Wars I Have Seen

Perfectly captures the feeling of being stuck in a room with a rambling old person reminiscing with only a vague central topic and constant digressions Made it about 20 pages in and stopped at this paragraph In a modern war there are no crowds because everybody is in it, so much so that there are no individuals, well that is something else, it is a queer life one leads in a modern war, every day so much can happen and every day is just the same and is mostly food, food and in spite of all that i [...]

this was the most readable and enjoyable book by gertrude stein that I have ever attempted I read the whole thing Anyone who has tried to sink their teeth into a really promising looking Gertrude Stein novel, say, The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, will understand that that is truly a ringing endorsement of this book In this book, Gertrude Stein writes about living in the French countryside during WWII I have to admit she makes it sound wonderfully idyllic probably because she was not living i [...]

I picked this up at the library and about eight pages in I could not stand it any This is not to say that I think the book is bad, but the language and grammar was difficult for me it felt like the book was going nowhere but just rambling on and on I should like to try to read it again when I have the patience, because I feel like it has some interesting and important ideas and observations Plus I am a fan of Stein s poetry.

One of the worst written books I have ever read What she believes is new writing is incompressible No punctuation Long, run on sentences Paragraphs have no organization and no beginning or end She does make some good points on the French its repetitive and you have to wade through a lot to find them Sorry, Gertrude.

Intensely interesting and highly readable, but I am disappointed that Stein said nothing about concentration camps or what was happening to the Jews Stein loves repetition, but I think she also like omission There are things she avoids confronting, esp the unpleasant.

i read this the summer before 911, because i felt a war coming on somehow i thought that reading this would make me feel prepared i like that a lot of it is just about the normal things of her life like making food, just that normal things still go on in times of war.

Ha See my shelf I notice Beth is reading The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas and wonder how she s surviving I cannot stand Stein s abysmal style.

let go first then read this.

tough slogging