A review by shanviolinlove
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

2.0

This is Gertrude Stein's own autobiography, apparently told through the lens of her life partner Alice B. Toklas. While her life in Europe was intriguing -- hobnobbing with geniuses from Picasso to Hemingway -- and while her own literary genius shows in the influence she had with developing artists and writers -- I couldn't quite embrace the style of which she chose to deliver her autobiography. Stein is famous for confounding the literary conventions ("Tender Buttons," anyone?) and provoking the mind; she references her study of sentences and paragraphs several times in this book. But as far as narrativization, which I wonder if she is attempting, I withhold my praise. Unlike Virginia Woolf, who has mastered the technique of the telling of one character through a framing character, Stein's work, I thought, was blatantly missing the ego "I" necessary for an "autobiography." If she wanted to write her own autobiography and eclipse Toklas, she should have done so. By labeling her work as Toklas' autobiography, I was disappointed that a writer this creative could not have reached the potential of carrying through Alice's voice in the portrayal of life with a genius. Too often it was her own voice coming through the literary mask.