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Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Vintage (1955-07-12)
ISBN: 039470133X
EAN: 9780394701332
Paperback
Release Date: 1955-07-12
SKU: 32-BJC6-BHE8
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Some wear to cover but text is clean and spine is tight.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
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There is art and then there is official art...
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-07-20
I do have a confession to make regarding Gertrude Stein. You may not know this but the woman is a genius. Why you may ask? Because she tells us this over and over and over again in the book. I do have to admit that at first I had to suppress the urge to shred this book/autobiography/memoir to shreds. I grew immensely jaded reading the raw prose with not a hint of of emotion throughout.
Thankfully, I eventually saw the light. It finally clicked.
Gertrude Stein was a woman in the time of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Matisse, Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot. Quite simply she needed to stand out as a literary figure. Historians would later call this artistic time period the Roarin' Twenties. Stein needed a way to disconnect with other prominent figures and still remain in the literary circle. She did this by well executing this book.
Though seemingly told through the perspective of her partner Alice B. Toklas, truly we are hearing Stein's. Her memories of meeting fascinating artists and writers in Paris are mind boggling. She adores the Parisian culture but also loves to be an American. Stein is very clever with how she formulates sentences in this book. She remarks on more than one occasion her obsession with the English language. Specifically the use of sounds. She begins to - paint - a novel with her words. Like the artist Picasso, who she is most fascinated with, her novel begins to paint a sort of cubist realism. There is no fluff here. And despite the very limited way she describes characters we eventually begin to see a full picture of them through Toklas/Stein's written words. Her words in way merge words, ideas, sounds, and create art.
We also see how certain artists inspire other artists. Picasso and Matisse were inspired by African art but they made in into their own by what they created. Picasso, upon seeing a camouflaged cannon, remarked to Stein that THEY created this. Artists created this perception of hiding something within plain sight.
Stein discusses nationalism constantly. She remarks on many occasions that Spaniards and Americans can understand one another because they can "realize abstraction." The americans do this with machinery and literature, and the spaniards with the ritualistic bullfighting and bloodshed. In that way, both are also abstract and cruel. She also hashes it out with germans, parisians, italians, polish, etc. She categorizes people and their personality traits by their national identity.
I really enjoyed that everyone came to her villa, that she shared with Tolkas, and asked for her advice on their literary work. She inspired much reverence by her companions and peers.
This by far is one of her more readable and enjoyable books. My advice is to go in with an open mind and truly appreciate her genius for what it is. I came in with stubborn intentions and almost missed out on a fantastic work of art.
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A Charming Memoir
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-01-17
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a lively read. It's also an interesting artifact from an artist who, from her perch atop the turmoil of World War I Paris, managed to craft a work that was modern in style, yet classically human in expression. Here she stood on the cusp of 19th and 20th century literature: T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland this is not, nor is it Hemingway's musings on the Lost Generation or Fitzgerald's cold, vacuous and material world. It's not cubist or surrealist, either, despite the influences evident elsewhere in her work. Instead, this is Gertrude Stein unplugged: witty, hip, self-deprecating, self-aggrandizing, opinionated and sharp, and we love her for it. It's a book about hanging out with friends in Paris, and that's about it, thank you. It has a whimsical style reminiscent of Seinfeld, but with the real-life characters of Picasso, Hemingway, doughboys and lovers wandering through the set, it also carries literary weight and impact.
In a sense, this is a book about nothing, but it's delivered with such intelligence and energy, one might swear Gertrude Stein is leading the reader through her teeming streets of early 20th century Paris on the way to catching a new art sensation. Stein has a remarkable feel for these streets, too: their intimate moods and pulses.
The autobiography, actually not an autobiography at all (but we get the joke), is also a parody of her partner Alice B. Toklas, who bears the brunt of affectionate barbs when not showering the author with zingers and unflattering observations of her own. This technique of imitation is uncommon in American literature--it's more common in Russian and Spanish classics, for example--but Stein carries it off with requisite naturalness and wit.
