I feel like my initial statement will not be original; I am becoming really tired of Gertrude discussing only Gertrude Stein. While she is certainly an interesting character, I really want to know more about Alice B. Toklas than I do how much people raved about Gertrude's novel. I feel like she is kind of exposing herself as insecure rather than confident in her genius by pointing it out so much.
That said, I have two other points, I feel like toward the end of the assigned reading for Thursday, Stein started to make more of an effort to make the work more about Alice; I see significantly more "I" and a pleasant amount less "Gertrude Stein." So, thanks Gerty!
Ok, now for my most major point regarding the writing style of the novel: It, once more, does not fail to incorporate a lot of Gertrude into it, even if she is trying to take on Alice's conversational style. On page 90, there is a line that goes:
"In these pictures he first emphasised the way of building in spanish villages, the line of the houses not following the landscape but cutting across and into the landscape, becoming undistinguishable in the landscape by cutting across the landscape."
I think this is the perfect example of what we were talking about in class on Tuesday; Gertrude's style is the written form of cubism. And, inevitably, it came through in writing The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Just based on the majority of the work, I cannot imagine that this is a sentence Alice herself would have said. She might have, indeed, been appreciative of such a sentence but it is highly unlikely that she would have said it (in my opinion, of course).
Also, that Gertrude put in this little clue that she was writing the Autobiography is very fitting to what seems to be her personality. She needs the attention to be on her "genius." Ah!
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While I agree that it does come a little repetitive with the discussion of Gertrude Stein, I think it was a genius way to provide a view of one’s life. Even though an autobiography is supposed to tell the story of a person’s life, I feel like this story is Alice’s perspective and I think there are times that her views are strongly evident.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you bring up the point of Stein’s writing style as being a major part of her writing style. This mostly mirrors the fact that art and the artists in her life play a very pivotal role. Most of the events that Stein includes in the work shaped her personality or life in some way. Using this specific style of writing is almost her way of recognizing this importance.
I think it's pretty cool that you pointed this out Paige because I've found it frustrating me too. I've pretty much come to accept it but I still understand the point. Going along with that, I also think it's pretty funny that the cover of the book has this monstrous picture of Stein and a small one of Toklas. I know Stein probably didn't influence that the publisher did but I think it's relevant.
ReplyDeleteEven if Stein is doing this constantly, it's still pretty clever. I mean, if you want to write a novel about yourself, what better way to do that then to pretend you're actually trying to make it about someone else? If Stein is such a genius then of course she wants to flaunt that in the classiest way possible. So, I don't hate on Stein as much for not talking about Toklas as much but I'm definitely glad you pointed it out.