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by Wikipedia
Gertrude Stein, photographed by Carl Van
Vechten, 1935 Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American writer and thinker who spent most of her life in France.[1] She was well known due to her writing, art collection and the many people (some of whom were, or became, famous) who visited her Paris salon. Her adult life featured two main personal relationships. The first was her working relationship with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874 to 1914, and the second was her romantic relationship with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein also had significant relationships with avant garde artists and literary people. She was friends with young artists Matisse and Picasso during the early 1900s, authors Thornton Wilder and Ernest Hemingway during the 1920s. She is credited with coining the term Lost Generation as description of her many expatriate acquaintances in France and Italy during the 1920s and 1930s. Early life
Gertrude Stein's birthplace and childhood home in Allegheny West Gertrude Stein, the youngest of a family of five children, was born in 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (merged with Pittsburgh in 1907)[3], to well-educated German-Jewish immigrant parents. Her father, Daniel Stein, was an executive with a railroad, whose prudent investments in streetcar lines and real estate had made the family wealthy. When Gertrude was three years old, the Steins relocated for business reasons first to Vienna and then to Paris. Her family returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where she attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school.[2] In 1888, Amelia Stein (Gertrude's mother) died, and in 1891 Daniel Stein (Gertrude's father) died. Afterward, Michael Stein (her eldest brother) managed the family business holdings, and made wise business decisions and arranged the affairs of his siblings. During most of her life, Gertrude lived on a trust income from funds her brother Michael very capably stewarded and invested. Michael Stein arranged for Gertrude, and another sister Bertha, to live with their mother's family in Baltimore after the deaths of their parents. (Mellow, 1974, pp. 25–28). In 1892 she lived with her uncle David Bachrach.[3] It was in Baltimore that Gertrude met Claribel Cone and Etta Cone who held Saturday evening salons which Gertrude would later emulate in Paris, who shared an appreciation for art and conversation about it, and who modeled a domestic division of labor that Gertrude was later to replicate in her relationship with Alice B. Toklas. (Ibid. pp. 41–42). Stein attended Radcliffe College from 1893 to 1897, and was a student of psychologist William James. With James's supervision, Stein and another student named Leon Mendez Solomons[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] performed experiments on Normal Motor Automatism, a phenomenon hypothesized to occur in people when their attention is divided between two simultaneous intelligent activities, like writing and speaking. These experiments yielded examples of writing that appeared to represent "stream of consciousness," a psychological theory often attributed to James, which became the term used to describe the style of modernist authors like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In 1934, behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner in fact interpreted Stein's notoriously difficult poem, Tender Buttons, as an example of the "normal motor automatism" Stein had written about for the experiment at Radcliffe.[11] According to a letter Stein wrote during the 1930s, however, she had never really accepted the theory of automatic writing, explaining: "there can be automatic movements, but not automatic writing. Writing for the normal person is too complicated an activity to be indulged in automatically."[12] At Radcliffe, she began a lifelong friendship with Mabel Foote Weeks, whose correspondence traces much of the progression of Gertrude's life. In 1897, Gertrude spent the summer in Woods Hole, Massachusetts studying embryology at the Marine Biological Laboratory, succeeded by two years at Johns Hopkins Medical School. In 1901, she left Johns Hopkins without obtaining a degree.[13]
