Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

Oh boy, this book and I had some kind of love / hate relationship going on (or rather like / hate - love is far too strong).

For those unfamiliar with this piece of work, Alice B. Toklas was Gertrude Stein's life partner, and Stein used the writing of Toklas' autobiography as a device for really writing her own memoir, starting briefly with her life in America prior to moving to Paris, but mostly concentrating on the period in Paris from 1903 to 1932.

Why not just write her own memoir? Oh I'm show more very clear on that point having now read the book - she couldn't possibly have been anywhere near as boastful about herself if she'd written a straightforward autobiography compared to how much she could when adopting the voice of Toklas writing about her. I don't think I've ever read such a display of egotism in all my life's reading, and when you consider that Gertrude Stein really didn't make it into mainstream popularity until the publication of this very book, her unwavering self-belief and self-promotion is really quite something.

Stein was certainly an interesting character and undoubtedly an instrumental figure in the Paris arts scene in the early twentieth century, an early champion and friend of artists such as Picasso and Juan Gris and influential in the literary scene of that period. The Saturday salon sessions she held became renowned in Paris for the art collection she owned and displayed with her brother and the arts discussions that took place there. However, given how interesting this period in Paris was for art and literature, Gertrude Stein is so caught up in the orbiting of others around her own self-importance that despite this book being only 272 pages long, it's a dull and boring slog for large swathes of it. Page after page of supposed comments of others on Gertrude Stein's brilliance and importance became utterly tedious no matter how famous the name-dropping. And despite certainly many famous names popping up regularly, you also have to wade through pages about visits from and to people whose names have been largely eroded from popular history with the passage of time, where nothing more interesting happened than someone commenting on how fascinating Gertrude Stein's work was.

The second half of the book interested me much more than the first. The First World War broke out, and as Stein and Toklas took on volunteer roles with the American Fund for the French Wounded, the focus of the autobiography expanded beyond the circle of the group in Paris and became more interesting. Given how much I lapped up Hemingway's description of the Paris literary scene of this era in The Sun Also Rises, it's incredible that Stein managed to make this so tedious with excessive detail and odd punctuation thrown in every now and then. I found it telling that in this book she writes at length about the Parisian artists, yet Hemingway only gets a few pages (and in those any compliments are matched with twice as many put-downs), Fitzgerald is only mentioned in two or three paragraphs and the likes of James Joyce doesn't get a mention at all. Stein tells it that she was a great mentor to Hemingway and that his writing needed so much work, yet consider that he had great success with The Sun Also Rises in 1926 and that Stein had yet to have wide commercial success until The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in 1933. I suspect that Stein's ego around the publication of her own work up to that point couldn't allow her to dwell on these literary success of others during this time for too long.

3 stars - this should have been such an interesting memoir to read, but Gertrude Stein's ego far surpassed the quality of her writing. show less

I worked my way through this book over the course of two months, beginning in early December 2025. I cannot say that I enjoyed everything in this book, but I am glad I read it. Many of the specific works were rereads, but not all of them. QED, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, and several of the shorter works were read in December. Aside from stating that I still feel, as I did in college, that the Autobiography is the least interesting thing Stein wrote. I can see why it brought her show more fame. I think I appreciated Tender Buttons more today than I did in my 20s, mostly because I’ve learned to just let the language set its own pace in my heart, and stop fretting over what it might “mean” and, as a corollary, whether I am smart enough to understand it. I like the way Stein employs words both as weapons but also as a means to capture the elusive threads of memory and emotion. I also now think “Melachantha” is the strongest and most powerful part of Three Women. To write a story from the perspective of a black woman was ground breaking enough, even if Stein was not black. But by doing so, this highly educated and ambitious Jewish lesbian woman was able to explore what it means to be separate, and different, and on the fringes of society. I think I still have a lot to learn from Gertrude Stein. show less

Well this isn't for everyone but like some of the others here on Goodreads I have an unjustifiable love for Tender Buttons. Is it just a small selection of modernist gibberish? Maybe. Is there a great key that can be used to unlock significant meaning from Stein's famous tome of word salad? Maybe not. I don't really know. Keeping in mind her project (to paint with language like an artist... just the words, not the grammar... sort of) gives one at least some way to talk about the unusual show more poems here when discussing them without feeling like some kind of literary bully. Then again, that is how I'm starting to think of modernism in general.

All meaning making aside, I love this book. Honestly? I couldn't tell you why. I just like the way the words sound. The pleasurable catharsis of meaning always feels just out of reach so the work never provides that sort of satisfaction. Still, in a weird sort of tantric way, there is simply joy in the way Stein rolls around in language. Here's one:

A PETTICOAT
A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.

That's the entire poem. Frustrating if read in a certain way, beautiful if read in another. There were longer poems and certainly poems that tested my endurance and focus but all in all this is a book I'm going to dip into every once in a while because it reminds me what the best poetry can: that language doesn't only convey meaning in one way and that reading language doesn't always have to recite the same discourse. show less

Although this is the most accessible of Gertrude Stein's works, it is deceptively simple. It took quite a while to get used to the conversational style and the unique sentence structure and composition. But in the end, I enjoyed it. It was a tantalizing glimpse of a brilliant author and her involvement with a major movement in art and literature. Eventually, I enjoyed the rhythm of the language and the ironic tone. However, I wish that I had kept track of all the paintings mentioned in the show more first section, as apparently no one else has thought of compiling a companion web-page of all the art works mentioned. I also would love to try this as an audio book -- I think the writing would lend itself very well to that medium. show less