This book doesn't present any great revelations and certainly won't surprise those already familiar with the egomaniacal Ms. Stein but for anyone who has suffered the pains of sibling rifts this is any interesting read. Both brother and sister are tortured and pathetic in their own ways, Gertrude for having stubbornly believed she was a literary genius (a delusion I doubt fostered by very many today with the value of her literary contributions negligible) and Leo for having simply been a neurotic posterchild who couldn't go on with his life after their separation. This is a better book still because it does not focus on Gertrude's non-existent literary legacy but instead chooses to reveal two lives both richly interesting and complex and yet with a bitter vulnerability.

Brenda Wineapple's SISTER BROTHER tells the story of thedevelopment of a remarkably close and rich relationship betweenGertrude and Leo Stein. Gertrude -- writer, esthetic innovator, feminist precursor-- and her brother Leo -- art collector extraordinaire, scholar manque--were a remarkable pair. From their childhood in a family bereft of its mother, through years in the heady intellectual atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Harvard and Johns Hopkins, Leo and Gertrude depended on one another and grew along similar paths. When they settled in Paris, their apartment became the center for all who wished to know about modern painting: about Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse, all of whose paintings hung in profusion on their walls.

But what hangs together-- whether brother and sister, or a great art collection -- can come undone, and it is the glory of this joint biography that Wineapple so carefully and tenderly traces the forces -- sexual appetites and obsessions, intellectual competitions, the powerful dialectic between dependence and autonomy -- which led to an absolute rupture between Leo and Gertrude, a rupture so complete that they never talked or wrote to one another again, for a period of thirty years. In those thirty years Gertrude became a central force in modern literature, while Leo subsided from the world into fad diets and unfinished projects. And yet, and yet: Wineapple does not sit in judgement, and it is the triumph of this book that Leo's many failures are as human, and as touching, and Gertrude's many successes: the reader ends up seeing ythe weaknesses of both, yet greatly admiring both.

The subject of the book, finally, is not Gertrude and Leo, but the strange, tender, and torrential emotions that run between brothers and sisters, and the many routes through life which lead either to social failure or social success.

i usually find stein's play with words a bit frustrating. however, this is a more readable book, one of her most accessible works. insightful in its view of fame & narcissism in america.

This is a fascinating account of Stein's travels in America following the success of "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas". Stein finds many things interesting about America, and through her descriptions, so does the reader. Her descriptions of the habits, manners, lifestyle, and thoughts of Americans are very simple but profoundly accurate. Being a Gertrude Stein work, Everybody's Autobiography also features amazing prose that is often challenging but always rewarding. Surprisingly, Everybody's Autobiography is very approachable once one adjusts to Stein's style. This was the first Stein work I read and I've already begun reading The Making of Americans. I just can't recommend this book [and Stein in general] enough.

Mellow introduces the reader to a person and a period of time that makes the book a vacation from our modern world.He introduces us to personalities of the nineteenth and early twentieth century who remain names to most of us. How delightful to attend the parties, hear the gossip, and take part in pre-World War I Paris, with this astonishing woman and her friends whose literature and paintings are recognized the world over.

This seemingly nonsensical book has a magical lyricism, a genius, that surfaces stronger and stronger with each reading. Her every paragraph is composed of triple entendres that are fraught with humor and meaning.

The letters and essays between these two influential writers form a narrative that reads almost like a novel. I found it helpful for working on my book Stein, Gender, Isolation, and Industrialism: New Readings of Winesburg, Ohio, but I also found it to be an entertaining document about friendship and the writing craft.

Despite what all of the other reviews say, Stein is not a genius. The previous reviewers were simply regurgitating what their professors insisted upon in college. This book is Stein's most accessible--do read it, just so you can know what kind of sense the book does NOT make. The best part of this novel is the format (autobiography, but written by someone else), which is unique; however, the stolen style, nonsensical delineations, stale dialogues, and immobile plot definitively strip away any claims that this rich, disturbed woman was a genius.

"The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" made Gertrude Stein a household name in America in the 1930s, and for good reason. This is Stein at her most accessible and I must highly suggest it for any first-time readers of this literary genius. The book has a light, breezy tone, interesting subject matter (Picasso & various renowned artists pop up throughout), and Stein's trademark intellectual brilliance. The device of using Toklas as an approach to Stein's life is certainly interesting and is responsible for some of the most entertaining passages. And this book is certainly entertaining, thanks to Stein's supreme wit and her clever descriptions of the people she interacts with and situations she finds herself in. I highly recommend this book, especially for those who haven't read Stein before. Her vivacity, wit, intelligence and skill are on display here in an accessible, classic work.

