wells, Ezra Pound, William James, to name a few. These long dead authors/artists will come alive before your eyes (the best, I suppose, to me at least, is the part where GS and ABT met Hemingway, then working for a newspaper, and before he wrote his great novels, GS giving him some pointed advice).

This is, however, more than gossips. This was written out of love. Gay love, but love still. GS telling ABT I love you, I know you, I know your story of you, your story of me, and your story of us. But you wouldn't write these stories. Let me then write them for you. This is, then, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas written by her great love, Gertrude Stein.

With this book, they had become one. ...more

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Aug 30, 2007 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I read this in my last year of college, in an autobiography seminar. Though it's not really an autobiography. A fictional autobiography.

I enjoyed it. Our class ultimately decided that it was an amazing love letter to Alice from Gertrude. It is incredibly pretentious and presumptious, but a love letter nonetheless. Just because the author is hopelessly self-involved doesn't make it any less a love letter.

Beautiful.

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Sep 06, 2013 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommends it for: 3Ms, Chrissie

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you , memoir-biography , american-fiction , mtbr-challenge-2013 , non-fiction , e-books , gutenberg , fiction-20th-century , read-2013 , lost-generation

Free download available at eBooks@Adelaide .

Opening lines:
Iwas born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it. My mother’s father was a pioneer, he came to California in ‘49, he married my grandmother who was very fond of music. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann’s father. My mother was a quiet charming woman named Emilie.

A splendid ...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I will confess that I was intimidated by this book, having read only isolated bits of Stein and having heard much about her difficulty. So I was surprised to find this book so readable, and so downright funny in places. It's an odd sort of memoir, skating along across the surface of Stein's and Toklas's life together and almost never delving into any sort of interiority or emotional depth, but it's full of clever lines and sharp little portraits of all the writers and artists that they knew in P ...more

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Jul 13, 2007 montana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommends it for: lesbian geniuses and their supporters

Yes. Finally found, rather Ruthie found, in a bookshop here and finished her in a few days. Gertrude Stien appears at least five times on every page usually with some remark about being friends with Picasso or not having interest in some other painter or person of prewar, war, or just post wwI era. Her comments on Hemmingway are hysterical and on the whole I have a great weakness for facilitators of art, and this book was very validating in that regard. Interesting as a writer to try to write in ...more

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Dec 29, 2014 Antonomasia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lgbtq , american , france , art , biography-and-memoir , 1001-books , 2013 , cult-books , decade-1930s

This book put two songs in my head*.
Harpers Bizarre - I Love You Alice B. Toklas
Peter Sarstedt - Where Do You Go To My Lovely?** (mentions of the Boulevard Saint Michel)

It's also a reminder that avant-gardes using simplified, faux-naive writing styles (e.g. Tao Lin and alt-lit) are nothing new. I've said quite a few times this year that I don't enjoy these very basic styles, that I feel some writers under-describe - yet I did rather like the Autobiography . It's not a flat sort of basic, conveyin ...more

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Jan 29, 2008 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 ...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Phil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I did enjoy this book, but not as much as Gertrude Stein probably enjoyed writing it, or thinks that I should like it. And that's my main problem with this book; Stein isn't the epoch-making writer that she believes herself to be.

A few things to get straight: i) this isn't an autobiography of Alice B Toklas, ii) this is a sort of autobiography of Gertrude Stein, iii) not a lot happens, iv) most of the people mentioned as geniuses are no longer more than footnotes in art history, v) Stein's writ I did enjoy this book, but not as much as Gertrude Stein probably enjoyed writing it, or thinks that I should like it. And that's my main problem with this book; Stein isn't the epoch-making writer that she believes herself to be.

A few things to get straight: i) this isn't an autobiography of Alice B Toklas, ii) this is a sort of autobiography of Gertrude Stein, iii) not a lot happens, iv) most of the people mentioned as geniuses are no longer more than footnotes in art history, v) Stein's writing style isn't designed to engage the reader.

Alice B Toklas is most famous nowadays as the name behind hash brownies (from a recipe she included in her "Alice B Toklas Cook Book" - a book that she DID write). I still have no idea whether Stein and Toklas were companions or "companions" - although I'm sure a quick glance at Wikipedia would tell me.

