The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

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Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

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Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.

Customer Reviews:

You Will Enjoy and Dislike Portions of this Book [78].......2007-09-16

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

Overrated Classic.......2007-01-07

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.

Exquisite.......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.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.......2006-02-08

This is an odd little book but an enjoyable one. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was actually written by, and focuses on, Gertrude Stein. She presents herself as a rather enigmatic figure. She is the intimate friend of a number of first-rate artists and writers, and she maintains a legendary Paris salon. She identifies herself as a genius - actually, one of a group of three geniuses, the other two being Pablo Picasso and Alfred North Whitehead - but she doesn't feel compelled to justify the characterization. The narrative is essentially a chronology of a series of dinners, parties, and other outings with the names of the people who came. A very dry wit is occasionally seen, as when Picasso and cubist painter Georges Braque go to see an art dealer wearing their "newest and roughest clothes." The tone of the narrative is relaxed and friendly and it seems that Alice and Gertrude Stein had fun, if nothing else.

Perhaps The Single Most Elaborate Joke In The History of Literature.......2005-12-29

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is a singularly problematic writer whose work is very difficult to describe. In 1902 Stein moved to France and spent most of her adult life in that country; upon arriving she was quickly caught up in the Paris arts scene and soon became one of the earliest champions of such artists as Picasso and Matisse. Under their influence, Stein sought to translate the various arts movements and styles that swirled around her into literary forms.

The result was an incredibly idiosyncratic body of work in which Stein tended to use language for the sake of language. Often described as stream of conciousness, Stein's work tends to divide readers and critics. Some greatly admire Stein; an equal number consider her a non-talent with a gift for self-promotion. Whatever the case, her writings proved unexpectedly influential in "high art" circles.

Stein, a lesbian, met Alice B. Toklas about 1907, and the two remained a couple until Stein's death. Those who knew Toklas through Stein's numerous social events describe her as a small, ordinary woman with a tendency to fade into the background; in a world made up of artists and their wives, Stein played the role of artist and Toklas played wife.

Published in 1933, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS is often described as Stein's "most widely accessible" work. That is true only in the sense that Stein generally writes in a linear style and without the obvious word-games to which she was prone; the book is not typical of her work in either respect. On the other hand, it is extremely typical of Stein in terms of concept. The book is essentially a view of Stein's world as it might have been described by the uncritical Toklas, presented in her voice and related in terms of what Toklas herself might have found most interesting.

Stein herself seems to have regarded AUTOBIOGRAPHY as an elaborate literary prank written to amuse herself and those who moved through in circle, and the nature of that prank should be obvious from the title and authorship. Clearly, one person cannot write the autobiography of another, and while it might be reasonable to describe the book as the autobiography of Gertrude Stein the fact that it is filtered through Toklas' personality does not quite allow for that either.

Whatever the case, AUTOBIOGRAPHY is a deliberately superficial work. Throughout the book Toklas describes Gertrude Stein as a great genius--but it is Stein, not Toklas, who writes, and so we really learn nothing on this point. The same is true of the many other names that swirled through Stein's life: Stein could have told a great deal and frequently hints as much--but the Toklas mask knows nothing about artists and art is consequently a great deal more interested in the hats worn to the party than in the people who wore them.

If all of this sounds complicated, it is, and it begs all sorts of questions about what is fact, what is fiction, how much is accurately Toklas, and--most particularly--the fundamental nature of Stein's body of work as a whole. Was she really the genius that she proclaimed herself to be? Or was her proclamation a deliberate joke? Should her works be regarded as innovative masterpieces or was she a literary prankster? If the latter, does the marked succcess of these pranks actually grant her some claim to genius after all?

Beats me, and I'm hardly alone in that response. Critics have argued about all this and more for decades and will likely continue to do so for decades more. I will say this: while I rather like Stein in limited doses, I do not recommend her to the casual reader. Taken cold, her work is more likely to frustrate and annoy than fascinate and inspire. If you are determined to read Stein, you really should read a fair amount about her first--and in the case of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS you would do well to have a solid working knowledge of early 20th Century art as well.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer
In Memory of James and Shamsi Hyre
Killed 29 August 2005 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi
By Hurricane Katrina

The True Story of Alice B. Toklas: A Study of Three Autobiographies

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The True Story of Alice B. Toklas: A Study of Three Autobiographies
Anna Linzie
Manufacturer: University Of Iowa Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0877459851

