Customer Reviews

Three Lives (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Stein's Three Lives, first published in 1909, is one of the easier books of her in terms of language. The third story in it, "Melanctha", which is an adaption of her earlier "Q.E.D.", has caused much controversy, mainly due to its racist remarks and stereotypical representations of African - Americans. It is what lies beyond this, however, that distinguishes "Melanctha" from 19th C novels and renders it one of the most important works within the Modernist canon. In her typical style of a "continuous present" and her free usage of a pseudo-vernacular she describes the relationship of Melanctha, a mulatta, with Dr. Jefferson Campbell, also a mulatto. Their struggle "to understand" is a battle of different modes of perception and thus connects the book to Stein's most important teacher, William James. Despite its racist depiction of African Americans, this book is a must for all interested in the beginning of Modernism presented by Gertrude Stein.

This is not a great novella or a set of great short stories but it is a very fascinating use of prose to create drama and intense feelings. Readers expecting to discover another Tolstoy will be very disappointed. Her writing style is very unusual but she does not write great novels. Hemingway and Katherine Porter claim that she influenced their work. She probably did; but, she is a writer's writer presenting unusual structure and prose. She is not a great novelist.

Stein published 26 books starting with this collection of three stories in 1909. This is her first book and she self published only 500 hard copies. She had to fight with the publisher to get it published her way. He wanted to make it more conventional. It was not written as a novel aimed at wide popular sales. She was seeking a smaller and a more critical audience.

When it was written, she had left Baltimore and was living in Paris on money inherited from her father. She had the luxury of being able to do whatever she wanted. As a result, she bought paintings and wrote experimental fiction.

This is a collection of three short stories. This particular book has an excellent introduction by Professor Ann Charters plus it has Q.E.D., which is another very brief collection of short stories and under 50 pages.

What is she doing here? She uses very simple characters, stereotypes really, as a vehicle to try out her experimental prose. It is not stream of consciousness - that was made famous by Joyce a few years later - but rather it is repetition of blocks of prose to create mood. She got the idea of repetition from painters who use repetitive brush strokes to create paintings. It sounds like an odd ball idea but it is original and effective.

There are three short stories here: The Good Anna, Melanctha, and The Gentle Lena. The first and last are about young German immigrant women and their struggle to control and be controlled, either by men or other women.

The most dramatic work and the longest is the over 100 page novella, Melanctha. This describes a very turbulent relationship between a young black doctor and the mixed race, half black, Melanctha, in Bridgeport. They have a conflicted relationship filled with stress. Stein manages to effectively bring the stress to the reader by repeating blocks of their conversations with just slight changes, paragraph to paragraph. After a while the reader feels that they are in the room with the arguing couple.

So, is this a great novel? No. But it is a highly original and interesting use of prose to create the intense mood of the story. It is considered by many as a milestone in American literature. Stein was tempted to follow in the tracks set by Henry James, but in the end struck her own unique chord.

Of her 26 works, this is the first and one of her four most important works. The other three are Tender Buttons (1914), The Making of Americans (1925), and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). The last was a best seller and brought her widespread fame.

For a good selection of her works, there is a 736 page collection by Vintage, March 17, 1990, ISBN-10: 0679724648 or ISBN-13: 978-0679724643 which contains all the good Stein works including Melanctha.

This is an important work of literature. The use of language to tell stories beyond what can typically be told in narrative was radical at the time. Students of early 20th Century American literature, students of gender studies, students of American studies should all be required to read it. Not an uplifting book and certainly not a book to recommend to your friends who spend more time watching TV and going to movies than reading.

There is a controversy surrounding the book's central character named Melanctha. It is unfortunate that television dominates culture in this era. It would seem that when a work of literature depicts a black person, a typical reader expects Cliff Huxtable to appear in one of his dandy sweaters to dispense advice to one of his children in DKNY clothing. Or readers of popular literature (books with bumpy covers) become offended when African American characters do not resemble one of Alice Walker's or Alex Haley's romanticized figures.

Melanctha is realistic. She is most likely a composite of many of the women with whom Stein came in contact while studying medicine in urban Baltimore. Melanctha's tragedy is that her intellect will go to waste because she is black and because she is a woman. Her sin (to some readers) seems to be that she talks like a black woman from Baltimore at that time would talk. So don't buy this book if you are offended by the way black people acted or German people acted (there is a story about German immigrants, as well) in Baltimore in the early 20th century.

If you are a fan of popular literature...Haley, Alice Walker, and the Cosby show are probably more up your alley. If you are interested in a very interesting experimental work from early 20th Century, by a woman who took her appreciation of post-impressionist art and tried to apply it to literature...this is it.

read the other reviews and youll be surprised by the violent reactions of people to this book. richard wright, black activist and author, praised this book as the "first true representation of an african-american in american literature" and yet another famous activist labeled it "senseless racist drivel"

What in the book provokes this controversy?

