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Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice
"How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?” Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master “whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness” and “thin, plain, tense, sour” Alice B. Toklas, the “worker bee” who ministered to Stein’s needs throughout their forty-year expatriate “marriage.” As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couple’s charmed life in a village in Vichy France, her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. “The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties,” she writes.
The portrait of the legendary couple that emerges from this work is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat.
The portrait of the legendary couple that emerges from this work is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat.
Two Lives is also a work of literary criticism. “Even the most hermetic of [Stein’s] writings are works of submerged autobiography,” Malcolm writes. “The key of 'I' will not unlock the door to their meaning—you need a crowbar for that—but will sometimes admit you to a kind of anteroom of suggestion.” Whether unpacking the accessible Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which Stein “solves the koan of autobiography,” or wrestling with The Making of Americans, a masterwork of “magisterial disorder,” Malcolm is stunningly perceptive.
“[Janet Malcolm] is among the most intellectually provocative of authors . . .able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight.”—David Lehman, Boston Globe
“Not since Virginia Woolf has anyone thought so trenchantly about the strange art of biography.”—Christopher Benfey<
229 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
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About the author
Janet Malcolm
25 books516 followersJanet Malcolm was a journalist, biographer, collagist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of
In the Freud Archives
and
The Crime of Sheila McGough
, as well as biographies of Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Anton Chekhov.
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
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May 5, 2022
Janet Malcolm's Gertrude Stein: tricky, haunted, unscrupulous, endlessly-intriguing and, with qualifications, admirable.
'Two Lives' is an always interesting, often withering, typically stylish portrait of a fascinating figure (who has always baffled me -- I have dipped in and out of my Gertrude Stein: A Reader many times over the years, have always enjoyed the singularity of its sentences but have continually put the book back on the shelf with perhaps less as opposed to more of a sense of understanding -- and still does, only now slightly less so). Stein, as Malcolm has it, was deeply hypocritical (she was Jewish when it suited her, and indulged Nazis who offered sufficient flattery), selfish, morally dubious, ruthless (although, in her one-time-beloved dilettante brother Leo's case, this seems at least partly justified) and generally delusional in whatever way suited her and Alice Toklas. Stein also never doubted her own genius, and it's this factor, 'Two Lives' suggests, as well as her acceptance of herself as someone marked out for exceptional treatment and regard, that convinced enough folks to treat her like displaced royalty (Stein is convinced that her 'deep sense of equality' explains the willingness of just about everyone to do everything for her, fix her car, displace the occupant of a beloved house, you name it). Her sense of exceptionalism, perhaps, allowed whatever merit the work has to flourish, seeded and nourished it. The Making of Americans, Malcolm suggests, is the confession of an inability to write The Making of Americans, not that this would ever hamper its composition, since everything Stein had to say, so she believed (and was partly right) was of interest (she rarely redrafted). In doing so, Stein placed a curious, burgeoning shadow across all American letters.
'Stein’s own occasional reversions to conventional narration of the “one or two things they have been doing that some one is telling about them” sort give the book a movement like that of a train that now and then comes up to speed but mostly crawls along because of track work. Stein keeps returning to the project it appears she has abandoned—that of writing fiction—and then berates herself for doing it badly. “Sometimes I am almost despairing,” she writes. “I know the being in Miss Dounor that I am beginning describing, I know the being in Miss Charles that I am soon going to be beginning describing, I know the being in Mrs. Redfern, I have been describing the being in that one. I know the being in each one of these three of them and I am almost despairing for I am doubting if I am knowing it poignantly enough to be really knowing it, to be really knowing the being in any one of the three of them. Always now I am despairing” (italics mine).
Tolstoy and Dickens and Jane Austen knew it poignantly enough. Stein, realizing that she is not equipped to create fictional characters, and yet believing herself to be a literary genius, stubbornly persists in her task of filling pieces of paper every day with her earnest and remarkable thoughts. Presently she makes another daunting discovery: “I have not any dramatic imagination for action in them, I only can know about action in them from knowing action they have been doing any of them. . . .I cannot ever construct action for them to be doing.”
In other words, she cannot invent. She can only write about what has actually happened to people she knows. And yet she is hardly doing what other writers do who lack dramatic imagination --journalists, biographers, memoirists. If her characters do not resemble the characters of fiction (it is amusing to think of Anna Karenina as a mass of gritty dried stuff held together by a skin. Or Emma Woodhouse as something white and gelatinous), neither do they resemble the characters of biography, memoir, and reportage. The characters in The Making of Americans resemble shades. You never see them. Stein makes sure you know almost nothing concrete about them, sometimes not even their sex. This is truly a new way of writing a novel, a novel where the author withholds the characters from the reader. Stein regards her characters as if from a great distance and, at the same time, seems, in her desperate eagerness to understand them, almost to be taking them into her mouth and tasting them. Only the narrator remains a full-blooded person, for whom one feels increasing sympathy and a sort of stunned admiration.
What the stakes are for the narrator—why her strange taxonomy is of such desperate importance to her—becomes clearer as the book progresses. It is some sort of defense against death. Death weaves in and out of the narrative and takes it over in the end, in the solemn and mysterious section about the troubled second Hersland son, David, who obscurely wills his own early death. “Dead is dead,” the narrator grimly observes midway through the book. But some pages later she writes of the comfort she derives from the idea that every individual is a type or kind.
“This is a pleasant feeling, this is comforting to me just now when I am thinking of every one always growing older and then dying, now when I am thinking about each one being sometime a sick one each one being sometime a dead one.” She goes on in her incantatory way, “I am having a pleasant completely completed feeling and always then it is a comfortable and calming thing this being certain that each one is one of a kind of them in men and women and that there are always
very many of each kind existing . . . that each one sometime is to be a dead one is then not
discouraging.”