As far as the book goes. It's gossipy, but not in an interesting gossipy way. Stories about other people inevitably wind up being stories about Gertrude Stein (she's like that person who says "That's enough about me, let's talk about you. What do YOU think about me?"). The tales before the war are most interesting, if only because the people they were associating with were more famous: Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, Braque. After the war, the only name of note who appears is Ernest Hemmingway (and Stein takes complete credit for his success and the way he wrote).

The war is nothing like the WW1 you might have heard about. Stein and Toklas bimble about in a Ford ambulance and nobody dies and after the war in Paris there are more young people than ever before (which was different from every other city in Europe I should imagine).

What's odd is that despite being intensly self-centered and Stein being quite unlikable and the gossip being particularly dull, I quite enjoyed it - although perhaps not in the way that Stein would have liked me to have enjoyed it. I liked it because it felt like a diary that you or I might have written (they said this and I said that and then they said this and then so and so came in etc), and if there was anything that Stein would have hated to have been considered, it would be ordinary. ...more

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Oct 09, 2012 John Spillane rated it 2 of 5 stars

Oh man Gertrude, by your own description you were a pill. Stein got an unimaginable number of tiffs and spats, but to her credit, strong personalities take note, she also patched them up even if it took a couple years. Her pal-ing around with Picasso, Matisse, and every other notable figure of the era is interesting in the beginning, but the book quickly devolves into her recounting every minor social slight and every success involving her being admitted with or without a passport, if they weigh ...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people languishing in obscurity

this book is interesting because of the seemingly endless stream of people flowing through stein's house, and also for the depiction of how hard stein had to work to get her work published, and for how long she was downright obscure. this will surely warm the cockles of the hearts of many contemporary writers and thinkers languishing in obscurity, but i - interested in self-publishing - also took heart from the fact that toklas herself took up the challenge of publishing stein's work herself. ho ...more

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Aug 13, 2014 Joe Cummings rated it 4 of 5 stars

As I have said in other reviews of other books, Paris during the 20th Century was a magnet for some of the great artists, writers and other intellectuals of our time. (Actually, Paris has been attracting great minds since before Peter Abelard in the eleventh century.) The delights of the City of Lights for Earnest Hemingway and others of the Lost Generation during the 1920s was recently shown the nostalgic 2011 Woody Allen film "Paris after Midnight." Part of the movie was centered around the sa As I have said in other reviews of other books, Paris during the 20th Century was a magnet for some of the great artists, writers and other intellectuals of our time. (Actually, Paris has been attracting great minds since before Peter Abelard in the eleventh century.) The delights of the City of Lights for Earnest Hemingway and others of the Lost Generation during the 1920s was recently shown the nostalgic 2011 Woody Allen film "Paris after Midnight." Part of the movie was centered around the salon of Gertrude Stein. I had thought that Allen had taken his inspiration for the movie from Hemingway's "Moveable Feast" which was a memoir that about his time there as a young writer that he wrote very late in his life. Allen, however, may have been equally-or even more inspired-by Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," as well.
Except perhaps in English or LGBT graduate school programs, Stein is not much remembered nowadays. It's a shame. She influenced many of the great Modernist writers and artists during the first third of the twentieth century. Residing in Paris with her fellow American expatriate and spouse Alice B. Toklas, Stein met or befriended everyone from Sherwood Anderson to Picasso to Man Ray to Matisse to Ford Madox Ford. Many of whom visited her and Toklas in their Paris home. This is well captured in this book. In fact, it's very gossipy at times and drops a lot of names that the author thought the reader should know. Perhaps it's a research project or master's thesis waiting to happen, but someone should google all the names in this book and see how many of them have a Wikipedia entry. I'd bet it will be more than ninety-five percent.
The book also talks about what life was like for American expatriates during the WWI. Stein and Toklas tried to help, and it has great descriptions of the American dough boys they encountered during their efforts to help at the front. One hundred years later, that was an especially poignant tribute to an army that included my grandfather.
Of course part of my motives to read this book was to see what was said about Ernest Hemingway. Years later, he must have been responding in "Moveable Feast" to what Stein had said about him in this book. I don't want to risk a spoiler alert; so I won't go into it. It's enough to say that it surprised me.
Stein says her motive for writing her spouse's autobiography was that Toklas already had too much on her plate to write it herself. Actually it was more than that. The "Autobiography" is as much the autobiography of Stein as it was of Toklas. However, by writing as Toklas, she could say things that would have been considered improprietous or even scandalous in her own voice.
More importantly, Stein wanted to write something for female readers. Hemingway and other have commented how male visitors to her home were entertained by Stein while their wives were kept company by Toklas. Stein, who referred to Toklas as her wife elsewhere, even suggests that a possible title to the Toklas autobiography could have been "My Life With The Great, Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With, My Twenty-five Years With Gertrude Stein."
Stein was drawn to genius which she considered to be a masculine trait. However, as Toklas she could be one of the girls. Other reviewers who knew both women have said that Stein wrote this book as her spouse Toklas would have recounted the events of their lives-including distractions and going off on tangents. This book was copywrited by Gertrude Stein in 1933, but after Stein's death the copyright was renewed in Alice B. Toklas's name in 1961. It seems appropriate.
...more

