Gertrude Stein Books

i usually find stein's play with words a bit frustrating. however, this is a more readable book, one of her most accessible works. insightful in its view of fame & narcissism in america.

This is a fascinating account of Stein's travels in America following the success of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas". Stein finds many things interesting about America, and through her descriptions, so does the reader. Her descriptions of the habits, manners, lifestyle, and thoughts of Americans are very simple but profoundly accurate. Being a Gertrude Stein work, Everybody's Autobiography also features amazing prose that is often challenging but always rewarding. Surprisingly, Everybody's Autobiography is very approachable once one adjusts to Stein's style. This was the first Stein work I read and I've already begun reading The Making of Americans. I just can't recommend this book [and Stein in general] enough.

Mellow introduces the reader to a person and a period of time that makes the book a vacation from our modern world.He introduces us to personalities of the nineteenth and early twentieth century who remain names to most of us. How delightful to attend the parties, hear the gossip, and take part in pre-World War I Paris, with this astonishing woman and her friends whose literature and paintings are recognized the world over.

This seemingly nonsensical book has a magical lyricism, a genius, that surfaces stronger and stronger with each reading. Her every paragraph is composed of triple entendres that are fraught with humor and meaning.

The letters and essays between these two influential writers form a narrative that reads almost like a novel. I found it helpful for working on my book Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio, but I also found it to be an entertaining document about friendship and the writing craft.

Both of the Library of America editions of the Stein works are great- very well organized, nicely laid out, and include a great biographical section at the end. The only reason I give them 4 stars is I'm not a *huge* Stein fan. If you are, then pick these up- definitly the definitive collection to have.

Both of the Library of America editions of the Stein works are great- very well organized, nicely laid out, and include a great biographical section at the end. The only reason I give them 4 stars is I'm not a *huge* Stein fan. If you are, then pick these up- definitly the definitive collection to have.

Traces Stein's career from her girlhood in California to the undergraduate years at Radcliffe, medical school, and on to her years in Europe as novelist, art collector, philosopher. Good introduction for Junior High School readers.

As I read the debates here, mostly about prose style, I have to smile. For me, other than the sensuality of her descriptions, the book is primarily about the voice of an outsider. Someone who, no matter where he goes, is always on the outside looking in. And, I surmise, is most comfortable with life that way. Raised as an outsider to his own family and home by his father, Bihn seeks out one night stands, or dabbles in relationships with people "out of his league" with whom he ultimately has no chance. He experiences a moment "inside the circle" with the Steins, and the next day gets so drunk as to vomit all over the kitchen, ensuring his place back "outside" the circle. Perhaps his fantasy of real, yet unrequited, relationship is the engine for his very apt and sensual descriptions of life and food (check out why love is a quince to understand the point). I found the book well written, and the depth of the character's point of view well drawn.

A rather dreary book, this- thus the 3. Spectacular writing (4). But participating even on the margin of the scrumptious life of Stein and Toklas poor Binh just never gets a bite. If you're too euphoric right now, read this book. Just the right recipe!

I was supposed to read this novel for an Asian Literature class as an undergrad at UCLA (over three years ago) but I could never get past the first few pages. Figuring I'd give it another chance I recently set out determined to discover why a university professor would select it for her class. Apparently I was right the first time; the only thing that got me to the end was Truong's exceptionally well written prose- the actual plot itself literally bored me to sleep on several occasions. Bare in mind, though, I am not particularly interested in Vietnamese history or Gertrude Stein, so if those are topics that interest you it may be a worthwhile read.

Anyone who buys this book believing it is about food, feasting, cooking or sitting in on any of Gertrude Stein's parties at a time when her Paris salon was visited by so many influential artists, writers and other creatives is going to be EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED. Book manages to demean both Stein and Toklas's work and lives as only an envious out-sider can. More of a self-pitying romance novel than historical fiction.
I gave it one star but deserves a black spot. Back cover blurb completely misleading.

This is a hauntingly beautiful story of Binh, an Indochinese world traveler (and world class chef) who ends up in the Paris home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. This is NOT a story about food or grand cooking anymore than "The Grapes of Wrath" was about picking vegitables.

This is a richly drawn character study. I found the story compelling and colorful and poignant. Binh's interactions with the two ladies is priceless. The scenes between him and his family - especially those envolving his mother - are quite elegantly rendered. The entire tale is told with exquisite attention to detail.

