The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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People edit see section history

• Gertrude Stein: Author - the book is essentially her autobiography (memoirs) written from the point of view of her lover, Alice B. Toklas. This is a Lost Generation insider's book. Tons of name dropping.
• Alice B. Toklas: The book is written from her point of view, but not really her autobiography although containing autobiographical sections.
• Pablo Picasso: Best friend to Gertrude Stein, Picasso features heavily all throughout the book as an influence and friend.

Quotes edit see section history

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• “I remember not long ago hearing Picasso and Gertrude Stein talking about various things that had happened at that time, one of them said but all that could not have happened in that one year, oh said the other, my dear you forget we were young then and we did a great deal in a year.”

• “The pictures were so strange that one quite instinctively looked at anything rather than at them just at first.”

• “Sure, she said, as Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicted in making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.”

• “When I first knew Gertrude Stein in Paris I was surprised never to see a french book on her table, although there were always plenty of english ones, there were even no french newspapers. But do you never read french, I as well as many other people asked her. No, she replied, you see 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 rhythms, but with my eyes I see words and sentences and there is for me only one language and that is english. One of the things I have liked all these years is to be surrounded by people who know no english. It has left me more intensely alone with my eyes and my english. I do not know if it would have been possible to have english be so all in all to me otherwise. And they none of them could read a word I wrote, most of them did not even know that I did write. No, I like living with so very many people and being all alone with english and myself.”

• “Hemingway, remarks are not literature.”

  Gertrude Stein

• “Gertrude Stein never corrects any detail of anybody's writing, she sticks strictly to general principles, the way of seeing what the writer chooses to see, and the relation between that vision and how it gets down. When the vision is not complete the words are flat, it is very simple, there can be no mistake about it, so she insists.”

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• “It was not what France gave you but what it did not take away from you that was important,”

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• She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.

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• Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don’t have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

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• Americans, so Gertrude Stein says, are like spaniards, they are abstract and cruel. They are not brutal they are cruel. They have no close contact with the earth such as most europeans have. Their materialism is not the materialism of existence, of possession, it is the materialism of action and abstraction. And so cubism is spanish.

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• Sentences not only words but sentences and always sentences have been Gertrude Stein’s life long passion.

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• She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done.

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• Human nature is so permanent in France that they can afford to be as temporary as they like with their buildings.

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• No, my dear young friend there is art and there is official art, there always has been and there always will be.

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• She always says that americans can understand spaniards. That they are the only two western nations that can realise abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself by disembodiedness, in literature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but ritual.

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• After a little while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.

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First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Gertrude Stein (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 818.5209

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Stein, Gertrude
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › History & Criticism
• Books › Biographies & Memoirs › Arts & Literature › Authors
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history