Book Description

In this original and intriguing study, Anna Linzie examines three mid-twentieth-century texts never before treated as interrelated in a book-length work of literary criticism: Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) and Alice B. Toklas's The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (1954) and What Is Remembered (1963). Taking these three texts as intertexts or as an assemblage of the true story of Alice B. Toklas, Linzie challenges assumptions about primary authorship and singular identity that have continued to limit lesbian and feminist rereadings of autobiography as a genre and of Stein and Toklas as writers and historical figures. The True Story of Alice B. Toklas explores how the concept of autobiography as a primarily referential genre is challenged and transformed in relation to autobiographical texts written about the same person, the same life, but differently, by different writers, at different points in time. The concept of one true story is deconstructed in the process as Linzie modifies Homi K. Bhabha's “almost the same but not quite/not white” for the purposes of this particular study as “almost the same but not quite/not straight.” The investigation moves simultaneously on the planes of textuality and sexuality in order to provisionally articulate a “lesbian autobiographical subject” in Linzie's reading of these three texts. Linzie's study fills a gap in literary criticism where Stein's companion and her work have been more or less neglected, conceptualizing the Stein-Toklas sexual/textual relationship as fundamentally reciprocal. The True Story of Alice B. Toklas provides a new critical perspective on Toklas as indispensable to Stein's literary production, a cultural laborer in her own right, and a writer of her own books. Making a significant contribution to recent lesbian/feminist reconceptualizations of the genre of autobiography, this study will fascinate Stein and Toklas scholars as well as those interested in queer and autobiography studies.

Customer Reviews:

Must have.......2006-09-24

College-level collections strong in literary criticism must have this study, which integrates and examines three works of criticism: Gertrude Stein's THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, Toklas's own THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK, and WHAT IS REMEMBERED. The idea of autobiography is probed as both the genre and the writers' methods and approaches are examined. Chapters deconstruct the true story idea and provide many points for study and examination.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

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Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein
Manufacturer: Harcourt Brace
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GM4AB2

Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

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Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein , Samuel Steward , and Alice B. Toklas
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312185421

Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

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Insight into the relationship between two remarkable people
Brilliant!
Gertrude and Alice Get Real!

Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312198329

Amazon.com

Baby Precious Always Shines, a delightful selection from the 300 love notes that Alice B. Toklas accidentally deposited with the rest of Gertrude Stein's papers in the Beinecke Library at Yale, would not have been possible before the 1980s, when the locked cabinet in which they were kept was finally opened to scholars. In her excellent introduction, Kay Turner (whose other books include I Dream of Madonna: Women's Dreams of the Goddess of Pop) explains that with their baby talk and constant blessings, the notes provide "a tantalizing mosaic of a marriage between two women that was built to last." Composed in the "word-inverted, long-breathed, rolling, repetitive, refluent style that Stein invented," they touch on everyday events in the Stein-Toklas household and reiterate Stein's love and desire for Toklas. Many seem to have been left for Toklas to find in the morning beside the manuscripts that Stein had written during the night. A few were written by Toklas to Stein. Turner also offers a convincing new reading of Stein's famously obscure "cows" (in A Book Concluding with As a Wife Has a Cow: A Love Story and elsewhere), previously thought to signify female orgasm; she argues that Stein and Toklas subscribed to the "cult of regularity" that swept Europe in the first decades of the 20th century. Indeed, the love notes, despite their Steinian verbal play, leave little doubt that the recurring cows, "now sweet smelly and complete," are bowel movements--further evidence, for Turner, of the women's extraordinary intimacy, their love "express[ing] itself daily in the rituals of bodily caretaking."

Book Description

Off and on, during the entire period they were together, Gertrude and Alice wrote each other little love notes.Calling her "wifey" and most often addressing her as "baby precious," Stein scribbled her love for Toklas in quick moments of unselfconscious desire, notes that are small but significant testimonies to her long-lived love.And on occasion, Toklas penned or typed letters back to her "husband."These notes are brief, mantra-like enticements: tender, beseeching, caring and confessing, funny and game, sexually-charged and sincere, quotidian and queer, but always passionate.Each one marks the pleasures--infrequently, the pains--of married love.When fitted together, the notes create a tantalizing mosaic of a marriage between two women that was built to last.

Customer Reviews:

Insight into the relationship between two remarkable people.......2000-05-07

How wonderful to read about the emotions of what is sometimes considered to be "deviant" love. I believe they would each be honored to know that their true relationship is public and, for the most part, that people are touched by their genuine caring for each other. I highly recommend this book, especially for those people who find it hard to understand relationships between same-sex couples.

Brilliant!.......2000-02-16

What a hoot! Kay Turner has done it again, producing a book that's both entertaining and eye-opening -- a delightful-as-usual combination of the scholarly and hilarious. Brava! A wonderful gift for and/or from yer girlfriend.

Gertrude and Alice Get Real!.......2000-01-16

Just imagine having your love notes found, analyzed and published for the world to see? Well, this is it. One of the world's most famous and iconic couples' lyrical notes to each other are here for all to share. Should it have been done? Some may say 'no', but considering the fact that they are by Stein, one of the most well-known, unread writers in history, and Toklas, whose place in history largely hinges on her hashish fudge, I'd say 'why not?' These ladies have long been used to public curiosity and scrutiny and became household names during their 1934-35 visit to the US. The introductory essay alone, though scholarly, is worth the price of admission---"Having a cow" will take on a whole new meaning in your vocabulary!

The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas (Penguin Modern Classics)
Gertrude Stein
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0141185368

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The Autobiography Of Alice B. Toklas

Manufacturer: Vintage Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: B000I3DSYE

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Gertrude & Alice .... the real deal !!
Gertrude and Alice -- the fun way
Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude, Alice is Alice is...