It takes a long time to read The Making of Americans. The language Stein writes in (after cutting herself loose from the conventional language of the opening Dehning section) is not the transparent language through which we enter stories, forgetting we are reading. We never forget we are reading while reading The Making of Americans. Stein seems to be transcribing rather than
transforming thought as she writes, making a kind of literal translation of what is going on in
her mind. The alacrity with which she catches her thoughts before they turn into stale standard expressions may be the most singular of her accomplishments. Her influence on twentieth-century writing is nebulous. No school of Stein ever came into being. But every writer who lingers over Stein’s sentences is apt to feel a little stab of shame over the heedless predictability of his own.'
'Two Lives' is an always interesting, often withering, typically stylish portrait of a fascinating figure (who has always baffled me -- I have dipped in and out of my Gertrude Stein: A Reader many times over the years, have always enjoyed the singularity of its sentences but have continually put the book back on the shelf with perhaps less as opposed to more of a sense of understanding -- and still does, only now slightly less so). Stein, as Malcolm has it, was deeply hypocritical (she was Jewish when it suited her, and indulged Nazis who offered sufficient flattery), selfish, morally dubious, ruthless (although, in her one-time-beloved dilettante brother Leo's case, this seems at least partly justified) and generally delusional in whatever way suited her and Alice Toklas. Stein also never doubted her own genius, and it's this factor, 'Two Lives' suggests, as well as her acceptance of herself as someone marked out for exceptional treatment and regard, that convinced enough folks to treat her like displaced royalty (Stein is convinced that her 'deep sense of equality' explains the willingness of just about everyone to do everything for her, fix her car, displace the occupant of a beloved house, you name it). Her sense of exceptionalism, perhaps, allowed whatever merit the work has to flourish, seeded and nourished it. The Making of Americans, Malcolm suggests, is the confession of an inability to write The Making of Americans, not that this would ever hamper its composition, since everything Stein had to say, so she believed (and was partly right) was of interest (she rarely redrafted). In doing so, Stein placed a curious, burgeoning shadow across all American letters.
'Stein’s own occasional reversions to conventional narration of the “one or two things they have been doing that some one is telling about them” sort give the book a movement like that of a train that now and then comes up to speed but mostly crawls along because of track work. Stein keeps returning to the project it appears she has abandoned—that of writing fiction—and then berates herself for doing it badly. “Sometimes I am almost despairing,” she writes. “I know the being in Miss Dounor that I am beginning describing, I know the being in Miss Charles that I am soon going to be beginning describing, I know the being in Mrs. Redfern, I have been describing the being in that one. I know the being in each one of these three of them and I am almost despairing for I am doubting if I am knowing it poignantly enough to be really knowing it, to be really knowing the being in any one of the three of them. Always now I am despairing” (italics mine).
Tolstoy and Dickens and Jane Austen knew it poignantly enough. Stein, realizing that she is not equipped to create fictional characters, and yet believing herself to be a literary genius, stubbornly persists in her task of filling pieces of paper every day with her earnest and remarkable thoughts. Presently she makes another daunting discovery: “I have not any dramatic imagination for action in them, I only can know about action in them from knowing action they have been doing any of them. . . .I cannot ever construct action for them to be doing.”
In other words, she cannot invent. She can only write about what has actually happened to people she knows. And yet she is hardly doing what other writers do who lack dramatic imagination --journalists, biographers, memoirists. If her characters do not resemble the characters of fiction (it is amusing to think of Anna Karenina as a mass of gritty dried stuff held together by a skin. Or Emma Woodhouse as something white and gelatinous), neither do they resemble the characters of biography, memoir, and reportage. The characters in The Making of Americans resemble shades. You never see them. Stein makes sure you know almost nothing concrete about them, sometimes not even their sex. This is truly a new way of writing a novel, a novel where the author withholds the characters from the reader. Stein regards her characters as if from a great distance and, at the same time, seems, in her desperate eagerness to understand them, almost to be taking them into her mouth and tasting them. Only the narrator remains a full-blooded person, for whom one feels increasing sympathy and a sort of stunned admiration.
What the stakes are for the narrator—why her strange taxonomy is of such desperate importance to her—becomes clearer as the book progresses. It is some sort of defense against death. Death weaves in and out of the narrative and takes it over in the end, in the solemn and mysterious section about the troubled second Hersland son, David, who obscurely wills his own early death. “Dead is dead,” the narrator grimly observes midway through the book. But some pages later she writes of the comfort she derives from the idea that every individual is a type or kind.
“This is a pleasant feeling, this is comforting to me just now when I am thinking of every one always growing older and then dying, now when I am thinking about each one being sometime a sick one each one being sometime a dead one.” She goes on in her incantatory way, “I am having a pleasant completely completed feeling and always then it is a comfortable and calming thing this being certain that each one is one of a kind of them in men and women and that there are always
very many of each kind existing . . . that each one sometime is to be a dead one is then not
discouraging.”
It takes a long time to read The Making of Americans. The language Stein writes in (after cutting herself loose from the conventional language of the opening Dehning section) is not the transparent language through which we enter stories, forgetting we are reading. We never forget we are reading while reading The Making of Americans. Stein seems to be transcribing rather than
transforming thought as she writes, making a kind of literal translation of what is going on in
her mind. The alacrity with which she catches her thoughts before they turn into stale standard expressions may be the most singular of her accomplishments. Her influence on twentieth-century writing is nebulous. No school of Stein ever came into being. But every writer who lingers over Stein’s sentences is apt to feel a little stab of shame over the heedless predictability of his own.'
April 16, 2017
I remain unconvinced of Gertrude Stein's importance to either literature or history (nor do I think Janet Malcolm was particularly trying to convince me on this front). What is always most interesting in any book by Janet Malcolm is Janet Malcolm writing about the way she works and writes.
