Gertrude Stein is such a little pill! I admit I was bored through large chunks of this -- she is adamant about her exacting style, refusing to interject flabby emotions into her spartan narrative about hobnobbing with the modernist painters in early twentieth century Paris. So when she's going on and on about who was collecting whom in Spain blah blah blah it can get a little dull. And then all of a sudden she's talking trash about Hemingway, and it's hilarious, and you're like "what??!" It just sneaks up on you out of nowhere. I really like the nerve of this lady ~ you can see that she just wrote all of this to amuse herself, all this "Gertrude Stein is a genius etc etc," and you know... why not?