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May 30, 2011 Jesse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1920-s , american-expats , for-class , left-bank-excursions , literary-modernism , read-in-2010

At first it just seems like simply a gossipy good time, but it also functions as a fascinating mise en abyme (the author speaking about herself through the voice of her partner, etc).

It's a thoroughly delightful portal through which to slip into 1920's Paris. I'd wager that Hemingway's A Moveable Feast is generally preferred, but I'm definitely Team Stein.

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Jan 14, 2011 Holly rated it 5 of 5 stars

i love this! i like gertrude stein's ideas about rhythm of text. and poodle called bucket! yes!

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May 22, 2015 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics , non-fiction

Charming, beautiful, witty, challenging, satisfying.

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Mar 05, 2015 Mat rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art , classics , modernism , to-read-again

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 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! ...more

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Dec 01, 2014 Charity rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classicsclub , owned

Before I started reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , I looked at reviews online. Many, many of them mention how conceited Stein is. They complain that she thinks herself a genius and that her writing is fantastic and groundbreaking and to the writing world what Picasso’s paintings are to the art world.

After reading the book, I would contend that she’s not nearly as much of a braggart as people say she is, and that the book itself is something of a joke, and she intersperses self-deprec Before I started reading The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas , I looked at reviews online. Many, many of them mention how conceited Stein is. They complain that she thinks herself a genius and that her writing is fantastic and groundbreaking and to the writing world what Picasso’s paintings are to the art world.

After reading the book, I would contend that she’s not nearly as much of a braggart as people say she is, and that the book itself is something of a joke, and she intersperses self-deprecating remarks with self-aggrandizing ones (which she often makes in an off-hand, tongue-in-cheek way, anyway).

But even if she were outright conceited in calling herself a genius and placing herself at the forefront of twentieth-century literature, so what? One thing that always irritated me about modernist authors---even the ones I loved from the beginning, like Hemingway---is that their writing is all so self-consciously genius.

“Look at me!” they seem to scream from the page like my four-year-old when I’ve spent too long on the computer, “Look how clever I am!” Hemingway does this. James Joyce does this. Pablo Picasso does this (I know he’s not an author, but he’s from the same time period, and he really thought he was a genius). But people don’t seem to complain so loudly about the fact that these fellows know they’re geniuses. And I have to think that’s because they’re fellows.

Stein’s writing bridges the gap between nineteenth-century and twentieth-century literature. She made it possible for the amazing writers who came after her---Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce---to be amazing writers and to have an audience for their amazing writing. She broke the ground, and she toiled for years and years with little recognition to do so. If she believes that she’s a genius, then what’s wrong with that?

The only thing I can see wrong with it is that she said it out loud and she said it unapologetically and she said it as a woman rather than as a man.

I really enjoyed The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas . The first chapter was absolutely brilliant, and I laughed and nodded with understanding many times in just the scant three pages that make up that shortest chapter.

There’s the opening sentences, with which I could completely relate: “I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it.”

Then there was the anecdote about Toklas’s father’s response when his son and a friend had gone horseback riding and one of the horses returned riderless. The mother of the friend became hysterical. “Be calm madam, said my father, perhaps it is my son who has been killed.” I laughed out loud at this and made my spouse listen while I read it to him so he could laugh out loud, too.

This is an excerpt of my full review. For my full review, please visit my blog, Imperfect Happiness .
...more

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Jan 14, 2010 Aeron rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this to prepare for a mystery dinner party we had in which I played the character of Alice B. Toklas. It was certainly an interesting read, and it must have been tongue in cheek. It was not a cohesive, flowing narrative, but more like a series of random vignettes about the lives of Alice and Gertrude and all the famous people they knew.