If you love literary novels that use historical figures as characters, you'll not want to miss this one.

I agree that this a just another version of "Lolita". But in contrast to "Lolita", the descriptions are much more subtule and less confusing. The author has a sense of reality which he desrcibes and smooths over with romaticism.

I am sorry to say that I did not find this book to be so absolutely shocking as others did. It is really not that bad, and honestly, now-days this stuff probably is more common than a few years back. If girls are willing to have an affair with an older man, why is it so difficult to imagine that boys might too?

But what touched me deeply was the author's shyness with the matter. Don't get me wrong, he describes things almost fully, but he does it in a manner that seems chaste to me. He says things like, "If the reader cannot stomach more of this, turn to page 47 for resumed dialouge" and "much to some readers pleasure, and to some reader's horror" (when he says that he slept with the Turkish boy).

Of course, pedophilia is not very right, but it does happen. He deals with it beautifully, and his character pretty much beds only boys that are willing. He doesn't force them, so that also makes it forgivable.

The comparisons of Allan Stein to Lolita are inevitable:
The obsession with the adolescent, the furtive criminal
inevitability, the bathetic conclusion all call one to mind
from the other.
Aside from Stadler's prose being more engaging than Nabokov's
and his protagonist less sinister, these are books with
very different purposes. Stadler plays extensively on the
duplicity of identity: he almost induces a mild vertigo
in the process. His eroticism is sincere and the fidelity
to place in his descriptions is evocative.
Paradoxically, by keeping the self-reflection to a minimum,
we learn more about the protag's motivation in this story than
we ever do in Lolita. The perversity is that Stadler's protag
ends up being less vocal but still more fully human than Nabokov's.


Lynn Hoffman author bang BANG: A Novel

Startlingly intelligent, 'Allan Stein' is a literary novel rich in descriptive detail, imagery and flowing prose which merges the past and the present in a simultaneously witty and poignant search for identity.

Our narrator is a school teacher 'on leave' following a (false) accusation concerning a teenage pupil by the latter's parents. Ironically, the accusation gives rise to a genuine relationship with the boy. As this subsequent relationship wanes, the narrator becomes caught up in the fantasy of the long-deceased subject of a Picasso portrait. He sets off to Paris, under the guise of being a museum curator, searching for some Picasso sketches of the boy in question. Initially comfortable with this liberating change of identity, the narrator becomes infatuated with the teenage son of the family with whom he is lodging in Paris. The novel then charts the course of his relationship with the boy, the boy's family, and the myriad of other enigmatic characters that he encounters.

Indeed, Matthew Stadler's gift for characterisation is partly what draws the reader so deeply into the narrator's world. The intimate portrayal of the 15 year old boy, Stéphane, is particularly honest and vivid. There are no delusions here - the boy may be stunningly beautiful (the moment of meeting him "made a tear in the fabric" of the narrator's day) but equally (referring to Stéphane's 'digestive problems') it proves "alarming that such an exquisite surface could contain all that flatulence"). The author's descriptions of the boy's mother, Miriam, and the narrator's own mother, are equally realistic and clear - which serves as a stark contrast with the narrator's own, more fluid, personality and sense of self. It is a testament to the author's skill that this self-insight grows in such an organic way that, by the end of the novel, the realisations that our narrator achieves are natural and just. It is thus not so much a journey of self-discovery, as a gradual transfer of self-knowledge from the subconscious to the conscious.

If you are seeking a light-hearted plane-journey read, you might be advised to look elsewhere. Matthew Stadler's novel deserves active, thoughtful participation. You will be well-rewarded, however, as his expertly-drawn characters, enchanting dialogue and erotic, humorous prose, combine to make 'Allan Stein' an exceptionally insightful work that will undoubtedly withstand any test of time.

"...I'm threatened by the boy as a site of divinity and spiritual deliverance." -Matthew Stadler

This is not only "a haunting testament to unfulfilled desire" but to UNFULFILLABLE desire: very young yet nubile men possess an hermetic quality, an inaccessible psyche that makes them more desirable, less attainable. This reality, and the narrator's growing desperation--the boy's emotional immaturity acts as a kind of spiritual chastity belt, no matter how much sex they enjoy together--are very, very amusingly evoked in this sensual, very well-written picaresque.

15, by the way, is the age of consent in most European countries, 14 in Spain.