Paris, 1903–1914 From 1903 to 1914 Gertrude lived in Paris with her brother Leo Stein, an art critic. It was during this period that she became well-known. Gertrude and Leo Stein's modern art gallery Much of Gertrude Stein's fame derives from a private modern art gallery she assembled, from 1904 to 1913, with her brother Leo Stein. Carl Van Vechten (music critic for the New York Times and then drama critic for the New York Press), and Henry McBride (art critic for the New York Sun), did much to increase Stein's fame in the USA. (Mellow, 1974, pp. 197, 192). Both had wide-circulation newspaper article series in which they frequently exposed Gertude's name to the public. Of the art collection at 27 Rue de Fleurus, McBride commented: "in proportion to its size and quality ... [it is] just about the most potent of any that I have ever heard of in history." (Ibid. p. 193). McBride also made the observation that Gertrude "collected geniuses rather than masterpieces. She recognized them a long way off." (Ibid.) The collection soon had a worldwide reputation. Leo Stein's acquaintances and study of modern art eventually resulted in the famous Stein art collections. Bernard Berenson hosted Gertrude and Leo in his English country house in 1902, and suggested they visit Paul Cézanne and Ambroise Vollard's art gallery.[14] The joint collection of Gertrude and Leo Stein began in late 1904, when Michael Stein announced that their trust account had accumulated a balance of 8,000 francs. They spent this at Vollard's Gallery, buying Gauguin's Sunflowers[15] and Three Tahitians,[16] Cézanne's Bathers,[17] and two Renoirs.[18] The art collection increased and the walls at Rue de Fleurus were rearranged continuously to make way for new acquisitions.[19] In "the first half of 1905" the Steins acquired Cézanne's Portrait of Mme Cézanne and Delacroix's Perseus and Andromeda.[20] Shortly after the opening of the Paris Autumn Salon of 1905 (on October 18, 1905), the Steins acquired Matisse's Woman with the Hat[21] and Picasso's Young Girl with Basket of Flowers.[22] By early 1906, Leo and Gertrude Stein's studio had many paintings by Henri Manguin, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Honoré Daumier, Henri Matisse, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.[23] Their collection was representative of two famous art exhibitions that took place during their residence together in Paris, and to which they contributed, either by lending their art, or by patronizing the featured artists.[24] The Steins' elder brother, Michael, and sister-in-law Sarah (Sally) acquired a large number of Henri Matisse paintings; Gertrude's friends from Baltimore, Claribel and Etta Cone, collected similarly, eventually donating their art collection, virtually intact, to the Baltimore Museum of Art. While numerous artists visited the Stein salon, many of these artists were not represented among the paintings on the walls at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Where Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso's works dominated Leo and Gertrude's collection, Sarah Stein's collection emphasized on Matisse.[25] Contemporaries of Leo and Gertrude, Matisse and Picasso became part of their social circle, and were a part of the early Saturday evenings at 27 Rue de Fleurus. Gertrude attributed the beginnings of the Saturday evening salons to Matisse, as
Among Picasso's acquaintances who frequented the Saturday evenings were: Fernande Olivier (Picasso's mistress), Georges Braque (artist), André Derain (artist), Max Jacob (poet), Guillaume Apollinaire (poet), Marie Laurencin (Apollinaire's mistress and an artist in her own right), Henri Rousseau (painter), and Joseph Stella.[27]
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein didn't look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".[28] In April 1914, when Leo relocated to Settignano, Italy, near Florence, and the art collection was divided. The division of their art collection was described in a letter by Leo, by which he stated:
The Steins' holdings were dispersed eventually, by various methods and for various reasons.[30] After Stein's and Leo's households separated in 1914, she continued to collect examples of Picasso's art which had turned to Cubism. At her death, Gertrude's remaining collection emphasized the artwork of Picasso and Juan Gris, having sold most of her other pictures.[31] Publications While living in Paris, Gertrude began writing for publication. Her earliest writings were mainly retellings of her college experiences. Her first critically acclaimed publication was "Three Lives." In 1911 Mildred Aldrich introduced Gertrude to Mabel Dodge Luhan and they began a short-lived but fruitful friendship during which a wealthy Mabel Dodge promoted Gertrude's legend in the United States. Mabel was enthusiastic about Gertrude's sprawling publication The Makings of Americans and, at a time when Gertrude had much difficulty selling her writing to publishers, privately published 300 copies of Portrait of Mabel Dodge at Villa Curonia, (ibid.) a copy of which was valued at $25,000 in 2007 (James S. Jaffee Rare Books). Dodge was also involved in the publicity and planning of the 69th Armory Show in 1913, "the first avant-garde art exhibition in America." (Ibid.) In addition, she wrote the first critical analysis of Gertrude's writing to appear in America, in "Speculations, or Post-Impressionists in Prose", published in a special March 1913 publication of Arts and Decoration. (Mellow, 1974, at 170). Foreshadowing Gertrude's later critical reception, Mabel wrote in "Speculations":