It is really Gertrude Stein's autobiography, masquerading as Alice's biography. It is ballsy to tell your own story through the eyes of your beloved. I me ...more

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Jul 31, 2009 Casey rated it 4 of 5 stars

You have to have a LOT of patience to get through Stein's style of writing. You also have to cage your inner-editor (OHH, how often I wanted to just get a red pen and add all those commas she so vehemently disliked), but if you can, I'm telling you she is a literary gem.

This book blows away all expectations we set of writing, specifically of autobiography. First of all, The Auto biography of Alice B. Toklas BY Gertrude Stein is a paradox right away. So, one can assume that we are not going to get You have to have a LOT of patience to get through Stein's style of writing. You also have to cage your inner-editor (OHH, how often I wanted to just get a red pen and add all those commas she so vehemently disliked), but if you can, I'm telling you she is a literary gem.

This book blows away all expectations we set of writing, specifically of autobiography. First of all, The Auto biography of Alice B. Toklas BY Gertrude Stein is a paradox right away. So, one can assume that we are not going to get to know the real Toklas, but you never really get to know the real Stein, either. This is a completely subversive work, but nonetheless enjoyable.

I love how she praises herself through others' eyes:
"I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken...The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead."

Even while praising herself pracically incessantly, she manages to keep her readers at arm's length, never letting them see the person behind the persona. While I can only guess at her motivation for doing this, it is undoubtedly intentional. She makes herself into even more of a popular icon through this book, allowing herself to become a caricature, but somehow it is not offputting; on the contrary, it makes one want to further study her work, whether out of wanting to get to know the woman behind the words or simply out of enjoyment of someone so vastly different.

Well, for anyone who has read any of Stein's other poetry or prose...

"That one has been doing something in family living and that one is doing that thing and any one in the family living is being one being in the family living and that one the one doing smoething in the family living is completely remembering that every one being in the family living is in the family living" --from The Making of Americans

...this style of writing is practically tame, and may be a good place to get to know Stein before jumping into her other works. ...more

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Jan 06, 2013 toft rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

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 ...more

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Oct 02, 2011 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I finally read this book four years after taking a seminar on Gertrude Stein. I missed her voice and was looking to recapture my love of her writing, so I was really coming from a pretty biased viewpoint. I think this book is best experienced as an introduction to Stein: it provides an overview of her career up until she became more widely published and it eases the reader into Stein's way of seeing and writing. It is by no means exemplary.

The first half read like a list of people encountered an I finally read this book four years after taking a seminar on Gertrude Stein. I missed her voice and was looking to recapture my love of her writing, so I was really coming from a pretty biased viewpoint. I think this book is best experienced as an introduction to Stein: it provides an overview of her career up until she became more widely published and it eases the reader into Stein's way of seeing and writing. It is by no means exemplary.

The first half read like a list of people encountered and where they were met, which got a little tedious. There wasn't much description and the sentences were very concise and traditionally punctuated. Stein was fond of saying that the aim of her writing was complete and accurate description of the inside and outside of objects, but these chapters didn't delve much below the surface. They read like a history, presenting the who, where, and when of events. Once the war began things got a little more interesting - most of the artists and writers who populated the first half the the narrative began leaving Paris and Stein and Toklas went to help with the war effort, generally staying abroad in peacetime as well. As soon as the focus narrowed to these two together, as soon as all the extraneous people and information were cleared away, Stein and Toklas became clearer as characters and the writing became more engaging. Stein even began slipping in a few sentence structures more typical of her writing, which mirrored the increased attention and publication she was receiving.

I have mixed feelings about Stein's decision to write her autobiography through Toklas's eyes. I think it's a brilliant concept and a great example of her oblique way of attacking reality in order to describe it more perfectly. I also suspect she was having a little fun with her audience; she was such a controversial and intriguing figure that readers wanted to know more about her, but she responded to demands for an autobiography with one of her partner instead. Even dullness of the first half has purpose when seen as a simple list of external reality that becomes clearer and richer as it is distilled to its essential, internal parts. It's also rather refreshing to be reminded that the people who share the lives and experiences of famous artists have valid viewpoints and experiences as well. The trouble for me arises with her decision to write with Toklas's voice - Toklas has only every published a cookbook, so the reader has no idea what that voice is. It is clear that Stein's voice and experiences are guiding the narrative but she allowed Toklas's conversational tone to dominate. Since the reader has most likely never heard Toklas speak, it reads instead as a watered-down version of Gertrude Stein. Stylistically it makes perfect sense but the overall effect is a little disappointing. ...more

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About Gertrude Stein

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 ...more

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