This is the book that brought Stein into mainstream society, and not without reason. Considerably more accessible than her other work, she relays the story of her life through the personna of Alice B. Toklas, her life-long companion. Primarily consisting of remarks about the various movers of the Paris art and literary scene that took place at the turn of the century, Stein, above all, isn't afraid to say just what she thinks. However, her wry anecdotes and asides are not written without the greatest of attention to style, and the reader finds each sentence to be representative of the orignality in grammatical structure that made her famous.

Briefly, Gertrude, briefly and succinctly, succinctly is as it was and it was as it was remembered. A golden voice, an only voice a voice is as separate as a letter not sent, a letter not sent, not written not not sent not not delivered. A voice to stop stars, stars as they shine, shine shine as is as it was remembered stars as wars not remembered not remembered too painfully, not rememebered as succinctly as briefly as this tape is. A winner in brief, brief as a winner a golden winnner with a voice to stop stars. Miss Stein the secret is still with you.

Gertrude Stein's work is meant to be read. She accomplished the same ends with words as did the cubists with paint. Her work defies linear syntax and conventional gramerical boundaries. She takes an object and strips all traces of reality from that object and presents it so that only the idea of that object remains. And it is the idea that Stein considered the most important. Her writing is frustrating at first and this audio casset makes Stein more accessible. You get a feel for the flow of her poetry. The rhyme and timbre that is elusive on the page is brought to life. Although this selection is short and doesn't give a hint as to when or where or under what circumstances it was recorded it still provides the reader with the essence of Stein.

While this tape is, as already observed, a brief selection of Stein's reading, it is essential to anyone who loves, or would like to learn to love, her work. The cadences and intonations of her readings reveal everything we need to know about her purposes and methods as a writer; even the most hermetic and arcane of her work becomes "readable" if her voice is present as one reads. This is not merely a precious historical document, but the perfect gateway to the treasures of Stein.

When you read the description on the fly leaf of this novel you are totally hooked. an inside view into the lives of Stein and Toklas through the eyes of their vietnamese cook . . .this has to be a good read . . . not!! The premise was good but if you enjoy good writing this one needs some serious work. The language seems stilted and artificial at times and the incidents contrived. If you want to read something with depth and richness I recommend getting Yann Martel's Life of Pi instead.

A book to be savored a few pages at a time; chewed and digested slowly like a fabulous meal. More than just "a read," THE BOOK OF SALT is an experience that involves all five senses -- and a sixth sense, if you possess it.

Among other things, Binh is the Vietnamese cook of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein. He is also an intellectual, a lover, a dreamer, a son, a man. We are privy to his inner life, insofar as he wishes us to be, both humorous and sad.

The story is told in almost poetic fashion; each word is savored for its own merit, and, like the ingredients of any fine cuisine, craftily blended to perform the perfect meal. It is more than satisfying; it is exquisite.

There is no more to tell about Binh; Truong has said it all. But there must be plenty of other fascinating characters lurking about in Truong's brilliant mind. Surely there's more! We await her next story excitedly, like children at bedtime.

This is a fascinating, multilayered story. Truong's language is compelling and poetic; I only wish I could write as beautifully as she does. She drew me deep inside the protagonist, Binh, and yet at the ending he was still full of mystery: the way most of us are to each other. While Binh's narrative was heartrending, sometimes fierce, his portrayal of Stein and Toklas was great fun. I look forward to reading Truong's future books.

This was my first book I read by Gertrude Stein, and frankly, it will probably be my last. Her subject matter is bland and uninteresting. I understand her rejection of conventional prose, and she does have a unique style of writing, but I just don't like it. I can understand and appreciate why she wrote it the way she did, but it barely kept my attention. And her use of stereotypes was extremely blatant.

read the other reviews and youll be surprised by the violent reactions of people to this book. richard wright, black activist and author, praised this book as the "first true representation of an african-american in american literature" and yet another famous activist labeled it "senseless racist drivel"

What in the book provokes this controversy?

The question is complex. Though Stein in all three stories uses words like "black" and"german" as undeniable stereotypes, there is no denying that these categories get deconstructed by the narrative and the style.