Mabel attributed the end of their friendship to an exchange in the autumn of 1912 when, during lunch, Gertrude sent her "such a good strong look over the table that it seemed to cut across the air to me in a band of electrified steel -- a smile traveling across on it -- powerful -- Heavens!" (Kellner, 1988, pp. 220–21.) Alice interpreted the look as a flirtation and left the room (ibid., p. 222), prompting Gertrude to follow, and when Gertrude returned, she said, "[Alice] doesn't want to come lunch ... She feels the heat today." (Mellow, 1974, p. 180). Q.E.D. (Not published until after her death) Gertrude completed Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum) on October 24, 1903. (Ibid., pp. 53–58). This piece is discussed more completely later in this article at Relationship with Alice B. Toklas and its precursors Fernhurst (written 1904) In 1904 Stein began this fictional account of a scandalous three-person romantic affair involving a dean (M. Carey Thomas) and a faculty member (Mary Gwinn) from Bryn Mawr College and a Harvard graduate (Alfred Hodder). (Mellow, 1974, pp. 65–68). Mellow asserts that Fernhurst "is a decidedly minor and awkward piece of writing." (Ibid, p. 67). It includes some commentary that Gertrude mentioned in her autobiography when she discussed the "fateful twenty-ninth year" (ibid.) during which:
Mellow observes that, in 1904, 30-year-old Gertrude "had evidently determined that the 'small hard reality' of her life would be writing". (Ibid., p. 68) Three Lives (written, 1905–06) Among the paintings was a portrait of Madame Cézanne which provided Gertrude with inspiration as she began to write, and which she credited with her evolving writing style illustrated by her early work, Three Lives:
She began her novel Three Lives during the spring of 1905, and finished it the following year. (Mellow, 1974, p. 77). The Making of Americans (written, 1906–08) Gertrude Stein stated the date for her writing of The Making of Americans was 1906-1908. Her biographer has uncovered evidence that it actually began in 1902 and did not end until 1911. (Mellow, 1974, p. 114-22). Stein compared her work to James Joyce's Ulysses and to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Her critics were less enthusiastic about it. (Ibid., p. 122). First publication in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work (August 1912) Gertrude's Matisse and Picasso descriptive essays appeared in Alfred Stieglitz's August 1912 edition of Camera Work, a special edition devoted to Picasso and Matisse, and represented her very first publication (Kellner, 1988, p. 266). Of this publication, Gertrude said, "[h]e was the first one that ever printed anything that I had done. And you can imagine what that meant to me or to any one." (Ibid.) Word Portraits (written, 1908–1913) Gertrude's descriptive essays apparently began with her essay of Alice B. Toklas, "a little prose vignette, a kind of happy inspiration that had detached itself from the torrential prose of The Making of Americans". (Mellow, 1974, p. 129). Gertrude's early efforts at word portraits are catalogued in Mellow, 1974, p. 129-37 and under individual's names in Kellner, 1988. Matisse and Picasso were subjects of early essays (Mellow, 1974, 154-55, 157-58), later collected and published in Geography and Plays (published 1922) and Portraits and Prayers (published 1934). (Kellner, 1988, pp. 34–35 and 56-57). The Matisse and Picasso portraits were reprinted in MoMA, 1970, pp. 99–102. Her subjects included several ultimately famous personages, and her subjects provided a description of what she observed in her Saturday salons at 27 Rue de Fleurus: "Ada" (Alice B. Toklas), "Two Women" (The Cone Sisters) (Claribel Cone and Etta Cone), Miss Furr and Miss Skeene (Ethel Mars and Maud Hunt Squire), "Men" (Hutchins Hapgood, Peter David Edstrom, Maurice Sterne), "Matisse" (1909) (Henri Matisse), "Picasso" (1909) (Pablo Picasso), "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia" (1911) (Mabel Dodge Luhan), and "Guillaume Apollinaire" (1913). Tender Buttons (written, 1912) Tender Buttons is the best known of Gertrude Stein's "hermetic" works. It is a small book separated into three sections -- Food, Objects and Rooms each containing prose under subtitles. (Kellner, 1988, p. 61-62). Its publication in 1914 caused a great dispute between Mabel Dodge Luhan and Gertrude, because Mabel had been working to have it published by another publisher. (Mellow, 1974, p. 178). Mabel wrote at length about the bad choice of publishing it with the press Gertrude selected. (Ibid.) Evans wrote Gertrude:
