The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
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Average rating3.3
"*The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ... is not an autobiography by Alice Toklas, Stein's companion from 1907 to her death, but a funny, innovative memoir which pays unusual attention to the 'wives of geniuses' as well as the 'geniuses' themselves. It focuses on the Paris years, mythologizing the Stein-Toklas household and presenting Stein as the writing member of an international art movement that starred Picasso. A lot of what we remember about Paris in the 1920s comes from *The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas*. Along the way Stein tells some stories about her past which are, according to her biographer James Mellow, streamlined versions of the truth."
-Phyllis Rose in *The Norton Book of Women's Lives*
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Tedious and tedious and tedious. Sometimes reading this book felt like reading random pages of a (very popular) teen girl's diary. “I saw so-and-so and he is working on a new painting and Gertrude Stein was amused by him.” “I saw so-and-so and he is writing a new novel and he bored Gertrude Stein.” Yes, on and on and on. Every celebrity of her age visited Stein, I think. The book felt a like an thinly-disguised attempt to pump up the renown of Gertrude Stein herself. And the writing was unbearably tedious.
But, at the same time, some of the little stories were fun to read about. After all, Stein and Toklas hosted Hemingway. And Fitzgerald. And Picasso. Talked to them. Laughed with them. Ate with them. Argued with them.
Tedious. But oddly mesmerizing.
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