Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice

Why would I read a book on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas, two writers (well, probably one) I have sedulously avoided reading in the past? Well, first off, the book was on sale -it was half price, more or less- at the Strand Book Store ("Eight miles of Books") in New York City and I went down to the Strand to replenish my book larder. (That's not all I picked up. I left the Strand with a first rate experimental novel by a guy I'd never read before at all -David Markson's This Is a Novel; a novel I hadn't read by Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl; David Cesarini's Becoming Eichmann; Paul Fussell's latest reflection on the experience of soldiering in World War II, The Boy's Crusade; a new history of the Trojan War by Barry Schwartz; Philip Roth's Everyman; and a novel written almost exclusively in the first person plural (that means "we") about office life, Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.) Second, while I don't know much about Stein, I do know she's some kind of genius of the English language. ("Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," she wrote. It works for me. Reading that actually makes me see something about roses I hadn't seen before.) (And I like her characterization of Oakland, California, the town where she grew up: "There's no there there." That's really, really cool.) Third, the few times I tried to read Stein I came up with a big Goose Egg, but I know she's a major writer, though a particularly thorny one, of the modernist variety, a Picasso of prose, so to speak. Fourth, I read the first few sentences of Malcolm's lively study of Stein and I was ... hooked.: "When I read The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book for the first time, Eisenhower was in the white House and Liz Taylor had taken Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds. The book, published in 1954, was given to me by a fellow member of a group of pretentious young persons I ran around with, who had nothing but amused contempt for middlebrow American culture, and whose revolt against the conformity of the time largely took the form of patronizing a furniture store called Design Research and of writing mannered letters to each other modeled on the mannered letters of certain famous literary homosexuals, then not known as such. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book fit right in with our program of callow preciousness; we loved its waspishly magisterial tone, its hauteur and malice....." What emerges from this engaging study is a picture of complicated but mutually beneficial relationship. Gertrude dearly decided that she was a genius, a nonpareil, and that, ergo, everyone around her should cater to her needs. "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing," she reported in Everybody's Autobiography. Everyone loved Gertrude but very few people really cared for Alice but it was Alice's careful, jealous, fussy caring for Gertrude that made it possible for Gertrude to exercise her genius --which, in Malcolm's eyes, was considerable

Then don't read Janet Malcolm. Malcolm is not the kind of biographer who delivers more than you ever wanted to know about a subject. But if you want to know how biographers do their sleuth work, how one wrong date can determine whether we think Stein horrid or not, and how the personalities of Stein scholars have shaped what we do and don't know about this writer, then read Malcolm. Along the way, you will be treated to delectable prose and delicious literary gossip. And you will get to know the personalities of Stein and Toklas in all their lively and quirky splendor.

Concisely told biographical work of Stein and Toklas. If you are looking for a definitive biography, this is not the book for you. If you want to understand the essence of their relationship and enjoy good writing and insightful phrasing, pick this up.

Malcolm, Janet." Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice", Yale University Press, 2007. Looking at Stein and Alice B. Amos Lassen Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are two of the first lesbian heroes we have. They were out long before being gay was even considered anything but a mental disease. In Janet Malcolm's "Two Lives", we get an in depth look at the two icons. It's a short book but filled with a lot of information and the two women come across in an entirely new way. We learn of Stein's fling with fascism and that she was a Republican. However, we also learn that she did not fully understand all that she did. Stein was very sexual while Toklas was a bit more subdued. We also learn that both women were Jewish but did not talk about it much and one of the questions I have always had about Stein is still unanswered and that is if her Jewish roots had any effect on her writing. The book is beautifully written and holds interest--so much so, that I read it in one sitting. Questions are asked but not completely answered--the pondering is left to the reader.

I've been waiting and waiting for this book since I read Malcolm's article "Gertrude Stein's War" in a June 2003 issue of "The New Yorker." The article, which took up a large part of the issue, was fascinating and prompted me to look up more on Stein. I bought "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook" and tried the recipe for mousse. (It was a disaster: a misreading of fractions caused this former English major to add too much baker's chocolate and then a distracted moment had me pick up the electric beaters while they were going and mousse spattered all over the kitchen walls.) Over the next few years, Malcolm wrote a few more article for "The New Yorker," whetting my appetite even more, so it was with great joy when I saw this book was finally ready. The wall of reality was hard. True, I have nobody to blame but myself for my expectations but this book is little more than the three "New Yorker" articles put together. There isn't much here that I hadn't read before. Once I swallowed my disappointment, I'm happy to have the book. It's easier than trying to dredge up the old magazine articles again; I've no idea where I even put them. The book is well written and readable, possibly one of the most accessible biographies ever written about Stein and Toklas in Malcolm's friendly prose. Malcolm's biography also reveals some very unsavory things about Stein that may change one's perception of her. Is Stein a feminist, lesbian hero or a right-wing figure who just falls short of being a collaborationist? Malcolm gives us the facts and we have to be the ones who make of them what we will. After I read the book, I only had one real question, one that cannot be answered by Malcolm: what exactly DID Hemingway hear Toklas screaming at Stein? We may never know.