(Ibid.) Stein ignored Mabel's exhortations, and eventually Mabel, and published 1,000 copies of the book, in 1914. (An antiquarian copy was valued at over $1,200 in 2007). It is currently in print. Stein's poems in Tender Buttons are very stylised and hermetic, as she preferred for sound rather than sense. Alice B. Toklas, 1907–1946 Stein met her long-time romantic partner, Alice B. Toklas[32] on September 8, 1907 on Toklas's first day in Paris, at Sarah and Michael Stein's apartment. (Mellow, 1974, at 107) On meeting Stein, Toklas wrote:
Soon thereafter, Stein introduced Toklas to Pablo Picasso at his studio, where he was at work on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was a painting that "marked the beginning of the end of Leo's support for Picasso."[35] In 1908, they summered in Fiesole, Italy, Toklas staying with Harriet Lane Levy, the companion of her trip from the United States, and her housemate until Alice relocated in with Stein and Leo in 1910. That summer, Stein stayed with Michael and Sarah Stein, their son Allan, and Leo in a nearby villa. (Ibid.) Gertrude and Alice's summer of 1908 is memorialized in images of the two of them in Venice, at the piazza in front of Saint Mark's.[36] Toklas arrived in 1907 with Harriet Levy, with Toklas maintaining living arrangements with Levy until she moved to 27 Rue de Fleurus in 1910. In an essay written at the time, Stein discussed the complex efforts humorously, involving much letter writing and Victorian niceties, to extricate Levy from Toklas' living arrangements.[37] In "Harriet", Stein considers Levy's nonexistent plans for the summer, following her nonexistent plans for the winter:
World War I
Stein in 1913 Juan Gris During the early summer of 1914, Gertrude bought three paintings by Juan Gris: Roses, Glass and Bottle, and Book and Glasses. Soon after she purchased them from Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's gallery (Mellow, 1974, at 209), the Great War began, Kahnweiler's stock was confiscated and he was not allowed to return to Paris. Gris, who before the war had entered a binding contract with Kahnweiler for his output, was left without income. Gertrude attempted to enter an ancillary arrangement in which she would forward Gris living expenses in exchange for future pictures. Great Britain Stein and Toklas had plans to visit England to sign a contract for the publication of Three Lives, to spend a few weeks, and journey then to Spain. They left Paris on July 6, 1914 and returned on October 17. [Ibid., 210-15]. When Britain declared war on Germany, Stein and Toklas were visiting Alfred North Whitehead in England. After a supposed three-week trip to England that endured for three months due to the War, they returned to France, where they spent the first winter of the war. Majorca, Spain With money acquired from the sale of Stein's last Matisse Woman with a Hat[39] to her brother Michael, she and Toklas vacationed in Spain from May 1915, through the spring of 1916.[40] During their interlude in Majorca, Spain, Gertrude continued her correspondence with Mildred Aldrich who kept her apprised of the War's progression, and eventually inspired Gertrude and Alice to return to France to join the war effort.[41] Auntie Toklas and Stein returned to Paris in June 1916 and acquired a Ford with the help of associates in the United States; Gertrude learned to drive it with the help of her friend William Edwards Cook. (Ibid., at 226-27). Gertrude and Alice then volunteered to drive supplies to French hospitals, in the Ford they named Auntie, "after Gertrude's aunt Pauline, 'who always behaved admirably in emergencies and behaved fairly well most times if she was flattered.'" (Ibid., at 228) 1920s and 1930s
Gertrude Stein with Ernest Hemingway's son, Jack Hemingway in 1924. Stein is credited with bringing the term "Lost Generation" into use. During the 1920s, her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus, with walls covered by avant-garde paintings, attracted many of the great writers of the time, including Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Thornton Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson. While she has been credited with inventing the term "Lost Generation" for some of these expatriate American writers, at least three versions of the story that led to the phrase are on record, two by Ernest Hemingway and one by Gertrude Stein (Mellow, 1974, pp. 273–74). During the 1920s, she became friends with writer Mina Loy, and the two would remain lifelong friends. Extremely charming, eloquent, and cheerful, she had many friends and promoted herself often. Her judgments of literature and art were influential. She was Ernest Hemingway's mentor, and upon the birth of his son he asked her to be the godmother of his child. During the summer of 1931, Stein advised the young composer and writer Paul Bowles to go to Tangier, where she and Alice had vacationed.
