SOURCE: "Gertrude Is Alice Is Everybody: Innovation and Point of View in Gertrude Stein's Autobiographies," in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring, 1978, pp. 81-93.

In the following essay, Bloom focuses on Stein's innovative use of point of view in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Gertrude Stein's major innovations as an autobiographer pertain to the creation of the alleged autobiography of another person to tell the story of the author's own life. Related to this are her variations on three major uses of point of view, to perform egotistical, interpretive, and objective functions within the autobiography. Let us consider the autobiographical persona first.

About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you [Alice B. Toklas] were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you. I am going...