The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas

Gertrude Stein

In explaining his unhappiness he told Gertrude Stein they talk about the sorrows of great artists, the tragic unhappiness of great artists but after all they are great artists. A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artists and he is not a great artist.

Before I decided to write this book my twenty-five years with Gertrude Stein, I had often said that I would write, The wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near geniuses, of would be geniuses, in short I have sat very often and very long with many wives of many geniuses.

It was a pleasure to meet, it was even an honour, but that was about all.

Fernande roused like a lioness defending her cubs. That is a brutality that I will never forgive him, she said. I met him on the street, he had a comic supplement in his hand, I asked him to give it to me to help me to distract myself and he brutally refused. It was a piece of cruelty that I will never forgive. I ask you, Gertrude, to give to me myself the next copies you have of the comic supplement. Gertrude Stein said, why certainly with pleasure.

But the gist of the matter was that Guillaume challenged the other man and Max Jacob was to be the second and witness for Guillaume. Guillaume and his antagonist each sat in their favourite cafe all day and waited while their seconds went to and fro. How it all ended Gertrude Stein does not know except that nobody fought, but the great excitement was the bill each second and witness brought to his principal.

One of the things that 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.

He says, she says, that I don't look it because I have more courage, but I don't think I am, she says, no I don't think I am.

I always say you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading never can do. A good many years later Jane Heap said that she had never appreciated the quality of Gertrude Stein's work until she proof-read it.

Constance Fletcher came a day or so after we arrived and I went to the station to meet her. Mabel Dodge had described her to me as a very large woman who would wear a purple robe and who was deaf. As a matter of fact she was dressed in green and was not deaf but very short sighted, and she was delightful.

Sunrises were, they contended, alright when approached slowly from the night before, but when faced abruptly from the same morning they were awful.

Then began a long correspondence, not between Gertude Stein and T S Eliot, but between T S Eliot's secretary and myself. We each addressed the other as Sir, I signing myself A B Toklas and she signing initials. It was only considerably afterwards that I found out that his secretary was not a young man. I don't know whether she ever found out that I was not.

About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you. I am going to write it as simply as Defoe did the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe. And she has and this is it.

I write for myself and strangers.

I have never read so many well-placed, even beautiful 'very's. If you ever question Gertrude Stein's ability as a writer, read The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas. This book shocks you with the beauty of its sentences.

Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is a testament to Gertrude Stein. Speaking for her friend about herself, Stein creates conversational ripples of voices spreading out from each anecdote into the whole of the work.

As my first experience with Stein, I had never before been confronted with Stein's reluctance to use commas. I admire her style, but cannot admire her paucity of commas: sometimes (far more often than Stein imagines) they are just useful.

I feel especially unworthy writing these thoughts on the book. She really is that good.