For Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris was based upon the rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings and 'it was like a kaleidoscope slowly turning'. Picasso was there with 'his high whinnying spanish giggle', as were Cezanne and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As Toklas put it - 'The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me'. A light-hearted entertainment, this is in fact Gertrude Stein's own autobiography and a roll-call of all the extraordinary painters and writers she met between 1903 and 1932. Audacious, sardonic and characteristically self-confident, this is a definitive account by the American in Paris.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"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. ...She usually insisted that writing is an entirely different thing from talking, and it is part of the miracle of this little scheme of objectification that she could by way of imitating Miss Toklas put in writing something of her own beautiful conversation. So that, aside from making a real present of her past, she created a figure of herself, established an identity a twin, a Doppelganger.... The book is full of the most lucid and shapely anecdotes, told in a purer and more closely fitting prose... than even Gide or Hemingway have ever commanded ...."
-- Donald Sutherland
..." The record of nearly thirty years of life in a fantastically changing Paris and else where -- a life passed in the most stimulating and important society."
-- Louis Bromfield
..." One of the richest, wittiest, and most irreverent [biographies] ever written."
-- William Troy
-- Donald Sutherland
..." The record of nearly thirty years of life in a fantastically changing Paris and else where -- a life passed in the most stimulating and important society."
-- Louis Bromfield
..." One of the richest, wittiest, and most irreverent [biographies] ever written."
-- William Troy
"From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
very interesting,
By Rogeez "ABD" (Bonn) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Gives a very interesting view on life in Paris in the first half of the 20th century , especially her meetings with artists - writers as well as painters. It is the very personell view of Gertrude Stein who pretends to be her friend Alice Toklas and writes in the way she believes Alice Toklas would have put it down
A.B.D
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lacking in grammar; abundant in gossip,
By Blue State Max (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
Gertrude Stein never met a punctuation mark she liked. She never met a sentence she could live with. But what a wonderful look into a renaissance of art and artists that may never come again.
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