During the 1930s, Stein and Toklas became famous with the 1933 mass market publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. She and Alice had an extended lecture tour in the United States during this decade. They also spent several summers in Bilignin, France, and doted on a famous poodle named "Basket" whose successor, "Basket II", comforted Alice in the years after Gertrude's death. World War II and Postwar With the outbreak of World War II, Stein and Toklas relocated to a country home that they had rented for many years previously in Bilignin, Ain, in the Rhône-Alpes region. Gertrude and Alice, who were both Jewish, escaped persecution probably because of their friendship to Bernard Faÿ who was a collaborator with the Vichy regime and had connections to the Gestapo. When Faÿ was sentenced to hard labor for life after the war, Gertrude and Alice campaigned for his release. Several years later, Toklas would contribute money to Faÿ's escape from prison. After the war, Stein was visited by many young American soldiers. Her preface written for a 1945 Paris exhibition for Spanish painter Francisco Riba-Rovira "is one of Gertrude Stein's last texts" on her vision of the painting art, approximately one year before her death. In it she expressed her opinions of Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse and Juan Gris as well as Riba-Rovira, a familiar artist of her salon at rue de Fleurus.[42] The following is a translation from Stein's preface to the exhibition by Riba-Rovira at Roquepine Gallery in May 1945:
Death Stein died at the age of 72 from stomach cancer in Neuilly-sur-Seine on July 27, 1946, and was interred in Paris in the Père Lachaise cemetery. In one account by Toklas, when Stein was being wheeled into the operating room for surgery on her stomach, she asked Toklas, "What is the answer?" When Toklas did not answer, Stein said, "In that case, what is the question?"[44] Stein named writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten as her literary executor, and he helped to publish works of hers which remained unpublished at the time of her death. There is a monument to Stein on the Upper Terrace of Bryant Park, New York. Relationship with Alice B. Toklas, and its precursors Stein is the author of one of the earliest coming out stories, Q.E.D. (published in 1950 as Things as They Are), written in 1903 and suppressed by the author. The story, written during travels after ending college, is based on a three-person romantic affair she joined while studying at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The affair was complicated, as Stein was less experienced with the social dynamics of romantic friendship as well as her own sexuality and any moral dilemmas regarding it. Stein maintained at the time that she detested "passion in its many disguised forms". The relationships of Stein's acquaintances Mabel Haynes and Grace Lounsbury ended as Haynes started one with Mary Bookstaver (also known as May Bookstaver). Stein became enamored of Bookstaver but was unsuccessful in advancing their relationship. Bookstaver, Haynes, and Lounsbury all later married men. (Blackmer 1995, p. 681-686) Her growing awareness of her sexuality began to interfere with the bourgeois values implicit in her medical studies and would have put her at odds with contemporary feminist theory and opinion, and Q.E.D. may have assisted her with understanding her scholarly and romantic failure. However, Stein began to accept and define her pseudo-masculinity through the ideas of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character (1906). Weininger, though Jewish by birth, considered Jewish men effeminate and women as incapable of selfhood and genius, except for female homosexuals who may approximate masculinity. (ibid) More positive affirmations of Stein's sexuality began with her relationship with Toklas. Ernest Hemingway describes how Alice was Gertrude's "wife" in that Stein rarely addressed his (Hemingway's) wife, and he treated Alice the same, leaving the two "wives" to chat. (Grahn 1989) Alice was 4'11" tall, and Gertrude was 5'1". The more affirming essay "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene" is one of the first homosexual revelation stories to be published. The work, like Q.E.D., is informed by Stein's growing involvement with a homosexual community (Grahn 1989), though it is based on lesbian partners Maud Hunt Squire and Ethel Mars (Blackmer 1995). The work contains the word "gay" over one hundred times, perhaps the first published use of the word "gay" in reference to same-sex relationships and those who have them, (Blackmer 1995) and, as such, uninformed readers missed the lesbian content. A similar essay of homosexual men begins more obviously with the line "Sometimes men are kissing" but is less well known. (ibid)
