THE MAKING OF AMERICANS

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS introduced Gertrude Stein to many readers who had not been able to break through the complexities of her medium of expression previously. So it is timely to publish what her admirers consider her greatest book, hitherto available only in a limited edition published in Paris 17 years ago. The text has been edited by Bernard Fay. (Personally, I have a confession to make. I found I could not read it, with any fairness of approach, so have asked someone more sympathetic with her method to give you the benefit of her opinion of the place of this book in world literature.) This book, written in 1906, antedated the heroic period of cubism and was a landmark in modernism in art. Her break from the writing tradition was conditioned by the same influence, but was more far-reaching in its effect. The book, crystallizing the method indicated in THREE LIVES becomes more abstract as it progresses, and is generally considered her best work. From the specific to the general, it becomes a history of everyone everywhere.