People often ask me which of Gertrude Stein’s works they should read first. Sometimes the question comes from someone who knows very little about GertrudeandAlice. Sometimes it comes from someone who has heard of them and only knows Gertrude through her most famous quotes: “Rose is a…,” or “No there…” and knows Alice because of her cookbook’s most famous recipe the “H–hish Fudge aka ABT Bro-nies.”
Usually I’ve encouraged them to begin with THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. The book is very accessible, written in a straight forward narrative style with just enough touches of Gertrude’s stylistic word-play and chronology shuffling to let the reader know that this masterpiece of modernist literature is just that – a masterpiece of modernist literature.
GertrudeandAlice with words (to typeset) in a picture circa 1935
