A fascinating insight into the vibrant culture of
Modernism, and the rich artistic world of Paris' Left
Bank, Gertrude Stein's ''The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas'' includes an introduction by Thomas Fensch in
''Penguin Modern Classics''. For Gertrude Stein and her
wife Alice B. Toklas, life in Paris was based upon the
rue de Fleurus and the Saturday evenings and 'it was
like a kaleidoscope slowly turning'. Picasso was there
with 'his high whinnying Spanish giggle', as were
Cezanne and Matisse, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As Toklas
put it - 'The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein
and the wives sat with me'. A light-hearted
entertainment, this is in fact Gertrude Stein's own
autobiography and a roll-call of all the extraordinary
painters and writers she met between 1903 and 1932.
Audacious, sardonic and characteristically
self-confident, this is a definitive account by American
in Paris. Gertrude Stein (1[zasłonięte]874-19), a writer of
experimental prose, is one of the original American
Modernists. Born in Pennsylvania, she lived most of her
life in Paris with her partner, Alice B.
Toklas.Experimental books like ''Three Lives'' (1909),
''Tender Buttons'' (1914), and ''The Making of
Americans'' (1925) established her reputation as an
avant-garde stylist, and ''The Autobiography of Alice
B''. Toklas made her an international celebrity. As an
experimental writer she has been an inspiration to
countless novelists and poets in our century, from
Ernest Hemingway and Edith Sitwell in her own time to
Jack Kerouac and Robert Duncan in ours. If you enjoyed
''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', you might like
Virginia Woolf's ''Orlando'', also available in
''Penguin Modern Classics''. ''Buttonholes the reader
with its informality, its unhurried rhythms, deadpan
humour and acerbic remarks''. (Frances Spalding,
''Sunday Times''). |
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