August 2, 2009
Exactly how DID two rather prominent Jewish lesbians manage to lead a rather idyllic French country life in the middle of the Nazi occupation of France? This is the question Malcolm starts with in her attempt to get a foothold in the much-chronicled, much more hinted and insinuated life of Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B Toklas.
Full disclosure: I spent my adolescence reading gossipy accounts of Gertrude Stein's involvement with William James, with Hemingway, with Picasso, with the Shakespeare and Co. people, with the whole coterie surrounding the first performance of Les Rites des Printemps. The woman knew every one who was even remotely fascinating in early 20th century western culture. Plus, she was so darn dramatic and moody, saying all kinds of epigrammatically horrible things about the people who were supposed to be her friends, and not really respecting any gender norms whatsoever. I read everything I could get my hands on about her, kind of the way other girls my age were reading all about River Phoenix.
So, when I opened up Malcolm's book, I was mostly just looking to regress into a world of familiar literary gossip where knowing who the key players were (and I did) would be much more important than actually knowing anything about what they wrote (which I actually do, but whatever). So Malcolm pleasantly surprised me, first by asking the most obvious of questions about Stein's and Toklas's life, which no biography I had read ever did, and secondly by allowing her investigation into the question spiral outward into both an analysis of what Gertrude Stein actually wrote (turgidly abstract prose fiction whose main charm lies in its wildly repetitive deployment of gerunds) and into a gossipy expose on the small circle of professors who consider themselves Stein's literary guardians (if you are a writer yourself, you will probably want to avoid thinking too hard about the failed academic who refuses to allow anyone else access to hours of taped autobiographical interviews with Stein he conducted. Over fifty years later, he's still convinced that he's on the verge of writing her definitive biography).
What's the answer to Malcolm's original question? Easy -- Stein charmed local Nazi officials into turning the other way because she was so very famous. Stein never thought she was defined by categories such as "woman" or "Jew" that might limit others. She never really seems to have contemplated exactly how hideous her tacit collaboration was, either. But by the time we actually arrive at this answer, the cast of characters Malcolm has assembled -- those who surrounded Stein during her life, those who teemed through her arduous prose, and those who have assembled themselves around her body of work after her death -- are all making claims for brilliance, charm, and even moral bankruptcy that makes Stein seem merely typical.
Full disclosure: I spent my adolescence reading gossipy accounts of Gertrude Stein's involvement with William James, with Hemingway, with Picasso, with the Shakespeare and Co. people, with the whole coterie surrounding the first performance of Les Rites des Printemps. The woman knew every one who was even remotely fascinating in early 20th century western culture. Plus, she was so darn dramatic and moody, saying all kinds of epigrammatically horrible things about the people who were supposed to be her friends, and not really respecting any gender norms whatsoever. I read everything I could get my hands on about her, kind of the way other girls my age were reading all about River Phoenix.
So, when I opened up Malcolm's book, I was mostly just looking to regress into a world of familiar literary gossip where knowing who the key players were (and I did) would be much more important than actually knowing anything about what they wrote (which I actually do, but whatever). So Malcolm pleasantly surprised me, first by asking the most obvious of questions about Stein's and Toklas's life, which no biography I had read ever did, and secondly by allowing her investigation into the question spiral outward into both an analysis of what Gertrude Stein actually wrote (turgidly abstract prose fiction whose main charm lies in its wildly repetitive deployment of gerunds) and into a gossipy expose on the small circle of professors who consider themselves Stein's literary guardians (if you are a writer yourself, you will probably want to avoid thinking too hard about the failed academic who refuses to allow anyone else access to hours of taped autobiographical interviews with Stein he conducted. Over fifty years later, he's still convinced that he's on the verge of writing her definitive biography).
What's the answer to Malcolm's original question? Easy -- Stein charmed local Nazi officials into turning the other way because she was so very famous. Stein never thought she was defined by categories such as "woman" or "Jew" that might limit others. She never really seems to have contemplated exactly how hideous her tacit collaboration was, either. But by the time we actually arrive at this answer, the cast of characters Malcolm has assembled -- those who surrounded Stein during her life, those who teemed through her arduous prose, and those who have assembled themselves around her body of work after her death -- are all making claims for brilliance, charm, and even moral bankruptcy that makes Stein seem merely typical.
April 3, 2016
I was really enjoying this when I started: I was hungover, I wanted to learn about Stein, and Malcolm can write sentences that sometimes rise above (or fall below, either way) the usual New York journalism. It was exactly what I wanted: three essays, one about Stein and Toklas in occupied France, one about Stein's work and academic criticism of it, and then one about Toklas' life. Also: super short, and really nicely designed.
Having finished it, though, I see that had I not been hung over, I would have been pretty annoyed. Malcolm writes about as much about Stein and Toklas as she does about some literary critics she met. She gets all meta with the "these people don't like this person and maybe this person is exploiting Stein but then aren't I just exploiting him too?" And slowly but surely we learn more about Janet Malcolm and the literary types she knows than we learn about Stein or Toklas. And what we learn about Janet Malcolm is that she just can't believe that there are some people in the world who don't care about their ethnic roots! Imagine the temerity! Your name is freaking Stein, how come you don't continuously write about being Jewish??
Because not post-Reagan America, that's why.
Anyway, I appreciate that Malcolm has encouraged me to read a couple more of Stein books (Everybody's Biography and Wars I Have Seen), and reminded me that this kind of meandering, vaguely Sebald-esque thing (complete with grainy photos!) really, really, really isn't for me, unless my brain is otherwise non-functional and the lack of connection between paragraphs won't bother me (slash my inability to get with the innovativeness of not caring about those connections has been suspended for some reason).