Stadler is in his ornate phase. The usual development of an artist in any medium is toward the baroque and ornate, a place the Beatles arrive at with St. Pepper's or Abbey Road in the late 1960s. It is, I confess, my favorite phase. Some may prefer the surreal comedy of Stadler's "Sex Offender," a novel simpler in theme: exotic sexuality vs. prosaic society's love-hate response to it. From my point of view, this is Stadler's masterpiece.

Stadler's sentences are lush and meandering. His descriptions, perhaps overlong, reward with poetic grandeur and learned reference. He is a prose-poet of the senses, akin to Arthur Rimbaud or Garcia Lorca, the latter of whom his lead character uses to seduce a Seattle high school boy he tutors.

His lead character is on paid leave from the school under a cloud of suspicion. He uses the hiatus to investigate an artistic mystery, the life of Allan Stein, famous Gertrude's nephew and the possible model for a famous painting. Matthew moves from rainy Seattle to sumptuous Paris, where the sensual descriptions continue to impress. In a piece of droll postmodern self-referencing, Stadler describes his own style and aims while ostensibly talking about Lorca's: "Lorca's poem might appear to be unreal, but its dreamlike consistency can supplant waking reality by the force of a new coherence & logic."

Edmund White, who soaked himself in all things Parisienne while writing the biography of Jean Genet, admires this book. It is, like White's writing, extremely sophisticated and sensual. Like Stadler's previous novel "Sex Offender," "Allan Stein" shows the ways in which, to use a Nietzschean paraphrase, "Sexuality penetrates the loftiest reaches of the intellect." "Allan Stein's" 15yo boys are described in the same way: as lean and smooth, as having near-visible hearts beating close to their ribcages, as being more interested in sex than Matthew's intellectual observations.

Stadler's response to his disgraced teacher's ephebophilia and the turbulence it may well provoke in him and in society is a relentless romanticizing. If this kind of love is unnatural, Stadler embraces the unnatural, as found in florid writing, art museums, and exotic Francophilia. As such, he does not attack this taboo directly. What is a loss for advocacy is a gain for literature.

I derived a great deal of pleasure from reading this book. I "became" each of these women. I wanted to live their lives and experience what they were going through. I identified mostly with Lena. I don't think she was as stupid as everyone said - she's a much deeper character that doesn't quite know how to express herself.

I wonder if women tend to identify with these characters more? I would love to see these made into a movie.

The language was difficult to follow at times. The patterns and rhythms were in the way sometimes, but if you allow yourself to "give in" to it - you'll be fine.

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.

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.

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.

In "3 Lives," Gertrude Stein recounts the life stories of three very different women living and dying in the city Bridgepoint. With "The Good Anna," we learn the story of a German maid, who maintains the homes of various grand ladies throughout her life. She loves taking care of stray dogs and scolding young ladies into what she deems to be their proper stations. She also cultivates a strong friendship with the widow Mrs. Lehntman, the great "romance" of her life. (Though, it's never entirely clear what is meant by "romance:' either a very strong friendship or an actual intimate relationship.)

In "Melanctha," we are related the history of a young black woman, bright and intelligent, who wants to learn more about life and love. She develops relationships with many different men but learns most of what she needs during her "wanderings" with Jane Harden. After a time, she finally decides to settle down and to get "really married" to the right man. She thinks she finds that in Dr. Jeff Campbell, but neither one knows exactly what he/she really wants.

In the final story, "The Gentle Lena," Lena is a young German girl, brought to the States by a cousin. She is considered ugly and dimwitted so no one in her new family really takes to her. All the girls taunt and tease her. Finally, she is et up in an arranged marriage to a man who doesn't really like women (though it's never said flat out whether or not he is gay). They have children, and the husband falls for the children, ignoring Lena completely.

All three women wind up alone, forgotten and eventually dead. But, that's not what I really didn't like about this book. Stein's use of language tended to get in the way, so much so that I could never really understand what characters were saying and could never empathize with them. In fact, with "Melanctha," their constant repetition of names and long-winded sentences that turn around on themselves to regurgitate what was said in the preceding sentences, made the characters seem simple-minded. I never liked any of the characters because I never felt that I was given anything to like. And, if I was, I had trouble discerning it through the tangle of words. I re-read passages many times simply to try to understand what was happening or what a character was feeling/thinking and never really understood. They came across very two-dimensional.

I forced myself to finish the book but still would have trouble recommending it, mostly due to the use of language.