Despite her playfulness, Stein refrains from the avant-garde in this book. There's little "Steinese" experimentation or inventiveness here. The words flow from her pen and typewriter like conversation, unflappably so, and this choice of language is shrewd, as the work gives a you-were-there quality; like a photo album, this book is a testament to her visual and "painted" frame of reference. Those who want to see her more edgy experiments in syntax and diction should check out Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, an edition that includes this autobiography and an interesting, if oddly unflattering at times, essay by F. W. Dupee and helpful notes from editor Carl van Vechten.
At times, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas feels shallow, I must say. While far from cold and plenty humorous, the writing conveys the aura of a modern city on the go, where relationships are casual, the stakes are low and people move in and out of other peoples' lives with little impact. Some of this entails love "French style," while at other times a character might drop dead with no more than a mention. Even French soldiers, fighting one of the most savage wars in human history, emote their greatest dramas only when responding to mistakes in Stein's thoughtful, but occasionally absent-minded, letters. The overall effect is comedy, then, and while at times the author reminds us of the Battle of the Marne or the bitter setbacks of artists and couples, the turmoil around and within her characters never overwhelms the characters' insatiable urges to live and laugh. Against a backdrop of world war, the end result is diminished, if not unresolved. To wit, Stein writes of Toklas, "as Gertrude Stein's elder brother once said of me, if I were a general I would never lose a battle, I would only mislay it."
Gertrude Stein was a warm and charitable person. More than eager to help France manage the war--even to the point of driving an ambulance for the A.F.F.W.--she had a Ford motor car shipped to Paris from the States, then shuttled wounded allies in her makeshift ambulance while constantly negotiating with military officers for fuel. She also hosted wayfarers and other visitors at her rue de Fleurus home, where she generously cooked dinner, served wine and critiqued artists' work in-between sleepless nights of work. All this is adorably depicted in the book.
One such artist was Hemingway. Depicting him as a callow, earnest newspaper boy with grand ambition, Stein displayed mixed opinions about him and other writing contemporaries while remaining ebullient when such editors and writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, recognized her work. When pointing out the strengths and foibles of her fellow artists she also, along the way, made shrewd observations about art; these commentaries are well worth a look. Both the insider who cavorted with Picasso and the outsider whose work was a target of mockery, Stein maintained a self-image that mirrored the contradictory inspirations around her. Altogether forgetful, telling us through Alice "she has a bad memory for names," a genius-by-association, and a genius personified, she constantly picked herself up, pulled herself together, then embarked on new adventures.
Gertrude Stein is all about adventure and challenge, and since she succeeds in both with a shrug and a laugh, she's also an eminent character. As she conveys through this literary conversation with herself and Alice B. Toklas, Stein might not know why, either; but the answer to why, for this writer, is subordinate to the question. In this work, as observation-upon-observation unfolds, enveloping "the real," "the truth" and "the whole" in both criss-crossing patterns and repetitive sounds, Gertrude Stein searches for deeper, more indefinable truths about her friends and acquaintances--not in terms of form, but in terms of the unconscious. She would vigorously contradict this point, but her work with Radcliff's psychologist William James is evident when she so probes the essences of her characters without killing her patients.
A fine effort by a provocative thinker.
My Titles
Shadow Fields
Snooker Glen
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You Will Enjoy and Dislike Portions of this Book [78]
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-09-16
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Split into 7 chapters, chronologically identified but the topic not necessarily so well organized, this book has great moments, and less than great moments.
First, the book's preface is that it is an autobiography of Stein's long time partner, Alice B. Toklas. Realizing this preface is nothing more than a ruse - which Stein acknowledges in the last sentence of the book - you immediately understand that it is Stein's autobiography which refers to Stein in the third person.
Second, the preface is that this is fiction. I would argue that it is mostly nonfiction.
