Rating: 
Summary: Turn off your TV.
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Bland subject matter makes for bland book.
Review: 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.
| 
