Terminalcoffee discussion

Today is Gertrude Stein's birthday...I'm stealing from a friend's facebook feed...

It's the birthday of writer Gertrude Stein, born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (1874). She spent part of her childhood in Vienna and Paris, but grew up in Oakland, California.

Any fans? Comments? Recommendations?

She was the "a rose is a rose is a rose" person, right? And she coined "lost generation"?

No idea.

(Do I hear crickets?)

And Hemingway replied, "A bitch is a bitch is a bitch."

Gertrude Stein's writing is pretty opaque and, to me, not so interesting. But she and her brother Leo were very important patrons of the arts while they were living in Paris, buying works by modernists like Matisse and Picasso when almost no one else would.

Gertrude Stein (1906), portrait by Picasso:

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Southern Fried Britt wrote: "And Hemingway replied, "A bitch is a bitch is a bitch.""

And a horse is still a horse, of course, of course.

Okay, I got my completely irrelavant mojo back. I was starting to worry for a minute. Carry on with your relevenet conversation.

relevenet? grrr...apparently I am still missing my typing mojo.

Relevant.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk with a horse, of course,
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

I know nothing about her. We never studied her in school, either.

I'm guessing she didn't write any vampire romances though, correct?

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (Stein's jokingly titled memoir of her partner) is on my to-read list, as is Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. Thus far my main exposure to Gertrude has been via Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.

I encounter her a lot tangentially, in other people's memoirs and histories. I remember reading something about Gertrude and Alice Toklas evacuating their art collection when the Nazis invaded, e.g.