Gertrude Stein, Genius.

I would definitely equate this reading with The Education of Henry Adams in a few ways. They both are observing people who are famous (at least now). They both speak in a nonchalant manner about these people. Stein talks about how Picasso was usually prompt, or Matisse was disliked by the cook because he was rude. While she does mention other things pertaining to their art, the funny anecdotes surprised me while reading and gave me a different picture of some of the artists mentioned. Sometimes these anecdotes did tend to take away from the plot. They made it more complicated for me to follow the actual plot line, as Stein used the stream of consciousness and would just change topics freely.
Also something that struck me about the book is the amount that Stein talks about herself, through Alice Toklas. I realize that they had a close relationship and were partners for a long time, but I feel like Toklas should be offended because often all she did was praise Stein and talk about how much of a genius she was. Through outside research I have read that Stein apparently wrote the book for profit. While this might not take away from the literary value of the story (as we saw earlier in the semester with Poe’s Pym), I think it is possible to see that she wrote it for that purpose. Her free flowing form of stream of consciousness, in the ways in which it simply leaves points, only to return to them later, reminds me of a college student who has waited until the last minute to write a paper