If your read books for style, you cant go wrong here. Stein's experimental prose is poetry set to music, exploring all the auditory limits of the english language.

There are 3 stories, The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena.

The controversy is mainly about the second story. Not that the other stories dont have their issues. Eg: The Gentle Lena is probably one of the weirdest characters you will EVER see in fiction.

So, buy this book and treat yourself to some pleasure in the english language!

This is an important work of literature. The use of language to tell stories beyond what can typically be told in narrative was radical at the time. Students of early 20th Century American literature, students of gender studies, students of American studies should all be required to read it. Not an uplifting book and certainly not a book to recommend to your friends who spend more time watching TV and going to movies than reading.

There is a controversy surrounding the book's central character named Melanctha. It is unfortunate that television dominates culture in this era. It would seem that when a work of literature depicts a black person, a typical reader expects Cliff Huxtable to appear in one of his dandy sweaters to dispense advice to one of his children in DKNY clothing. Or readers of popular literature (books with bumpy covers) become offended when African American characters do not resemble one of Alice Walker's or Alex Haley's romanticized figures.

Melanctha is realistic. She is most likely a composite of many of the women with whom Stein came in contact while studying medicine in urban Baltimore. Melanctha's tragedy is that her intellect will go to waste because she is black and because she is a woman. Her sin (to some readers) seems to be that she talks like a black woman from Baltimore at that time would talk. So don't buy this book if you are offended by the way black people acted or German people acted (there is a story about German immigrants, as well) in Baltimore in the early 20th century.

If you are a fan of popular literature...Haley, Alice Walker, and the Cosby show are probably more up your alley. If you are interested in a very interesting experimental work from early 20th Century, by a woman who took her appreciation of post-impressionist art and tried to apply it to literature...this is it.

Matthew Stadler writes very well--sometimes heart-stoppingly well--and is bold both in experimenting with narratives and in again and again and again focusing on loving boys, an extremely fraught subject in contemporary America. I think that his first novel, Landscape:Memory, remains his most fully accomplished book (and, OK, it makes me more comfortable when the boylover is not an older man). Still, I like the ironical voice of the narrator in his desultory research on Gertrude Stein's nephew, his account of his friendship with a gay man of his own age in Seattle, and of his obsession with the son of the family with whom he's staying in Paris. The endings of all four of his novels seem forced to me, but I find the sensibility interesting and some of the sentences jewels. Anyone who believes that adolescent males lack any sexuality will be upset by the book. Others may still want to shake the narrator out of his complacencies and wonder if Mr. Stadler is in a rut -- even noting the different locales and eras represented in his oeuvre to date.

While reading the book, I was struck by all the similarities to Hollinghurst's amazing "The Folding Star". Both books feature a teacher who lusts after teenage boys, a trip by this teacher to a non-English speaking "old world" country and an unusual blend of historical fiction, unabashed erotica, and Proustian pyrotechnics.

The writing is quite wonderful in this book, but is not as dense or as high-brow as Hollinghurst's. Instead of impressing us with his vocabulry, Stadler brings a unique gay American sensibility to the novel, which gives it quite a different sensibility than Hollinghurst's.

While both writers will obviously be compared to Proust and to Mann, I find both Holinghurst and Stadler to be reminiscent of A.S. Byatt. Just like in some of Byatt's writing, the search for historical truth also parallels the search for truth in one's own life. I definitely recommend this book, although If I were to only read one of them, I would read the better book, The Folding Star

I really enjoyed this very funny, erotic and different novel. Matthew Stadler is probably one of the most gifted young novelists writing today. Even though his books are disturbing, they have a way of captivating you so that you can't wait to read the book right through. I lost some sleep over this one.

This is the story of a young teacher's journey to Paris to uncover the sad history of Gertrude Stein's troubled nephew Allan. The teacher travels to Paris under an assumed name, after being fired from his job because of a sex scandal. In Paris he becomes enchanted and obsessed with a 15 year old boy. Thus the story continues from there.... Forget the pedophiliac part of the story, this should not frighten you away from Matthew Stadler's excellent writing & descriptions of this time and place. His writing is so elegant at times its like reading a classic or it will be in time.

Whether he is shocking the reader, or enticing us with beautiful prose, Matthew Stadler, certainly know how to keep a reader's attention, and take you places you might not dare go alone. This is perhaps his best book yet.