In Tender Buttons Stein comments on lesbian sexuality and the work abounds with "highly condensed layers of public and private meanings" created by wordplay including puns on the words "box", "cow", and in titles such as "tender buttons". (ibid) Political views Stein was politically conservative, though the nature of her opinions is debated. According to Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Stein was a life-long Republican and vocal critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.[45][46][47] She publicly endorsed Franco during the Spanish Civil War and admired Vichy leader Maréchal Pétain, translating some of the latter's speeches into English. These unpublished translations included a favorable introduction in which she compared him to George Washington.[45] Some have argued for a more nuanced view of Stein's collaborationist activity, arguing that it was rooted in her wartime predicament and status as a Jew in Nazi-occupied France.[48] Prior to World War II she made public her opinion that Adolf Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. "I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace ... By suppressing Jews ... he was ending struggle in Germany" (New York Times Magazine, May 6, 1934).[49] Stein was later to comment on Hitler, Mussolini, and Roosevelt: "There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing" (Blackmer 1995). About Stein's writings
Carl Van Vechten, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1934 Stein's writing appears on three different planes: her "hermetic" works that have gone largely unread, as best illustrated by Stein's The Making of Americans: The Hersland Family; her popularized writing in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which made her famous; and her speech writing and more accessible autobiographical writing of later years, of which Brewsie and Willie is a good example. After moving to Paris in 1903, she started to write in earnest: novels, plays, stories, libretti and poems. Increasingly, she developed her own highly idiosyncratic, playful, sometimes repetitive and sometimes humorous style. Typical quotes are: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"; "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle"; about Oakland, "There is no there there"; and "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable." These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical essays or "portraits", were designed to evoke "the excitingness of pure being" and can be seen as an answer to Cubism, plasticity and/or collage, in literature. Many of the experimental works such as Tender Buttons have since been interpreted by critics as a feminist reworking of patriarchal language. These works were loved by the avant garde, but mainstream success initially remained elusive. Despite Stein's work on automatic writing with William James it is clear Stein did not see her own work as automatic, more as a 'excess of consciousness'. Judy Grahn lists the following principles behind Stein's work: 1) Commonality, 2) Essence, 3) Value, 4) Grounding the Continuous present, 5) Play, and 6) Transformation Though Gertrude collected cubist paintings (primarily by Picasso until she could no longer afford them), the biggest visual or painterly influence on Stein's work is that of Cézanne, specifically in her idea of equality, what Judy Grahn terms commonality, distinguishing from universality or equality: "the whole field of the canvas is important" (p. 8). Rather than a figure/ground relationship, "Stein in her work with words used the entire text as a field in which every element mattered as much as any other." It is a subjective relationship that includes more than one viewpoint, to quote Stein: "The important thing is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality." Grahn ascribes much of the repetition of Stein's work to her search for descriptions of the "bottom nature" of her characters, such as in The Making of Americans where even the narrator's essence is described through the repetition of narrative phrases such as "As I was saying" and "There will be now a history of her". Grahn: "Using the idea of everything belonging to a whole field and mattering equally, as well as each being having an essence of its own, she inevitably wrote patterns rather than linear sequences." (p. 13) Grahn means value in the sense of overall lightness or darkness of a painting. Stein used many Anglo-Saxon words and few Latin-based words: blood instead of sanguine. She also avoided words with "too much association". "One consequence of developing value and essence as the basis of her work, rather than social themes, dramatic imagery or linear plots, is that she developed a remarkable objective voice. To an uncanny degree at times, social judgment is absent in her author's voice, as the reader is left the power to decide how to think and feel about the writing." Grahn