In the beginning, the idiosyncratic and egocentric Stein distances herself from readers - other reviewers were gravely upset by her self proclamation of being a genius only equaled by Picasso. But, that juvenile repertoire soon succumbs to Stein's maturation - as a person and as a writer. I too disliked the first chapter where she mainly seeks to receive adoration for having hobnobbed with the avant garde of the turn-of-the-century impressionists and surrealists in Parisian art society.
But, she was there and she was part of that time when painting was a major art form in Paris. It was not only exciting to her, but was exciting to those she hobnobbed with. She was the original American in Paris.
Stein's autobiography is outlined in Chapter 4. She gives you her history up to the time she moves to Paris and becomes part of the art scene. In this chapter, she writes one of my favorite paragraphs. " . . . I feel with my eyes, and it does not make any difference to me what language I hear, I don't hear a language, I hear tones of voice, and there is for me only one language and that is english. One of the things that I have liked all these years is to be surrounded by people who know no english. I do not know if it would have been possible to have english be so all in all to me otherwise." (Stein never capitalizes countries)
One friend comes to stay with her, and upon observing the lifestyle of the people to whom Stein is befriended, asks, ". . . is it alright, are they really alright, . . but really is it not fumisterie, is it not all false." And, probably most is fumisterie - so what of it? That is the attitude which defines and describes the artists and their friends at this time.
Then came WW I. Fumesterie and coffee-and-a-croissant philosophy withered when touched by man's horrors. Matisse, Hemingway and Apollinaire were physically reduced by the war. Many others were mentally drained. Stein reflects on how people would become tired for the simplest of tasks. It was a phenomenon which she, a Johns Hopkins' educated psychologist, had to observe with a keen eye.
And, her emotions, her world, her priorities too had changed. The last chapter discusses much less about art, and much more about literature. It can be said the first chapter focuses 90% on art and 10% on literature, while the last chapter focuses 90% on literature and 10% on art. Her friends, in the last chapter, are mainly writers. In the first chapter, they are mainly artists. Like Picasso's painting, her life is a Metamosphisis. And, that is what makes this book so very interesting to me.
She best acknowledges the change of her life in one simple sentence in the last chapter: " Painting now after its great period has come back to be a minor art." And, the new major art was literature - ruled by the Lost Generation of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Ford Maddox Ford and others.
And, so with the change, she remained in the hub
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Overrated Classic
Rating  (2)
Date: 2007-01-07
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
I picked up The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas after hearing about it for years. It is toted as a story about the relationship between two great influences in the Parisian world of arts and letters in the early 20th century. Instead I found a hagiography of Gertrude Stein written by Ms. Stein herself. According to her self-proclamations, she was a genius, a great writer, an auto mechanic, a great conversationalist, a supporter of the arts, etc., etc. The only one of these I feel competent to comment on is her skills as a writer. If this book is an example of her writing, then I am not convinced that she was a great writer.
In its favor, The Autobiography does paint a picture, abstract but true, of the artistic world of Paris during the early 20th century. The most interesting chapter was the Was Years, where Alice and Gertrude Stein aided in support for soldiers during World War I.
To me, this book is greatly overrated and not worth the time it takes to read it.
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Exquisite
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-12-19
Stein's other (and commendable) forays into experimental writing aside, this clever (auto)biography reminds us that the woman knew exactly what she was doing and there is indeed no "joke" or "prank" to be seen here. In its own manner just as experimental as some of her so-called "difficult" work, 'Autobiography' is exquisite. Tight yet effusive, cautious yet boundless, boring yet gripping. Really, it's a tour de force disguised as a tour de force disguised as a tour de force. (HAD to note that). Yes, this is an eminently readable work by a true genius who was, pre-eminently, "aware."
As a document of artistic/historical merit, the work is invaluable for its content alone. Again, Stein reveals more in what she so explicitly does "not" say than a million authors can ever hope to communicate with an infinite number of words. Required reading for any lover of literature, 20th century and beyond.
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