Staying on Alone: The Letters of Alice B Toklas

by Alice B. Toklas, Gilbert A. Harrison (Introduction), Edward Burns (Editor)

1973 LIVERIGHT HB Edition. Chatty letters of Gertrude Stein's life-long companion. Describes her life in Paris with shrewd observations of 20th century artists, musicians and writers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, LGBT, Gay

426 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1973

About the author

People remember American writer Alice Babette Toklas as the domestic partner of Gertrude Stein; her works include cookbooks and a volume of memoirs.

She joined as a member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century. Born to a Polish army officer in a middle-class Jewish family, she attended schools in San Francisco and Seattle. For a short time, she also studied music at the University of Washington.
She arrived in Paris and met on 8 September 1907.
Together, they hosted a salon that attracted expatriates, such as Ernest Miller Hemingway, Paul Bowles, Thornton Niven Wilder, and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque.

Toklas, a background figure, acted as confidante, secretary, muse, editor, critic, and general organizer and chiefly living in the shadow until she published in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice Babette Toklas , bestselling book.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using this other book, I continue my review of Gertrude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas." My edition of the latter has no introduction, no pictures (except in the cover), with just three cryptic blurbs which wouldn't give you any idea who Alice B. Toklas is, whether she's a real person, and why it is called an autobiography when it was written not by Alice B. Toklas but by Gertrude Stein. Who that person is, on the cover, with a manly hairstyle, you wouldn't know either. That's Gertrude Stein! How did I know? Through this other book, with LOTS of pictures. It is a compilation of selected letters written by Alice B. Toklas (ABT) to friends, etc. after Gertrude Stein (GS) had passed away. The very first entry is in the form of a telegram dated 27 July 1946, ABT saying:

"Gertrude died this afternoon. I am writing. Dearest love, Alice."

The last letter in this collection was of 9 January 1966 where ABT wrote a letter with these last two sentences:

"Do come back soon. I shan't last forever."

ABT's heart stopped on 7 March 1967, just short of her 90th birthday. She had found the will to go on living for 20 more years without GS, despite her sentiments--candidly disclosed in a letter dated 28 October 1947:

"I wish to God we (she and GS) had gone together as I always so fatuously thought we would--a bomb--a shipwreck--just anything but this."

ABT died 60 years after she and GS met in 1907. By the time of her death she had already accomplished her task of getting GS's unpublished manuscripts into print. She had even written her memoir and had gone back to the Roman Catholic faith where she was baptized as an infant (GS died not believing in the afterlife, "dead is dead" she wrote in one of her novels) and had been praying for GS, her "Baby Woojums", hoping they will meet again in heaven.

I hope they did.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me feel so badly for Ms. Toklas. Facing life alone for years and years after losing one's soulmate is difficult enough without having to deal with obnoxious in-laws and much more. However, I love reading letters and Toklas writes to her friends frankly and honestly.

[Kimb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insight into the era and the artists, but i wouldn't recommend it.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

p.210... to Fernanda Pivano of Milan
--the whole Hemingway legend--which we saw him create and soigner--going to pieces as it is under one's eyes is the most pitiable embarrassing thing imaginable. The present Hemingway crack up--one must borrow from the vocabulary of the greatest of his victims--has far too much old fashioned biblical punishment and rewards for comfort to those living in the present. But of course that is just what he doesn't do--he is hopelessly 1890--and one can damn him no further. He wears like the new look but he is in the tradition of Kipling. But enough of this.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

still a favourite on the umpteenth reading.