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Kathleen's Reviews > The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
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by
Kathleen's review
bookshelves: art, autobio-memoir, experimental-fic, women-writers, writing
Feb 06, 2019
bookshelves: art, autobio-memoir, experimental-fic, women-writers, writing
It’s Paris in the period before and after WWI, and it is fascinating. This book is 80 percent name dropping and 20 percent Gertrude Stein’s unusual take on things. Both aspects were great fun.
Alice’s life pre-Gertrude is summed up in the first five paragraphs. It’s obvious that Gertrude Stein has determined that Gertrude Stein and the people Gertrude Stein wants to surround herself with and Gertrude Stein’s thoughts about them and Gertrude Stein’s beliefs about everything are the important part of Alice’s story, which may be true.
We get an inside look at artists such as Picasso and Matisse, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. Many come off as rather needy and fragile, relying on Gertrude (who has unending confidence in her opinions) both materially and artistically.
“Begin over again and concentrate, she said (to Hemingway).”
This book is not characteristic of Stein’s other writing, but I got a feel for her sentences by reading this, and also for her philosophies. There’s some deep stuff here:
“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of inner and outer reality. She has produced a simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should not be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry and prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry or prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or an inner reality.”
Having had this reading experience will be a great help as I tackle her more challenging novels and poetry. I'm looking forward to them!
Alice’s life pre-Gertrude is summed up in the first five paragraphs. It’s obvious that Gertrude Stein has determined that Gertrude Stein and the people Gertrude Stein wants to surround herself with and Gertrude Stein’s thoughts about them and Gertrude Stein’s beliefs about everything are the important part of Alice’s story, which may be true.
We get an inside look at artists such as Picasso and Matisse, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. Many come off as rather needy and fragile, relying on Gertrude (who has unending confidence in her opinions) both materially and artistically.
“Begin over again and concentrate, she said (to Hemingway).”
This book is not characteristic of Stein’s other writing, but I got a feel for her sentences by reading this, and also for her philosophies. There’s some deep stuff here:
“Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of inner and outer reality. She has produced a simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should not be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry and prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry or prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or an inner reality.”
Having had this reading experience will be a great help as I tackle her more challenging novels and poetry. I'm looking forward to them!
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Reading Progress
October 15, 2017
– Shelved
October 15, 2017
– Shelved as:
to-read
December 1, 2018
–
Started Reading
December 1, 2018
–
9.0%
"The Picasso-Stein intimacies are fascinating! "...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.""
page
28
December 6, 2018
–
14.15%
"An absolutely lovely story of how Alice and Gertrude saved the struggling artist Matisse that begins, "Matisse had at this time a small Cezanne and a small Gauguin and he said he needed them both. The Cezanne had been bought with his wife's marriage portion, the Gauguin with the ring which was the only jewel she had ever owned. And they were happy because he needed these two pictures.""
page
44
January 19, 2019
–
35.37%
""Years after Elliot Paul at Gertrude Stein's suggestion had a photograph of the painting by Picasso and the photographs of the village reproduced on the same page in transition and it was extraordinarily interesting. This then was really the beginning of cubism.""
page
110
January 21, 2019
–
47.59%
"She (Mildred Aldrich) was very fond of Gertrude Stein, very interested in her work, enthusiastic about Three Lives, deeply impressed but slightly troubled by The Making of Americans, quite upset by Tender Buttons, but always loyal and convinced that if Gertrude Stein did it it had something in it that was worth while."
page
148
January 26, 2019
–
72.99%
"The War. "We led a very busy life. There were all the Americans, there were a great many in the small hospitals round about as well as in the regiment in Nimes and we had to find them all and be good to them, then there were all the French in the hospitals, we had them to visit as this was really our business...It was during these long trips that she (Gertrude Stein) began writing a great deal again."
page
227
February 2, 2019
–
86.17%
""Gertrude Stein had been very much impressed by This Side of Paradise. She read it when it came out and before she knew any of the young American writers. She said of it that it was this book that really created for the public the new generation ... She thinks this equally true of The Great Gatsby. She thinks Fitzgerald will be read when many of his well known contemporaries are forgotten.""
page
268
February 6, 2019
– Shelved as:
art
February 6, 2019
– Shelved as:
autobio-memoir
February 6, 2019
– Shelved as:
experimental-fic
February 6, 2019
– Shelved as:
women-writers
February 6, 2019
– Shelved as:
writing
February 6, 2019
–
Finished Reading
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Angela M is taking a break.
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Feb 07, 2019 05:49AM
Terrific review, Kathleen.
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I have promised myself to read this for so long. What a group of minds and talents to have sitting around one table. Your smashing review feels like a gentle tap on the back pushing me forward.
Thank you Angela and Sara. It was such an amazing time and place--but to be a fly on that wall!
