Gertrude Stein and Mary MacLane were both larger-than-life characters. Picasso famously painted Stein's portrait (above). Everybody remembers Stein, nobody remembers MacLane.
Read Chapter Four of Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. This is a link to an "illustrated" and unauthorized version. Chapter Four begins on page 107 and ends at the end of document, page 124. In this book, Stein is writing her autobiography through a thinly veiled 3rd person voice and style that are obviously Stein's, yet attributed in certain senses to Toklas.
Mary MacLane was only 19 when she wrote her most famous book, The Story of Mary MacLane (1902) For this assignment, read pages 1-47. Continue if you want more. Her style is bombastic, over-the-top, metaphoric, sacrilegious, meant to annoy and grate. For a few years, she was one of the most famous people in America. Now she has been completely and totally forgotten. A group of scholars and enthusiasts have started the Mary MacLane Project to bring her life and work back into focus. They believe that her ideas still speak to current social and cultural realities.
The assignment for our next class meeting, September 13, is to read these two texts carefully, and think about how they construct a "life" or biography.
Your next writing assignment is to write your own creative autobiography. There are so many ways to do this. Brainard, Acker, Stein, and MacLane each chose a new "way" or technique to write about their lives.
Don't feel limited. Yours might be an autobiography that spans a single day, or it might be your whole life. It could be an autobiography of an imagined life. We will be talking more about this in the coming class periods, but you should start to brainstorm and take notes of your thoughts and ideas.
This is going to be due two weeks from today, September 22, no later than noon. Upload to Populi. Details to follow.
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