Everybody's Autobiography by Gertrude Stein Read Free Book Online Page A

whether somebody can paint, don’t he an ass I said, Braque spoke up, a painter can writehe said I have written all my life, well I said I only saw one thing of yours that was written and that in a language that you cannot understand and I did not think much of it that is all I can say, and he said but that I did not write he said, oh didn’t you I said well anyway you signed it I said and I have never seen any other writing of yours so you do not count, and anyway we are talking about Pablo’s poetry, and even Michael Angelo did not make much of a success of it. Rosenberg the dealer murmured although nobody heard him and then there was Fromentin. You see I said continuing to Pablo you can’t stand looking at Jean Cocteau’s drawings, it does something to you, they are more offensive than drawings that are just bad drawings now that’s the way it is with your poetry it is more offensive than just bad poetry I do not know why but it just is, somebody who can really do something very well when he does something else which he cannot do and in which he cannot live it is particularly repellent, now you I said to him, you never read a book in your life that was not written by a friend and then not then and you never had any feelings about any words, words annoy you more than they do anything else so how can you write you know better you yourself know better, well he said getting truculent, you yourself always said I was an extraordinary person well then an extraordinary person can do anything, ah I said catching him by the lapels of his coat and shaking him, you are extraordinary within your limits but your limits are extraordinarily there and I said shaking him hard, you know it, you know it as well as I know it, it is all right you are doing this to get rid of everything that has been too much for you all right all right go on doing it but don’t go on trying to make me tell you it is poetry and I shook him again, well he said supposing I do know it, what will I do, what will you do said I and I kissed him, you will go on until you are more cheerful or less dismal and then you will, yes he said, and then you will paint a very beautiful picture and then more of them, and I kissed him again, yes said he.
    Rosenberg went out with me, oh thank you thank you, he said, he must paint again oh thank you thank you said he.
    I did not see him often again practically not. He was going out and staying out all evening until the morning and drinking Vichy water and then he went away with his dog to Cannes and we went away for six months to Bilignin but before that he did have a show of the pictures he had painted before he stopped painting and it was a great success the show and he said he was not going to commence painting but he did not talk much about poetry or anything and as I said he went away with no one but his dog an Airedale terrier called Elf which he had once bought in Switzerland.

CHAPTER II
What was the effect upon me of the Autobiography

 
    Before one is successful that is before any one is ready to pay money for anything you do then you are certain that every word you have written is an important word to have written and that any word you have written is as important as any other word and you keep everything you have written with great care. And then it happens sometimes sooner and sometimes later that it has a money value I had mine very much later and it is upsetting because when nothing had any commercial value everything was important and when something began having a commercial value it was upsetting, I imagine this is true of any one.
    Before anything you write had commercial value you could not change anything that you had written but once it had commercial value well then changing or not changing was not so important. All this is true and now I will tell how it all happened to me as it did.
    I was getting older when I wrote the Autobiography, not that it makes much difference how old you