Having finished it, though, I see that had I not been hung over, I would have been pretty annoyed. Malcolm writes about as much about Stein and Toklas as she does about some literary critics she met. She gets all meta with the "these people don't like this person and maybe this person is exploiting Stein but then aren't I just exploiting him too?" And slowly but surely we learn more about Janet Malcolm and the literary types she knows than we learn about Stein or Toklas. And what we learn about Janet Malcolm is that she just can't believe that there are some people in the world who don't care about their ethnic roots! Imagine the temerity! Your name is freaking Stein, how come you don't continuously write about being Jewish??
Because not post-Reagan America, that's why.
Anyway, I appreciate that Malcolm has encouraged me to read a couple more of Stein books (Everybody's Biography and Wars I Have Seen), and reminded me that this kind of meandering, vaguely Sebald-esque thing (complete with grainy photos!) really, really, really isn't for me, unless my brain is otherwise non-functional and the lack of connection between paragraphs won't bother me (slash my inability to get with the innovativeness of not caring about those connections has been suspended for some reason).
June 17, 2023
I love Alice and Gertrude, and have a high tolerance for reading all about them from many different angles. That said, I found I liked this book less and less the more I read and the more I read the more I wondered who are you I wondered to talk like this.
The author seemed determined to fling gobs of dirt fling gobs everywhere and hope something sticks. What happened for this reader, as this reader read and read, is my opinion of Alice and Gertrude did not change but my opinion of this author certainly did.
Alice and Gertrude remain untarnished remain perfectly imperfect.
The author seemed determined to fling gobs of dirt fling gobs everywhere and hope something sticks. What happened for this reader, as this reader read and read, is my opinion of Alice and Gertrude did not change but my opinion of this author certainly did.
Alice and Gertrude remain untarnished remain perfectly imperfect.
July 31, 2020
Malcolm's typical meta-journalism/meta-commentary approach is getting a bit tired by this point (we learn more about her interactions with Stein scholars than Stein/Toklas, in the end), but this book is certainly worth the price of admission.
I'm not sure that her thesis is really all that interesting -- how did two Jewish lesbians survive in occupied France? -- insofar as the answer is very straightforward (their French neighbors liked them and they had protection from a connection within the Vichy government), but there's definitely some great bits of prose in here.
Two Lives also strongly reinforces my impression of Stein as a deeply silly and pretentious person who is mostly taken seriously because she was able to charm so many geniuses (Picasso et al.); her 'esoteric' (i.e. non-'audience') writings are a gimmick, simply put, and are arguably the most overrated body of literature of the twentieth century.
I'm not sure that her thesis is really all that interesting -- how did two Jewish lesbians survive in occupied France? -- insofar as the answer is very straightforward (their French neighbors liked them and they had protection from a connection within the Vichy government), but there's definitely some great bits of prose in here.
Two Lives also strongly reinforces my impression of Stein as a deeply silly and pretentious person who is mostly taken seriously because she was able to charm so many geniuses (Picasso et al.); her 'esoteric' (i.e. non-'audience') writings are a gimmick, simply put, and are arguably the most overrated body of literature of the twentieth century.
March 7, 2012
If things truly come in waves, we seem to be riding a Gertrude Stein tsunami. Recent Stein events and books include:
-- "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 28-June 2). This extraordinary show presents paintings collected in the early twentieth century by Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife Sarah and displayed at their weekly salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Visually demonstrating the family's significant effect on modern art, the curators have astonishingly managed to convey on multiple levels the compelling concept of how art -- collecting, promoting, and creating it -- is used to seek power within a family.
-- Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories by Wanda M. Corn and Tirza True Latimer. Published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibit at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., this tantalizing, gorgeously illustrated book regards Stein through her objects -- paintings, drawings, prints, handmade gifts from artist friends, snapshots, brochures, programs, clothes, jewelry, wallpaper, stationery, even posthumous Stein kitsch.
-- Yale University Press's new editions of the Stein opuses Ida and Stanzas in Meditation, both books beautifully considered in last month's issue of Bookslut by Elizabeth Bachner.
-- Barbara Will's penetrating study Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma delineates the deep biographical and artistic connections between Stein and fascism.
-- Finally, the oceanic tremor of a book and harbinger of the Gertrude Stein tidal wave, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007).
My adventures navigating this Steinian wave began with Two Lives, a book I was drawn to more out of my interest in Malcolm than in Stein. The book's title, I discovered, is misleading. The story is less about the literary world's most fascinating couple and more about Malcolm's struggle to understand the seriously enigmatic life and work of Gertrude Stein, the mother of modernism and as such a Mother of Us All. Malcolm's enticing account of her own journey into that formidable, apparently inaccessible country -- call it Steinlandia -- with the marvelous triumvirate of Stein scholars, Ulla E. Dydo, Edward M. Burns, and William Rice, as her Virgil, allows her readers to follow vicariously up and down all sorts of Steinian alleys, at once surprising and mundane.
Read the rest of the column at Bookslut: http://www.bookslut.com/the_bombshell...
-- "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 28-June 2). This extraordinary show presents paintings collected in the early twentieth century by Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife Sarah and displayed at their weekly salon at 27 rue de Fleurus. Visually demonstrating the family's significant effect on modern art, the curators have astonishingly managed to convey on multiple levels the compelling concept of how art -- collecting, promoting, and creating it -- is used to seek power within a family.
-- Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories by Wanda M. Corn and Tirza True Latimer. Published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibit at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., this tantalizing, gorgeously illustrated book regards Stein through her objects -- paintings, drawings, prints, handmade gifts from artist friends, snapshots, brochures, programs, clothes, jewelry, wallpaper, stationery, even posthumous Stein kitsch.
-- Yale University Press's new editions of the Stein opuses Ida and Stanzas in Meditation, both books beautifully considered in last month's issue of Bookslut by Elizabeth Bachner.
-- Barbara Will's penetrating study Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma delineates the deep biographical and artistic connections between Stein and fascism.
-- Finally, the oceanic tremor of a book and harbinger of the Gertrude Stein tidal wave, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007).
