Ada

by Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein wrote Ada in 1910 as a small portrait to honor the triumphs and ordeals of the life of her lover and companion Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967). Berlin based artist Atak revisits this classic "word portrait" with stunning color and bold illustration. Each book comes with a beautiful poster.

Genres: Poetry, Comics, Graphic Novels, Classics, Art

40 pages, Staple Bound

First published January 1, 1910

About the author

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful comics I've ever read. The Berlin artist Atak is a new name to me, but I'm convinced he's a genius. The illustrations are to die for. It's an attack on your visuals. Short and sweet, yet what literary critics call 'endlessly entertaining.' Inventive adaptation of the Gertrude Stein poem, sheds some light on an interesting woman in history, Stein's 'first lady,' Alice B. Toklas. The comic was created in 2005, but it honestly reads like it could have been published in 1910 (when the poem was written), or any time in the past century. It's psychedelic in its daintiness. I can't say enough good things about it. It's poignant, colorful, and odd. It's a piece of art.

[dianne b. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a sweet romantic surprise. What is more romantic than being listened to? What is more authentic proof of love? i value your thoughts.

First a daughter "who also was successful enough in being one being living". She, happy with her mother who had "always told very pretty stories to each other", even when they didn't get it right, with forgiveness and love.

The illustrations in this edition evoking Dia de los Muertos and the Mad Hatters Tea Party to represent the various Old Men who came to live and die, or die and live and die with Ada's family are almost up to the words (which are there to honor Alice B. T.)

But after mother's passing life, well, "she was one needing charming stories and happy telling of them". There was some saying of nothing, some tenderness, other sayings of nothing with her father. Ada, due to the resources left to her by her grandfather, can leave and live on her own and find "Some one who was living was almost always listening. Some one who was loving was almost always listening. That one who was loving was almost always listening...
(to) stories having a beginning and a middle and an ending."

And then it gets even better.
Maybe ABT and GS had the perfect love.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

tender

[Lorena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent.