from the first chapter:

"Within a year I also had gone and come to Paris. There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius 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. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of these three cases have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began."

More Good Books

The Autobiography of Alice B.Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Christmas 1968. End of my first semester at Marquette in Milwaukee. Charlie Langton from Atlanta joined me and my family for the holiday in Joliet. This book was his present to me. (I don't remember what I gave him - probably nothing, thoughtless slob that I was and am). It was a used book, only a little less worn than it is today. Charlie assured me that I would love it. He was not wrong. What an extraordinary Christmas gift that continues to shimmer on my bookshelf 33 years later.

I had probably heard of Gertrude Stein but had never read anything by her. Of course, this edition ruined the main joke of the book by naming and framing Gertrude Stein on the cover. So it goes. There are other laughs.

No book that I have ever read drops so many significant names in such a masterly fashion. Pick any page at random. Page 123: Roger Fry, Picasso, the Infanta Eulalia, Lady Cunard and her daughter Nancy, Lady Otoline Morrell. Well, those are kind of rarified. Let's try (at random) page 58: Derain, Picasso, Braque, Apollinaire, Max Jacob. Page 134: Marcel Duchamp, Braque, Picabia, Mabel Dodge, Carl Van Vechten, John Reed. You see, people were always dropping in at 27 rue de Fleurus, especially artists because Gertrude Stein thought art and bought art so the artists came. And it did not hurt that she had befriended Pablo Picasso. In her own words:

"Picasso and Fernande came to dinner, Picasso in those days was, what a dear friend and schoolmate of mine, Nellie Jacot, called, a good-looking bootblack. He was thin dark, alive with big pools of eyes and a violent but not rough way. He was sitting next to Gertrude Stein at dinner and she took up a piece of bread. This, said Picasso, snatching it back with violence, this piece of bread is mine. She laughed and he looked sheepish. That was the beginning of their intimacy."

Gertrude Stein has two styles: difficult and not difficult. This book is decidedly not difficult. It is a rich narrative of life in Paris and elsewhere before during and after The Great War. It is not a war story but it has war in it. It is an art story but it is also about Gertrude Stein and is only occasionally about Alice B. Toklas. It is a story about how the world became modern. And here it is. It opened my eyes to a much bigger world and I owe that fresh vision not only to Gertrude Stein but also to Charlie Langton who was a better friend than I knew and has by now written his own very good book of poems.

But despite my sentimental atttachment to this book, I have to explain that you will like it too, especially if you know a little bit about the art that made the world modern. It's a hoot to read how these famous old folks cavorted in their day. And Gertrude Stein's deadpan could out-Keaton Buster.