My adventures navigating this Steinian wave began with Two Lives, a book I was drawn to more out of my interest in Malcolm than in Stein. The book's title, I discovered, is misleading. The story is less about the literary world's most fascinating couple and more about Malcolm's struggle to understand the seriously enigmatic life and work of Gertrude Stein, the mother of modernism and as such a Mother of Us All. Malcolm's enticing account of her own journey into that formidable, apparently inaccessible country -- call it Steinlandia -- with the marvelous triumvirate of Stein scholars, Ulla E. Dydo, Edward M. Burns, and William Rice, as her Virgil, allows her readers to follow vicariously up and down all sorts of Steinian alleys, at once surprising and mundane.
Read the rest of the column at Bookslut: http://www.bookslut.com/the_bombshell...
December 21, 2014
Malcolm investigates the lives of Stein and Toklas and discusses some of Stein's impenetrable writing. Stein remains a significant, even legendary literary figure associated with the rise of modernism in art and literature. The mystery in my mind has always been--why? Malcolm describes her as a sexy, happy, self-proclaimed genius who naturally attracts followers. Stein learned early on that she was not creative, meaning that she could not create characters or conversations for the literature she sought to write, so instead she collected people in order to write about them. During the French Occupation, she and Toklas were protected by a collaborator. Stein hides as much as she admits (in inscrutable prose) and the truth of who she and Toklas were remains obscure, with Malcolm particularly interested in learning of their sense of identity as Jews.
Regardless as to its difficulty, Malcolm finds Stein worthy of the critical attention surrounding her work and, in fact, presents the case made by a trio of Stein scholars that Stein deserves a place in the academic canon. The final section of the book is devoted to Alice B. Toklas after Stein's death, a sad case of a spouse left penurious upon widowhood, despite a relationship that spanned decades and Stein's stated intention in her will that Toklas should be able to sell paintings should she need to do so to maintain herself.
A fascinating glimpse into the lives of two unique historical characters, Malcolm draws from all available sources to expose facets and contradictions to the characters of both women that make them more accessible, less monumental, in their depiction. This is a most welcome accomplishment. Thus fortified, it's time for me to seek out Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, to see another portrayal of the two.
Regardless as to its difficulty, Malcolm finds Stein worthy of the critical attention surrounding her work and, in fact, presents the case made by a trio of Stein scholars that Stein deserves a place in the academic canon. The final section of the book is devoted to Alice B. Toklas after Stein's death, a sad case of a spouse left penurious upon widowhood, despite a relationship that spanned decades and Stein's stated intention in her will that Toklas should be able to sell paintings should she need to do so to maintain herself.
A fascinating glimpse into the lives of two unique historical characters, Malcolm draws from all available sources to expose facets and contradictions to the characters of both women that make them more accessible, less monumental, in their depiction. This is a most welcome accomplishment. Thus fortified, it's time for me to seek out Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, to see another portrayal of the two.
January 21, 2017
"Posterity has not dealt kindly with Stein's alter ego. Deep mythic structures determine who is likable and who isn't among the famous dead. The practical spirit is an essential but unlovable spirit. Toklas remains the dour ugly crone to Stein's handsome playful princess."
October 23, 2022
Turns out i had the book on my shelf, and had read it before, and it was relegated to some dusty drawer in my memory.
I've had the same experience a decade later. It is vaguely interesting to read about Gertrude, and even the bloodless cranky Alice, but I am not sure what I learned. Oh yes, I learned that I will never read Stein's The Making of Americans.
Malcom's book does not bring either ladies to life, and the historical elemental joy of Gertrude in her salon is entombed away behind many glass doors. The treatment of the ladies' Jewishness, their remaining in Vichy France during the war, is all just as puzzling to me as before I opened the book. Good thing it was short.
I've had the same experience a decade later. It is vaguely interesting to read about Gertrude, and even the bloodless cranky Alice, but I am not sure what I learned. Oh yes, I learned that I will never read Stein's The Making of Americans.
Malcom's book does not bring either ladies to life, and the historical elemental joy of Gertrude in her salon is entombed away behind many glass doors. The treatment of the ladies' Jewishness, their remaining in Vichy France during the war, is all just as puzzling to me as before I opened the book. Good thing it was short.
October 3, 2024
J'entrais dans ce Two Lives comme on entre en guerre. Prêt à rejeter la posture critique de Janet Malcolm sur l'apport de Stein dans l'histoire littéraire.
J'en sors à la fois apaisé et encore plus combatif. Prêt à défendre bec et ongles ma chère chère chère Gertrude Stein, ses idiosyncrasies, ses élucubrations, ses axiomes aussi farfelus que fondamentaux.
C'est comique d'une certaine manière: il n'y a que de l'antagonisme dans ce livre. Malcolm l'a écrit en cherchant à comprendre l'oeuvre et à la discréditer d'un même souffle; et je l'ai lu en cherchant à questionner la démarche tout en admirant son toupet, son front, toute le kit.
J'en sors à la fois apaisé et encore plus combatif. Prêt à défendre bec et ongles ma chère chère chère Gertrude Stein, ses idiosyncrasies, ses élucubrations, ses axiomes aussi farfelus que fondamentaux.
C'est comique d'une certaine manière: il n'y a que de l'antagonisme dans ce livre. Malcolm l'a écrit en cherchant à comprendre l'oeuvre et à la discréditer d'un même souffle; et je l'ai lu en cherchant à questionner la démarche tout en admirant son toupet, son front, toute le kit.
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December 18, 2024wanted to read this because of hemingway’s account of his friendship with stein in A Moveable Feast, and feel I really concur with his (negative) opinion of her writing. the frequent quoting of the book's subject was the worst part of it, in an otherwise enjoyable book.
February 11, 2009
I returned this to the library before I could properly quote from the way Malcolm sort of unravels, against her will, especially in her reading of Making of the Americans. It may be true she has no 'intuition' towards Stein (something Malcolm loves to admit, endlessly comparing herself - negatively - to Ulla Dydo, I think she even sets up a metaphor somewhere of Dydo as the foodie of Stein criticism and Malcolm as the eater of hamburgers and french fries, I wish she'd have said 'hamburger helper' instead, but anyways) what this book taught me or reminded me is that resistance and reluctance and even dis-inclination remain underrated as reading positions, who cares if in Malcolm's book (literally) the following quotes (dug up from an email) aren't intended as praise?
"the author has regressed to a state where evidently she cannot
differentiate writing from shitting"
"Perhaps no other novel makes it so plain to the reader that it is being written over time, and that, like life, it is inconsistent and changeable. Just when it looks like Stein has taken permanent leave of her senses and will never stop gibbering about the mushy sausage-like things she has replaced her characters with, she snaps out of it"
"if her characters do not resemble the characters of fiction (it is amusing to think of Anna Karenina as a mass of gritty dried stuff held together by skin. Or Emma Woodhouse as something white and gelatinous), neither do they resemble the characters of
biography, memoir and reportage."
As always, if you've written a book of poetry or a book about poetry, you get FIVE STARS. From Stephanie.
"the author has regressed to a state where evidently she cannot
differentiate writing from shitting"
"Perhaps no other novel makes it so plain to the reader that it is being written over time, and that, like life, it is inconsistent and changeable. Just when it looks like Stein has taken permanent leave of her senses and will never stop gibbering about the mushy sausage-like things she has replaced her characters with, she snaps out of it"
"if her characters do not resemble the characters of fiction (it is amusing to think of Anna Karenina as a mass of gritty dried stuff held together by skin. Or Emma Woodhouse as something white and gelatinous), neither do they resemble the characters of
biography, memoir and reportage."
As always, if you've written a book of poetry or a book about poetry, you get FIVE STARS. From Stephanie.
June 16, 2008
A very interesting and approachable look at the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Not very sympathtic to Toklas though. Probably the most important information I gathered from this book was the author's view of the challenges and pleasures of reading Stein's The Making of American's.
May 16, 2016
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was informative and entertaining. Having said that, I may read The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, but doubt if I will try any of Gertrude's other works any time soon!
July 21, 2024
very funny little kind-of biography with an outstanding key change when stein's prominent contemporary biographers become characters themselves and also a kind of gossipy greek chorus
May 10, 2023
I like Janet Malcolm's style, especially in essays, and this feels like an extended essay. I did actually learn a lot about Stein and Toklas, and also put in perspective my reading of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. But the more interesting parts were Malcolm writing about writing a biography or an autobiography and how that reflects not only on Stein's works but also on this one.
June 5, 2023
I overall like this book. I didn't know anything about Alice Toklas or Gertrude Stein before reading this and it painted an interesting picture of their life together. The author referenced other writings often and it sometimes added to my confusion, but I appreciated the snippets of work by Stein and Toklas.
September 4, 2024
Loved it. I’ve always been interested to know more about stein and Toklas. They’re always there on the edge of modernist art history. But boy oh boy this does not make me want to read any stein 😂 😂 DIFFICULT. Have also wanted to read Janet Malcolm so it was a good double whammy.
January 18, 2022
Researching Gertrude Stein is my current rabbit hole: she is a huge and mystifying presence from the 20th century whose legacy and influence are hotly debated. Spurred by the disappointing but legendary “Autobiography of Alice B Toklas,” I’ve spent the past few weeks madly reading about the couple. Janet Malcolm’s “Two Lives” (a riff on Stein’s own “Three Lives”) seemed like a great place to start, give the author’s reputation as an incisive writer (publishing frequently in The New Yorker).
The bottom line: a book nearly as curious as Stein herself, but far briefer. It was a great read, with rich insights. Malcolm’s essays here document both fact and process; we are introduced to a few of the leading lights in “Stein-ology” as Malcolm does her research and struggles to make sense of the famous duo. The book also underlines how much of the couple’s life is still open to interpretation although Malcolm is not hesitant to judge. Her harsh appraisal of Stein and Toklas centers to a large extent on their sublimation of their Jewish identity and the mystery of their comfortable and confident survival in occupied France during WWII.
Academic reviews of the book that I looked at in advance of reading “Two Lives” almost waved me away: these reviews are dismissive of Malcolm’s lack of respect for Stein’s literary legacy. In fact, Malcolm likely read far more of Stein’s output than most literature majors, so at the least her views are rooted in real experience. But it is not the writing as much as the life that is so tantalizing. In this version of her life, the curtain is pulled aside and we get a sense of Stein’s capacity to will herself into the powerful force she became.
Malcolm focuses on the traces of early journals (now controlled by an academic who is generally unwilling to share): these hint at the misery and boredom of the rather isolated existence Stein experienced on coming to Paris in the early 20th century. A recent medical school drop-out (or failure) at Johns Hopkins, Stein did not—as we have been led to believe—simply waltz in and begin attracting the sensational group of artists who fluttered around her for decades. It was a stumble for a brilliant woman who typically got what she wanted (she often leaned on her youngest-child privilege). What she wanted more than anything, evidently, was fame. To reach that goal, and to survive WWII, Stein shed both this early pessimism and any residual Jewishness. Her bold refusal to acknowledge the horrors of the wars she lived through are singular and confounding, perhaps only made possible by her self-absorption and self-regard.
If Stein was self-absorbed, then Toklas was completely devoted supporting Stein’s ambition and legacy, both during and after Gertrude’s lifetime. Although Toklas was dealt a bad hand in her last decades, enduring poverty and little respect from Stein’s relatives, she was never a loveable character (except by Stein). Malcolm’s book does little to change this appraisal, repeating some of the least charitable descriptions of the slight woman. In the end, I ended up in the same place I started, feeling that these “two lives” are among the most notable and mystifying of the 20th century.
The bottom line: a book nearly as curious as Stein herself, but far briefer. It was a great read, with rich insights. Malcolm’s essays here document both fact and process; we are introduced to a few of the leading lights in “Stein-ology” as Malcolm does her research and struggles to make sense of the famous duo. The book also underlines how much of the couple’s life is still open to interpretation although Malcolm is not hesitant to judge. Her harsh appraisal of Stein and Toklas centers to a large extent on their sublimation of their Jewish identity and the mystery of their comfortable and confident survival in occupied France during WWII.
Academic reviews of the book that I looked at in advance of reading “Two Lives” almost waved me away: these reviews are dismissive of Malcolm’s lack of respect for Stein’s literary legacy. In fact, Malcolm likely read far more of Stein’s output than most literature majors, so at the least her views are rooted in real experience. But it is not the writing as much as the life that is so tantalizing. In this version of her life, the curtain is pulled aside and we get a sense of Stein’s capacity to will herself into the powerful force she became.
Malcolm focuses on the traces of early journals (now controlled by an academic who is generally unwilling to share): these hint at the misery and boredom of the rather isolated existence Stein experienced on coming to Paris in the early 20th century. A recent medical school drop-out (or failure) at Johns Hopkins, Stein did not—as we have been led to believe—simply waltz in and begin attracting the sensational group of artists who fluttered around her for decades. It was a stumble for a brilliant woman who typically got what she wanted (she often leaned on her youngest-child privilege). What she wanted more than anything, evidently, was fame. To reach that goal, and to survive WWII, Stein shed both this early pessimism and any residual Jewishness. Her bold refusal to acknowledge the horrors of the wars she lived through are singular and confounding, perhaps only made possible by her self-absorption and self-regard.
If Stein was self-absorbed, then Toklas was completely devoted supporting Stein’s ambition and legacy, both during and after Gertrude’s lifetime. Although Toklas was dealt a bad hand in her last decades, enduring poverty and little respect from Stein’s relatives, she was never a loveable character (except by Stein). Malcolm’s book does little to change this appraisal, repeating some of the least charitable descriptions of the slight woman. In the end, I ended up in the same place I started, feeling that these “two lives” are among the most notable and mystifying of the 20th century.
December 13, 2010
Normally, a book about 2 dead lesbians would be the last thing I'd want to read.
But after the Journalist and the Murderer,
I developed a liking for Malcolm's style of writing.
Colorful metaphors, snappy one liners, a little psychological insight.
This book isn't as good as the other one but is still very enjoyable,
and confirms an insight as to the nature of the author.
Janet is basically a quidnunc who loves to expose the foibles of others.
Taking a cue from Stein, who's "autobiography" of Alice Toklas wasn't an
autobiography, but rather a device Stein could use to flatter herself;
Malcolm also uses biographies of others to reveal her life.
She denies this, but her real life experience with libel was
almost exactly like the McGuinness affair.
And in this book in a number of places she comments in a mildly
disapproving way the fact that Stein concealed her jewishness
almost all the time.
Malcolm likewise never mentions her jewish background:
the family escape from Europe in 1939 e.g.
And her bio at Wiki doesn't mention it either.
Every jew who has a bio at Wiki has that fact listed at the top of the page,
except for Malcolm.
I assume she has something to do with that.
For a delightful bio of her, in her own style of writing,
go to salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/0...
What goes around, comes around ! :>
The old psychological bromide:
What you don't like about another person is something you
(usually unknowingly) have in yourself, is so true of her.
Looking forward to her other books.
Mostly she wrote for the new yorker mag.
But after the Journalist and the Murderer,
I developed a liking for Malcolm's style of writing.
Colorful metaphors, snappy one liners, a little psychological insight.
This book isn't as good as the other one but is still very enjoyable,
and confirms an insight as to the nature of the author.
Janet is basically a quidnunc who loves to expose the foibles of others.
Taking a cue from Stein, who's "autobiography" of Alice Toklas wasn't an
autobiography, but rather a device Stein could use to flatter herself;
Malcolm also uses biographies of others to reveal her life.
She denies this, but her real life experience with libel was
almost exactly like the McGuinness affair.
And in this book in a number of places she comments in a mildly
disapproving way the fact that Stein concealed her jewishness
almost all the time.
Malcolm likewise never mentions her jewish background:
the family escape from Europe in 1939 e.g.
And her bio at Wiki doesn't mention it either.
Every jew who has a bio at Wiki has that fact listed at the top of the page,
except for Malcolm.
I assume she has something to do with that.
For a delightful bio of her, in her own style of writing,
go to salon.com.
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/0...
What goes around, comes around ! :>
The old psychological bromide:
What you don't like about another person is something you
(usually unknowingly) have in yourself, is so true of her.
Looking forward to her other books.
Mostly she wrote for the new yorker mag.
December 4, 2012
I was a bit 'meh' about the gossipy parts of this book - sometimes the colour of 1920s Paris can come off a bit "Henry and June" for me.
The part that really shone was the analysis of The Making of Americans - Malcolm's documentation of her struggle to read it, and when she finally did, what it revealed, rejuvenated my fascination with Stein and her style all over again.
Which doesn't mean that I'll read it, mind. Books that large are only used for squishing spiders at my place.
Also, Malcolm's confession that she'd got the wrong end of the stick completely regarding Stein's so-called advice to place a Jewish orphan with a Jewish family during the war - a death sentence in France at that time. Biographers do love a dramatic revelation a bit too much - the truth was more prosaic.
The implicit collusion of Stein and Toklas with Bernard Fay - who at the time was busily compiling lists of Freemasons for the Nazis to arrest - was troubling in the extreme. What they did to obtain and hold onto their beautiful country house may have been immoral, at the very least it was achieved with the protection of Fay and his like.