Gertrude and Alice
Diana Souhami
Manufacturer: Pandora Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0044408331

Amazon.com

"Twentieth-century literature is Gertrude Stein." Or at least so felt Gertrude Stein, in a sentiment that she shared with few others, except of course Alice B. Toklas. Gertrude and Alice met in 1907 in Paris, and famously shared their lives from that day forth, souls in perfect complement; two magnificently eccentric and idiosyncratic women who became a legendary entity, and who were photographed by Man Ray and Cecil Beaton, painted and fêted by Picasso, and visited by writers such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Eliot. Theirs is a fascinating story, and they have found a wonderful and oddly sympathetic chronicler in Diana Souhami, whose book The Trials of Radclyffe Hall met with critical acclaim, and who proves the perfect counterfoil to the "Steins." Her own touch of genius is barely to consider Gertrude's grand oeuvre, sparing the rod to an already spoiled child and freeing her readership from the unpalatable fare that she generally served up (by contrast, Alice was a dedicated and talented cook).

Literary success came late to Stein--she was 57 when The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published--but, like Edith Sitwell, she became, to use a Leavis phrase, more a figure in the history of publicity; the curious thing is that one senses that behind the rhetoric she knew it. After Stein's death in 1946, Toklas became the classic devoted author's widow, finally dying just short of her 90th birthday. She was buried with Gertrude in Père Lachaise cemetery, although her inscription is on the back of the tombstone, as she was ever behind her lover. Souhami's two lives, refreshingly stripped of biographical dead wood, positively crackle with high-powered gossip and bristle with bitchy anecdotes, although her laconic touch is never asleep to the touching cadences, as well as the wonderful absurdities. As a writer, a "literary cubist" who once tried to give up nouns, Stein is more to be admired than respected. As a life force, mover, and shaker, and as partner to Alice, she was massively successful. Their life together--a third life, so to speak--was their greatest creation, and it's done justice by the talented Souhami's glorious account. Gertrude and Alice would have hated it. --David Vincent, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

They were the talk of Paris, photographed by Beaton and Man Ray, painted by Picasso and written about by Hemingway. "Perfect... and witty... Souhani brings out the irreducible eccentricity of this particular marriage."
--Independent.

Customer Reviews:

Gertrude & Alice .... the real deal !!.......2002-09-22

Oh my goodness .. if you've been 'enamored' of Gertrude & Alice for years & years, or are just discovering them .. this is THE story of their lives together. Grab this book before it goes out of print again !!

Gertrude and Alice -- the fun way.......2000-08-12

I am not a scholar and I am not sure that I would have the patience to read Gertrude "dans le texte". Yet I have a dilettant interest in these women of the first half of this century who seemed to have had a strong influence on the Arts and Litterature (Stein/Toklas, Cones, Sitwells...). I picked up this book by chance off the bookselves of my friends -- Liz and Jeff -- a rainy day by the Delaware River. I not only finished it off but enjoyed it tremenduously. I found the writting interesting, detailled (what a treat to get so many details of that era) and refreshing by its ease of access. Do read this book -- I am now onto other Stein/Toklas books (most certainly Alice's recipes).

Gertrude is Gertrude is Gertrude, Alice is Alice is..........1999-05-07

One of the best dual-bios of these two ladies (and I've read this book both in German and English.) This book makes both of them very real, moving them beyond the literary/lesbian icons that they've become in the last 60+ years. Read this in conjunction with James Mellow's CHARMED CIRCLE and you'll be hooked both on Gertrude and Alice and the artistic era between the two World Wars!

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Wonderful biography

The Biography of Alice B. Toklas
Linda Simon
Manufacturer: Bison Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Wonderful biography.......2007-08-18

This biography fills in any gaps one might have regarding Gertrude Stein. The biography flows very, very nicely, with separate chapters on Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and WWI doughboys. With the discussion of Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, and the passing mention of Gertrude Stein having lunch with Roger Fry, one senses the ghost of Virginia Woolf hovering nearby. The chapter, late in the book, on Alice's cooking skills, is worth the price of the book. The author provides an outstanding appendix, notes section, and bibliography, as well as an excellent index.

On a completely different note, one sees again the influence of the Bloomsbury group in England on the pre-Raphaelite painters, and the corresponding influence of Gertrude Stein on the continent on the modernist painters, most notably Picasso. Perhaps not "influence," but rather support for these new painters, who otherwise might not have become as successful.

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What Is Remembered
Alice B. Toklas
Manufacturer: North Point Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0865471800

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Shepard's Bankruptcy Citations: American Bankruptcy Reports: United States Supreme Court: Federal Reporter 1 F - 271 F2D Case Edition 2006 Volume 1
LexisNexis Matthew Bender
Manufacturer: LexisNexis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0769838863

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Shepard's Bankruptcy Citations: Federal Reporter 272 F2d - 456 F3d: Federal Appendix: Federal Supplement: Federal Rules Decisions: Bankruptcy Reporter 1 BRW - 72 BRW Case Edition 2006 Volume 2
LexisNexis
Manufacturer: LexisNexis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0769838871

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Shepard's Bankruptcy Citations

Manufacturer: Shepards/Mcgraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9993874493

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