GERTRUDE STEIN

by Avis Burnett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 20, 1972

Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were walking home from the city library where they had spent the morning reading their current favorite authors, Fielding and Scott."" From such an off-putting, stiffly fictionalized beginning this has to improve, and by the time Burnett gets her subject to Paris we've unclenched our teeth and begun to read for the anecdotes that must be forthcoming. Given the material from then on the biography can't be boring; still as Alice B. Toklas remarked later (in What Is Remembered), ""It is very difficult now that everybody is accustomed to everything to give some idea"" of the independent Miss Stein's impact on her times. Burnett relates all the episodes and encounters and extensive conversations (we're never sure how much is reconstructed from letters, memoirs, etc. and how much invented) without the spark of illuminating perspective -- nor will the few brief quotations from Stein's work do much for those rare adolescents who are interested in her as a writer. As gossip this is just as unsatisfactory despite the apparent wealth of social detail, for it is unlikely that readers who aren't up to GS's own Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or say Brinnin's The Third Rose (1959) will care much about the mere passing presence of such figures as Tristan Tzara, Ford Maddox Ford or Edith Sitwell or learn much about Picasso who appears more frequently, and the more sophisticated will surely demand at least an acknowledgment of such issues as Gertrude's break with Hemingway (never mentioned) and the possible sexual side of her relationship with Alice. If Miss Burnett cannot be expected to provide any answers it is still disappointing that she has not heeded the implications of her subject's last words: ""What is the question?

Pub Date: Oct. 20, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION