Everybody's Autobiography Read Free Page A

and that is now only written but never spoken.
    That is very interesting I said, now the English language I said has gone just the other way, they always tried to write like anybody talked and it is only comparatively lately that it is true that the written language knows that that is of no interest and cannot be done that is to write as anybody talks because what anybody talks because everybody talks as the newspapers and movies and radios tell them to talk the spoken language is no longer interesting and so gradually the written language says something and says it differently than the spoken language. I was very much interested in what I said when I gradually said these things, and it is very important all this is just now. So soon we will come to have a written language that is a thing apart in English. If you begin one place you always end at another. Let me tell you about my brother.
    As I said he had lived in France as long as I had he had a son he had a grandson here, he had his wife and friends he seemed reasonably content and happy. And about five years ago he said he wanted to go back to California but why I said what’s the matter you’ve lived here so long what’s the matter, oh he said you don’t understand, he said I want to say in English to the man who brings the letters and does the gardening I want to say things to them and have them say it to me in American. But Mike, I said, yes yes Iknow he said but I can’t help it, I must go and hear them say these things in American, I must go back there to live that is all there is about it I must. And he has sold his house, it was a bad time to sell and nobody could sell anything but he wandered around until he saw a man who looked as if he was looking for a house and he was and my brother said why not buy mine and he did and in a week they were gone, all except the son who had been married in France and liked to talk to everybody in French because that is what he likes to do.
    Well that is a true story.
    And Picasso came with his wife when we came back to Paris after having written The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
    I began reading it to him in French, he and I were on the couch together and his wife was sitting on a chair and was talking to Alice Toklas and then they all listened as I began.
    I talk French badly and write it worse but so does Pablo he says we write and talk our French but that is a later story.
    So I began at the beginning with the description of the room as it was and the description of our servant Helen. You made one mistake said Pablo you left out something there were three swords that hung on that wall one underneath the other and he said it was very exciting. Then I went on and Fernande came in.
    I was reading he was listening and his eyes were wide open and then suddenly his wife Olga Picasso got up and said she would not listen she would go away she said. What’s the matter, we said, I do not know that woman she said and left. Pablo said go on reading, I said no you must go after your wife, he said oh I said oh, and he left and until this year and that was two years in between we did not see each other again but now he has left his wife and we have seen each other again.
    When I saw him again I said how did you ever make the decision and keep it of leaving your wife. Yes he said you and I we have weak characters and no initiative and if I had died before I did ityou never would have thought that I had a strong enough character to do this thing. No I said I did not think you ever could really do a thing like that, hitherto when you changed anything somebody always took you away and this time nobody did and how did it happen. I suppose he said when a thing is where there is no life left then you either die or go on living, well he said that is what happened to me.
    When he got rid of his wife he stopped painting and took to writing poetry. Everything does something I suppose and this is what that did and about this