An oblique and conscientious approach to biography that was very welcome if a little too dry and dissertive (is that a word?). Oddly, the entire book might be read into the front plate image of Gertrude and Alice on the balcony of their farmhouse, taken by Cecil Beaton. It's arresting in the extreme.
The part that really shone was the analysis of The Making of Americans - Malcolm's documentation of her struggle to read it, and when she finally did, what it revealed, rejuvenated my fascination with Stein and her style all over again.
Which doesn't mean that I'll read it, mind. Books that large are only used for squishing spiders at my place.
Also, Malcolm's confession that she'd got the wrong end of the stick completely regarding Stein's so-called advice to place a Jewish orphan with a Jewish family during the war - a death sentence in France at that time. Biographers do love a dramatic revelation a bit too much - the truth was more prosaic.
The implicit collusion of Stein and Toklas with Bernard Fay - who at the time was busily compiling lists of Freemasons for the Nazis to arrest - was troubling in the extreme. What they did to obtain and hold onto their beautiful country house may have been immoral, at the very least it was achieved with the protection of Fay and his like.
An oblique and conscientious approach to biography that was very welcome if a little too dry and dissertive (is that a word?). Oddly, the entire book might be read into the front plate image of Gertrude and Alice on the balcony of their farmhouse, taken by Cecil Beaton. It's arresting in the extreme.
August 15, 2009
I just picked this up in a pile of books at the Russian River vacation cause I'm a little fascinated by Gertrude and Alice B. Toklas... or maybe just the idea of the brownies made me think they must be cool. Oh, and having read The Book of Salt that was tangentially about them, I was interested. Learning about them was interesting, but the book didn't thrill me. Gertrude Stein is a famous writer, however most of the books she wrote, according to the author, are completely unreadable, even by the critics. She is a self-proclaimed genius who was described, basically, as being extremely egotistical, heartless, and self-aggrandizing. She was the creative, joyful one, and Alice B. Toklas was her "wife," caretaker, and her conscious. Evidently Toklas was really jealous of her, too, because some men were interested in her. For example, in the book they quote Hemingway as having written, "She used to talk to me about homosexuality and how it was fine in and for women and no good in men and I used to listen and learn and I always wanted to fuck her and she knew it." So Toklas made Gertrude stop associating with him. He wrote about them in A Moveable Feast. Another interesting thing is that even though they were both Jewish, they rarely admitted it or talked about it and were even friends of a Nazi sympathizer/collaborator who was later sent to prison. They continued to defend him. Hmmm. Somehow they don't seem so cool any more.
April 20, 2014
This is not the book I had understood it to be, which is my fault. This is purely an academic work, and if you're not familiar with Stein's writing, then you will be at a loss. I also have to say I don't really care much for the style of the author of this book. It's more about name dropping. There's focus on her subjects in there, but she's much more interested in the historiography of the subjects than her subjects themselves.
What is good is that it's not necessarily about Toklas & Stein's sexuality. It's more equalizing, with less focus on their bedroom, and more on their works. In the vein of normalcy, this book is definitely there.
What is good is that it's not necessarily about Toklas & Stein's sexuality. It's more equalizing, with less focus on their bedroom, and more on their works. In the vein of normalcy, this book is definitely there.
October 31, 2016
The middle essay of this book was for me the most intriguing. Malcolm and her Greek chorus of Stein scholars and the hunt for tidbits of Toklas locked away, or maybe not, in the head of a fifth man offstage. It is essentially the plot of the first part of Bolano's 2666, but with less sex.
Overall the book is interesting. The first part tackling how did two Jewish American lesbians manage to just chill out in France during WW2, the middle with the scholars, and the last on Jewish identity and family and how we manage to be flattened for appearances on paper. But in the scheme of Malcolm's works it doesn't rank.
Overall the book is interesting. The first part tackling how did two Jewish American lesbians manage to just chill out in France during WW2, the middle with the scholars, and the last on Jewish identity and family and how we manage to be flattened for appearances on paper. But in the scheme of Malcolm's works it doesn't rank.
February 22, 2021
What a contradiction...Gertrude Stein and even Alice Toklas. Initially, like others, I held these ladies in high esteem. As I read more about them, I am not so sure. From the outside, they appear to be women fighting for the best interest of women but when you dig deeper, that is so not the case. Complex and full of self is my current analysis. Stein interacted with lots of people and she often spoke badly about them behind their backs. She even spoke badly of Toklas. I left tilting my head to the side wondering what is so interesting about Gertrude Stein and why the bickering academics will not release her tapes. Hummm....
January 2, 2022
This is a wonderful book. It was lent to me by a colleague during lockdown and I had forgotten about it, only picking it up this week. Surprisingly it felt like a page turner - the writing was good and the insights fascinating. It isn’t a biography of them but each part (3) takes an aspect of their lives and their relationship, whilst the parts interconnect as well. The first part is perhaps the most interesting (without detracting from the rest), dealing with their time in France during the occupation. I don’t think the book has enticed me into reading Gertrude Stein’s works but it has given me a different perspective on her and her attraction.
February 13, 2013
A must-read for anyone with an interest in Gertrude Stein, of course, but also a gem of a biographical essay. It doesn't try to cover every meal Alice cooked for Gertrude but concentrates on grey areas in their lives, especially during their time in the French Alps in WWII. Written with Janet Malcolm's usual sharp prose, it is a masterpiece of its kind.
July 7, 2018
The book is well written as one would expect from Janet Malcolm but for me it failed to deliver on solving the mystery as to how these two survived in France. All the endless discussions with fellow academics left me cold. I felt the author did not capture the real spirit of these two interesting characters.
June 1, 2020
This was excellent, but would have been more intriguing and enjoyable if I already knew more about Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas. I would recommend reading biographies of the two ladies and their two most famous works (autobiography of toklas, toklas cookbook) before reading this book in order to get more out of it.
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