A Quote For Thought

Not limited to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, autobiographies, in general, require the ability to interpret both the present and the past as well as possibly the future. Taken from one of my favorite blogs, http://andrewsullivan.com, the quote is by George Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle".

What was in front of Stein’s nose at the time she wrote her book was her own or Alice’s life. Gertrude Stein's views on life in general contradict the views purported by the restrictions of an autobiography that life is simply a linear process, one that occurs in a strictly chronological sense, and one that revolves mainly around one's self. Throughout the book, Stein uses a number of techniques that to one extent or another disorient the reader. The devices she employs, all of which seem to also annoy the reader, represent the intense struggle that one must go through when truly trying to represent one’s "self". To Stein, these techniques represent the confusing nature of life, and, although confusing, each of these devices is employed for a specific reason. For Stein, to "see" one's own life requires more than chronicling the "major" events you have lived through; instead, to Stein, life is an abstract entity full of twists, turns, and contradictions. It is through this seemingly confusing, digressive, and contradictory set of sentences that she portray the "true" nature of our lives. For example, the conversations one has throughout life are not well thought out sentences neatly separated by periods. Instead, it is a series of statements of various lengths that jump from one random moment to another that when put to a sheet of paper seem to make no sense. By employing a complex stream of consciousness style that digresses into every single direction, Stein seems to find a more casual, informal tone that is more indicative of our own lives as opposed to falling back to the easier, more traditional styles of the autobiography. Therefore, understanding our own lives involves not remembering the neatly separated, mutually exclusive, and important actions of our lives but all the digressions and seemingly inane paths we have taken in the effort to capture our own "essence". By taking part in this "constant struggle" when looking at our own lives, as Stein does in this "auto we may be able to gain a better sense of our own existence in general.