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Letter to the editor

Stein, Toklas partnership fostered great works

Gertrude Stein drew from lover Alice B. Toklas, and vice versa.

By David Walton, Special to the Times
Published October 14, 2007

That indispensability is the theme of Janet Malcolm's perceptive and very readable little book on this famous literary and domestic partnership - a union of voices and aesthetics.

Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice began as an article in the New Yorker, and opens with the question, "How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians escaped the Nazis?" The answer, some of it from responses to that article, provides insight into Stein and Toklas' years in Paris and theSouth of France during the war.

They survived because they were liked, admired, accepted and protected - despite the usual image of Stein as imperious and Toklas as sour. Stein's tour of the United States in the 1930s had made her and Alice celebrities. During the Liberation, America GIs tracked them down as one of the sights of Paris.

Toklas was herself the author of a famous cookbook whose literary merit rests upon its distinctive voice, reminiscent of Stein's 1933 bestseller The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. "The similarity of tone of the two books only deepens the mystery of who influenced whom," Malcolm says.

Malcolm's reading of Stein's work is highly illuminating, and her selection of passages gives a fair representation of - and substitute for - Stein's highly repetitive and seemingly aimless writings. Yet, Malcolm shows, "She wrote almost exclusively, if not always openly, about her own experiences, and of all writers she may be the one whose work most cries out for the assistance of biography in its interpretation."

Malcolm's book opens new doors to an understanding of Stein's writing and of the indispensable presence of Alice B. Toklas in its creation.

David Walton is a writer in Pittsburgh.

[Last modified October 10, 2007, 18:35:52]