continues, "Anxiety, fear and anger are not played upon, and this alone sets her apart from most modern authors. Her work is harmonic and integrative, not alienated; at the same time it is grounded useful, not wistful and fantastic." (p. 15) Stein predominantly used the present tense, "ing", creating a continuous present in her work, which Grahn argues is a consequence of the previous principles, especially commonality and centeredness. Grahn describes play as the granting of autonomy and agency to the readers or audience, "rather than the emotional manipulation that is a characteristic of linear writing, Stein uses play." (p. 18) In addition Stein's work is funny, and multilayered, allowing a variety of interpretations and engagements. Lastly Grahn argues that one must "insterstand ... engage with the work, to mix with it in an active engagement, rather than 'figuring it out.' Figure it in." (p. 21) Gertrude Stein wrote in longhand, typically about half an hour per day. Alice B. Toklas would collect the pages, type the words and deal with the publishing and was generally helpful while Leo Stein criticized his sister's work publicly. Indeed, Toklas initiated the publisher "Plain Editions" to distribute Stein's work. Today, most manuscripts are kept in the Beinecke Library at Yale University.[50] In 1932, using an accessible style to accommodate the ordinary reading public, she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas; the book would become her first best-seller. Despite the title, it was really her own autobiography. She described herself as extremely confident, one might even say arrogant, always convinced that she was a genius. She was disdainful of mundane tasks and Alice Toklas managed everyday affairs. The style of the autobiography was quite similar to that of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, which was actually written by Alice and contains several unusual recipes such as one for Hashish Fudge (also called Alice B. Toklas brownies), submitted by Brion Gysin.
Several of Stein's writings have been set by composers, including Virgil Thomson's operas Four Saints in Three Acts and The Mother of Us All, and James Tenney's skillful if short setting of Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose as a canon dedicated to Philip Corner, beginning with "a" on an upbeat and continuing so that each repetition shuffles the words, e.g. "a/rose is a rose/is a rose is/a rose is a/rose." Reception Sherwood Anderson in his public introduction to Stein's 1922 publication of Geography and Plays wrote:
In a private letter to his brother Karl, Anderson said,
(Mellow, 1974 at p. 260) F. W. Dupee (1990, p. IX) defines "Steinese" as "gnomic, repetitive, illogical, sparsely punctuated...a scandal and a delight, lending itself equally to derisory parody and fierce denunciation. Though Stein perhaps influenced authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Richard Wright, as hinted above, her work has often been misunderstood. Composer Constant Lambert (1936) naively compares Stravinsky's choice of "the drabbest and least significant phrases" in L'Histoire du Soldat to Gertrude Stein's in "Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene" (1922), specifically: "[E]veryday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday", of which he contends that the "effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever", apparently entirely missing the pun frequently employed by Stein. Perhaps James Thurber understands all too well:
(From Collecting Himself, Michael Rosen, ed.) Quotations
Tributes
Bibliography Selected Works
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th Century. Biography Early life, relationship with Gertrude Stein She was born Alice Babette Toklas in San Francisco, California into a middle-class Jewish family and attended schools in both San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time she also studied music at the University of Washington. She met Gertrude Stein in Paris on September 8, 1907 on the first day that she arrived. Together they hosted a salon that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Wilder and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse and Braque. Acting as Stein's confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure, chiefly living in the shadow of Stein, until Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It became Stein's bestselling book. The two were a couple until Gertrude Stein's death in 1946.