The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

We're going to discuss this in March at the Bryant Library. Brownies, anyone?

Stunning in its simplicity and joyous in its storytelling. A beautiful gift of love and a great achievement in literature. A landmark... it is more accessible than most of her other writing and a gift of love. That alone makes it dear. The history it traces makes it important and well worth reading.

I was totally blown away. I read it years ago, and am now going to have to buy a second copy to replace the first copied I loaned to someone and never got back. It's something I could read over and over again.

Not the best translation of french... hm

I thought this was sort of dry and sort of funny. She's a great writer.

This is another great read. I cannot help but admire the ways she uses grammar, and each sentence is flawless.

Wonderfully entertaining and inventive story that proves Stein was much more than the rich salon heirress who coined the phrase "the Lost Generation". She befriended nearly every now-famous author, musician, and artist of her time. Few knew Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, or Fitzgerald better and this book gives many witty casual observations about all of them.

Can appreciate but did not enjoy. In the slightest.

This title is in fact slightly misleading as it is an autobiography of Gertrude Stein, yet in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her companion and partner of some quarter of a century. This is an enormously pleasant and humorous read, and a considerable name dropping of anybody who was anyone in the art world who happened to step by Gertrude and Alice's pad in Rue de Fleurus in Paris. Gertrude Stein...more

This title is in fact slightly misleading as it is an autobiography of Gertrude Stein, yet in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her companion and partner of some quarter of a century. This is an enormously pleasant and humorous read, and a considerable name dropping of anybody who was anyone in the art world who happened to step by Gertrude and Alice's pad in Rue de Fleurus in Paris. Gertrude Stein was essential on the art scene not simply through her own evolving literary fame, but through the salons and get-together and art viewings and introductions she instated and probed. She and Pablo Picasso for instance were very close friends, and he painted her portrait as one of his first major works (it took about 90 sittings no less). The coming into being of the painting is conscientiously narrated here. There are also hilariously entertaining passages, written in Stein's notoriously characteristic naive yet spot-on highly intelligent and acutely observant descriptive language (few commas mind you!). For example, when Gertrude Stein and her brother were to purchase a big Cezanne paiting in the early 1900s in Paris "and then they would stop" (p. 38). And further: "...they spent days deciding which portrait they would have. There were about eight to choose from and the decision was difficult. They had often to go and refresh themselves with honey cakes at Fouquets..." The language is subtle, beautiful and yet very sharp, and for those interested in Stein and Toklas and the arts and literatures of theirs and their contemporaries - Picasso, Matisse, Gris, Manolo etc etc, it's an increadibly rewarding read, never boring and full of the essential who's who and gossip of their times, penned by the woman/women who played the key roles. As Gertrude Stein-as-Alice Toklas put it "the geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me."   hide