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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Two
Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Compact I
picked up Janet Malcolm’s book Two Lives:
Gertrude and Alice, because it seemed to be a compact biography of these
two interest 20th century individuals: Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
Toklas. I came away from the book with a few conclusions. An author can
develop an intense interest in almost anything. Stein may have been a genius
but her prose remains unreadable. Discerning who helped whom during World War
II and why can be a great challenge. Here’s an excerpt, from
Part One, pp. 13-16: With
The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas she not
only achieved the vulgar celebrity she craved but brilliantly solved the koan
of autobiography by
disclaiming responsibility for the one being written.
Speaking in the voice of her companion, Gertrude Stein can entirely dispense
with the fiction of humility that the conventional autobiographer must at
every moment struggle to maintain. "I must say that only three times in
my life have I met a genius," Stein has Toklas say of their first meeting,
"and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may
say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the
quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are
Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead." Stein's playful egomania pervades
the book ("she realizes that in English literature in her time she is
the only one"), as does an optimism that gives the story of her life the
character of a fairy tale. Nothing bad ever happens to her; every difficulty
is overcome as if by magic. While a student at Radcliffe in the late 1890s,
faced with an examination in William James's philosophy course for which she
has not studied, Stein writes on the examination paper: "Dear Professor
James, I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination
paper in philosophy today," and leaves the examination room. The next
day she receives a postcard from James: "Dear Miss Stein, I understand
perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself"—and he gives her
the highest grade in the course. Her whole life is like that. Picasso is
going to paint her portrait but after eighty or ninety sittings, he says,
"I can't see you any longer when I look," irritably paints out the
face, and goes to Spain for a vacation. On his return, he paints in the face
from memory and presents Stein with the famous masklike portrait. Or here is
how Stein and Toklas came to work as volunteers during World War I, driving
supplies to regional French hospitals (work for which they were decorated by
the French government): "One day we were walking down the rue des Pyramides
and there was a ford car being backed up the street by an american girl and
on the car it said, American Fund for French Wounded.... We went over and
talked to the american girl and then interviewed Mrs. Lathrop, the head of
the organization. She was enthusiastic, she was always enthusiastic and she
said, get a car. But where, we asked. From America, she said. But how, we
said. Ask somebody, she said, and Gertrude Stein did, she asked her cousin
and in a few months the ford car came." To
whatever extent you’re curious about the lives of Stein and Toklas, you’re
likely to find something of interest on the pages of Two
Lives. If, like me, you don’t know much, you’ll know a little more, but
probably won’t care. Steve
Hopkins, December 20, 2007 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Two Lives.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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