Boring diary-like "autobiography" of Stein’s deserves no praise

In my quest to read these 100 “great” books, I knew I’d come across some I didn’t enjoy, and I have read a couple so far that, while they didn’t do it for me, I could still see why they were on the list. Until now. Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is just awful. I don’t understand why it is included to be honest.

Stein was a writer and artist, American by birth, who lived and hobnobbed in Paris in the first part of the 20th Century. She wrote this book as a biography of Alice, her domestic partner, and it tells stories and tales of their life in Paris before and after World War I. Unfortunately, there is no overarching “story” to tie it all together. It reads like a diary, sort of like “today we did this” and “that summer we hung with this person.” Extremely boring to start with, but it is obvious from the beginning that Stein is so full of herself, she is as pretentious as it gets. The whole book is full of name-drops, how much they hung out with Matisse and Picasso and all the artists of the day. There are even times when Stein hints some of their careers would have not gone anywhere if not for her influence. When World War I hits, she continues her vacationing around Europe and sees the war as a big inconvenience to her social life, and becomes angry over things like her passport not being properly recognized at borders.

If the book were organized in any way, with some guidance or flow to keep it going in one direction, it at least could be readable, but as it sits, it is hardly that. Paragraphs stand alone from each other, and one idea often has little or nothing to do with the next. It is like Stein sat down and just starting writing with no idea where the book was going and no purpose behind it, except to tell everyone how fabulous her life and friends are. To my credit, I forced my way from beginning to end and didn’t give up, but it is an excruciating read and not recommended from any literary perspective.