[1] After Stein After the death of Gertrude Stein, Toklas published her own literary memoir, a 1954 book that mixed reminiscences and recipes under the title The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. The most famous recipe therein (actually contributed by her friend Brion Gysin) was called "Haschich Fudge," a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and "canibus [sic] sativa," or marijuana. Her name was later lent to the range of cannabis concoctions called Alice B. Toklas brownies. Some believe that the slang term toke, meaning to inhale marijuana, is derived from her last name, though it is more likely to originate in the Spanish verb tocar, meaning to touch or taste. The cookbook has been translated into numerous languages, most recently into Norwegian in 2007. A second cookbook followed in 1958 called Aromas and Flavors of Past and Present; however, Toklas did not approve of it as it had been heavily annotated by Poppy Cannon, an editor from House Beautiful magazine. She also wrote articles for several magazines and newspapers including The New Republic and the New York Times. In 1963 she published her autobiography, What Is Remembered, which abruptly ends with Stein's death, leaving little doubt that Stein was the love of her lifetime. Her later years were very difficult because of poor health and financial problems, aggravated by the fact that Stein's heirs took the priceless paintings (some of them Picassos) which Stein had willed to Toklas. Toklas also became a Roman Catholic convert in her old age. Toklas died in poverty at the age of 89, and is buried next to Stein in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France; Toklas' name is engraved on the back of Stein's headstone.[2] In modern culture Brendan Behan ended his poem about Paris and Gertrude Stein with:
Both Toklas and Stein are referred to in both the stage play Mame and film version Auntie Mame. In a lyric of the song "Bosom Buddies", Vera Charles declares: "But sweetie, I'll always be Alice Toklas, if you'll be Gertrude Stein." The 1968 Peter Sellers movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas was named for Toklas' cannabis brownies, which play a significant role in the plot. In 1969 on an episode of the ABC-TV variety show Hollywood Palace hosted by Diana Ross & The Supremes, member Mary Wilson tells Diana that show guest and comedian Soupy Sales has asked The Supremes to bake him a pie, to which Diana Ross replies to her group mates: "A pie, huh? Well, you better not use the recipe you got from Alice B. Toklas"! A reference was made to Toklas in a 1969 episode of "Bewitched" called "Tabitha's Weekend". Endora (Agnes Moorehead) makes a joke about eating Mother Stephens (Mabel Albertson) raisin cookies when Tabitha asks if "Grandmama" would like one too. When offered one, Endora says "They're not by chance from an Alice B. Toklas recipe?" Mrs. Stephens says, "They're my recipe." To which Endora says "Then I think I'll pass." The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, a political organization founded in 1971 in San Francisco, is a namesake of Toklas. Samuel Steward, who met Toklas and Stein in the 1930s, edited Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977), and wrote two mystery novels featuring Stein and Toklas as characters, Murder Is Murder Is Murder (1985) and The Caravaggio Shawl (1989). Alice B. Toklas is pictured in the 1978 Swedish absurdist comedy film Picassos Äventyr (Adventures of Picasso), directed by Tage Danielsson. In this film she is played by Wilfrid Brambell, who was a star of the television series Steptoe and Son. A running gag is based on word play: Gertrude Stein often silences Alice B. Toklas with the phrase "Alice, be talkless." Toklas is mentioned, along with Gertrude Stein, in Tim Curry's 1979 song I Do The Rock. Toklas is played by Linda Hunt in the
1987 film Waiting for the Moon.[4] The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted in 1989 to rename a block of Myrtle Street between Polk Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco as Alice B. Toklas Place, since Toklas was born one block away on O'Farrell Street.[5][6] The Toyes made mention of Toklas in their 1995 song "Monster Hash". In certain California communities, female facial hair is an accepted form of self-expression and is referred to as a "Toklas-stache". Toklas is mentioned in the Eric Schwartz song "Hattie and Mattie" on his 1999 That's How It's Gonna Be album. The song also appears on Holly Near's 2006 album Show Up. In La Chuisa's "The Wild Party" the lesbian stripper Madelaine True mentions her in the song "Like Sally" Bill Richardson's 2001 book Waiting for Gertrude makes reference to Toklas and Stein's relationship. Vietnamese American writer Monique Truong developed a marginal character, Toklas' Indochinese cook, in her bestselling novel The Book of Salt, published in 2003. The novel contains substantial citations and relays several scenes taken from the Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. Melissa Manchester wrote the song "When Paris Was A Woman" which appears on her 2004 album "When I Look Down That Road". The song is from the view point of Alice B. Toklas. References
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