The question is complex. Though Stein in all three stories uses words like "black" and"german" as undeniable stereotypes, there is no denying that these categories get deconstructed by the narrative and the style.

If your read books for style, you cant go wrong here. Stein's experimental prose is poetry set to music, exploring all the auditory limits of the english language.

There are 3 stories, The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena.

The controversy is mainly about the second story. Not that the other stories dont have their issues. Eg: The Gentle Lena is probably one of the weirdest characters you will EVER see in fiction.

So, buy this book and treat yourself to some pleasure in the english language!

This book is highly overrated. I am sure I will get blown away for saying this but it has nothing to do with my appreciation of modern writing. I enjoy Joyce, and many avant garde writers. Stein has an ego as big as a house. Witness her constant comments about herself as a genius in the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. The literary equivalent of Picasso she is not. The book is slow and boring, filled with failed, in my opinion, rhetorical tricks. If you want stream of consciousness avant garde writing there are many better writers, Joyce being the best. Jack Kerouac is a newer author who is great also. I found it difficult to finish this book. It did not keep my attention. I basically find all the praise for her as both a writer and an individual vastly out of proportion to her talent. It would be helpful if those writers and academicians who are full of praise for her would perhaps write some articles that are readable saying exactly why she is a genius.

Returning to THREE LIVES after several years, I am again reminded of Stein's stylistic innovation and topical audacity. These are stories of working class women, one African American and two whose European heritage is still marked as "ethnic", who live with modest hopes and even more modest contentment. Watching Stein imagine a narrative voice to these women of spotty education and limited worldview is itself important. This is not the stream-of-consciousness of Joyce or Faulkner, but rather a subject-verb-predicate world of simple people. That Stein can reflect emotional complexity and intellectual anxiety with a style that would seem well-suited to a reading primer speaks not only of her ability, but indeed might undercut the utility of more affected literary devices. Stein is forging into then largely ignored life and so it should come as no suprise that this book doesn't appeal to most. But there is something here that merits our attention

This collection of three novellas is indicative of a major turn in avant-garde of American literature. Gertrude Stein's prose here functions through its lacuna's and omissions; it is minimalist in content, but her command of dialect is truly accomplished. Melanctha is the finest work here-the story of a black woman and her relationship in a society that hates her. Of course Stein has been accused of employing stereotypes-but such a critique fails to really live the text in its complexity. I can't say the other two works are as strong, Stein feels almost restrained in her commitment to the vernacular. Nevertheless, this is a seminal work.

This may have been a groundbreaking piece of work in speaking in the vernacular of people of the American lower classes, but now it reads as a little stilted and (especially in the case of the middle story, about a black woman who grew up fatherless and who tries to find and make a life with an intellectual man) a little condescending toward her own characters.

Clearly, the stories are meticulously crafted; she meant them to be this way. She just never gets inside the minds of her characters, treating them like marionettes on sticks instead of living within them, even for the few dozen pages of each story.

I have to admit, I couldn't stop thinking, "You know, Henry James would have moved this along by now." That may not be fair, and it's not like these stories are unreadable, not by a long stretch, but they're the literary equivalent of those hour-long documentaries on late night cable news stations: the camera-eye shows more sympathy than empathy, and it's understood from the get-go that a good end isn't really on the table for any of these characters.

The trouble with the avant-garde is that they set themselves up to say that anyone who doesn't like what they do is, well, totally square. At the same time, those who convince themselves that they appreciate it in the correct way can lord it over the rest of us naifs.

After having heard about this book for years from a dear Stein-devotee pal, I gave it a try. I must say that, not only was I disappointed in the so-called language experimentation, but I was just plain bored. I did not find the characters interesting; I did not get taken into their world view by the stream-of-consciousness writing style that is Stein's trademark; I did not feel like I learned anything. What truly convinced my pal that I am an artistic philistine - and I guess I am in her measure - is that I vastly preferred The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, which was written for a popular audience (this is, clearly written and not with all the obscure and in my view idioitic word play).

Oh well, this review will no doubt get many "unhelpful" votes, but then, at least I looked at it honestly and and naively and gave it the effort an avant-garde classic deserves. NOT RECOMMENDED.

If you like experimental language and can still be surprised by linguistic expressions you thought to be impossible, you have come to the right place - get this book and read "Three Lives". It is a wonderful collection of short stories about three different women who struggle with life each in their own way, and Gertrude Stein's descriptions express linguistically, what the souls of these girls go through: Torture, boredom, helplessness, violence, love, sexual desire. Has there ever before been such an emotional language? I doubt it. The edition by Mondial (ISBN 978-1595690425 or 1595690425) includes an introduction by "enfant terrible" Carl Van Vechten, an essayist and photographer, who knew Gertrude Stein very well and delivers an interesting insight into her way of writing (and living) and the history of this book.