Unconventionally Expressive

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is by and large very similar to Tender Buttons owing to the close connection between the styles of writings in these pieces. Both works utilize humor and creativity to express thoughts. They were seen as major contributors to the modernist movement because of their choice of voice. Stein was not afraid to move away from conventional understandings of perspective in writing in both works and this gave them an exceptional place in the literary movement. In her cook book, Stein implicitly describes the domestics in their relationship and hence perpetuates feminist ideas through those experiences. The same may be said of Stein in Tender buttons; although she may have chosen to cover this up to some extent, there are still certain elements that symbolize the union between Stein and Toklas.

Both books appear to add aesthetic style to prose because they pay more attention to the senses over and above the intellectual. In this regard, Stein in the two works was opposing the literary culture of the time. Through this emphasis on the sensual, Stein had in a way resisted old ways of writing and was then experimenting with a new mode. Stein wanted to illustrate that the body is just as important as the mind and that perceptions which were created from the body should be given as much attention as any other kind. It should be noted that Stein, unlike other modernist writers, was less graphic. However, this does not undermine the piercing nature of her writing. For example in tender Buttons, she describes a meal as follows

“Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkening drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea and all the stouter symmetry”.

Clearly, she combines poetic alliteration and consonance to convey the importance of the physical over and above the intellectual. In fact, one of the reasons why it was difficult to interpret Stein’s work was because most people sought to find a deeper meaning in her work or they wanted to come to a conclusion. However, this was rather difficult to do given that Stein wanted to bring out the beauty of language and this was her focal point. Similarly, in the Autobiography of Alice Toklas, her style awakens the senses despite the fact that she is writing about cooking. She finds a way of adding critical thought into her writings.

It should be noted that to some extent, Tender Buttons was the more outstanding of the two and it got much greater acclamation than did the Autobiography of Alice Toklas. In fact, Stein had to hide her own voice in order to make it seem like she had not written the book. Previously, Stein used to compose her own work and would have Toklas type it, so in recognition of this diligence, Stein adds in the autobiography that “You cannot tell what a picture is until you dust it… you cannot tell what a book is until you type it”. Such comments make the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas different from the Tender Buttons because Stein was bold enough to explain the intricacies of her relationship with her lifetime partner Alice Toklas. The Autobiography was more real and practical than Tender Buttons as readers had to search for meaning in symbolic descriptions throughout this book. The books were important contributors to the modernist movement and led to the appreciation of the sensual and the physical in literature.