The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Author: Gertrude Stein
Publisher: Blurb
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2018-07-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781388227289

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was written in 1933 by Gertrude Stein in the guise of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, who was her lover. It is a fascinating insight into the art scene in Paris as the couple were friends with Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. They begin the war years in England but return to France, volunteering for the American Fund for the French Wounded, driving around France, helping the wounded and homeless. After the war Gertrude has an argument with T. S. Eliot after he finds one of her writings inappropriate. They become friends with Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. It was written to make money and was indeed a commercial success. However, it attracted criticism, especially from those who appeared in the book and didn't like the way they were depicted.

The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book

The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book
Author: Alice B. Toklas
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0063050897

“I’m drenched in cream, marinated in wine, basted in cognac, and thoroughly buttered by the end of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.” —Eula Biss, New York Times bestselling author of Having and Being Had A beautiful new edition of the classic culinary memoir by Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s romantic partner, with a new introduction by beloved culinary voice Ruth Reichl. Restaurant kitchens have long been dominated by men, but, as of late, there has been an explosion of interest in the many women chefs who are revolutionizing the culinary game. And, alongside that interest, an accompanying appetite for smart, well-crafted culinary memoirs by female trailblazers in food. Nearly 70 years earlier, there was Alice. When Alice B. Toklas was asked to write a memoir, she initially refused. Instead, she wrote The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, a sharply written, deliciously rich cookbook memorializing meals and recipes shared by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wilder, Matisse, and Picasso—and of course by Alice and Gertrude themselves. While The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—penned by Gertrude Stein—adds vivid detail to Alice’s life, this cookbook paints a richer, more joyous depiction: a celebration of a lifetime in pursuit of culinary delights. In this cookbook, Alice supplies recipes inspired by her travels, accompanied by amusing tales of her and Gertrude’s lives together. In “Murder in the Kitchen,” Alice describes the first carp she killed, after which she immediately lit up a cigarette and waited for the police to come and haul her away; in “Dishes for Artists,” she describes her hunt for the perfect recipe to fit Picasso’s peculiar diet; and, of course, in “Recipes from Friends,” she provides the recipe for “Haschich Fudge,” which she notes may often be accompanied by “ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes.” With a heartwarming introduction from Gourmet’s famed Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl, this much-loved, culinary classic is sure to resonate with food lovers and literary folk alike.

Two Lives

Two Lives
Author: Janet Malcolm
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300137710

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. 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. Praise for the author: "[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

Seeing Gertrude Stein

Seeing Gertrude Stein
Author: Wanda M. Corn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011-06-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520270029

"An Ahmanson-Murphy fine arts book"--P. [4] of cover.

How to Write

How to Write
Author: Gertrude Stein
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2018-11-14
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0486835588

First published in 1931, this volume offers Gertrude Stein's reflections on the art and craft of writing. Although written in her distinctive experimental style, the book is remarkably accessible and easy to read. The modernist author's characteristic humor is borne out by some of the chapter titles, "Saving the Sentence," "Arthur a Grammar," "Regular Regularly in Narrative," and "Finally George a Vocabulary." Stein's experimental style features elements such as disconnectedness, a love of refrain and rhyme, a search for rhythm and balance, a dislike of punctuation (especially the comma), and a repetition of words and phrases. Those who are unfamiliar with her Stein's work or have found it difficult to understand will discover in How to Write an excellent entrée to a unique literary voice and an imaginative approach to language that continues to inspire writers and readers.

Gertrude Stein and a Companion

Gertrude Stein and a Companion
Author: Win Wells
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
Total Pages: 68
Release: 1986
Genre: France
ISBN: 9780573690358

"The play begins just after the death of Gertrude Stein. Her ghost returns to Alice B. Toklas and the genesis and development of their relationship is richly portrayed. Mr. Wells has truly captured the feeling, art, music and literature of Paris of those years, when Pablo and Ernest and Henri and all of Gertrude's friends spent their free time in the great writer's salon. This play is a director's dream. It flits back and forth in time as the actors play not only Gertrude and Alice but a host of famous people who were part of their lives."--Publisher's website.

Wars I Have Seen

Wars I Have Seen
Author: Gertrude Stein
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2013-03-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307830195

A memoir of the Nazi occupation—and the Allied liberation—of France, from the iconic author of Tender Buttons and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Intimate friends of Gertrude Stein, aware of her indomitable courage and resourcefulness, were not at all surprised when she emerged unscathed from the Nazi occupation of France, her Picasso collection intact and her poodle, Basket, wagging his tail contentedly at her heels. But Stein had her full share of troubles and excitement in those four years, and it is this unbelievable period that she documents in full in this most graphic and revealing of all her books. Written in longhand under the very noses of the Nazis, Wars I Have Seen is the on-the-spot story of what the people of France endured. From the early days, in which Stein was more concerned with foraging food for her dogs than with the fate of democracy, to the coming of the Americans, which gave her the thrill of a lifetime, Stein depicts the heroic exploits of the French Resistance fighters and the excitement of the battle for liberation with all of her signature literary panache.

Baby Precious Always Shines

Baby Precious Always Shines
Author: Kay Turner
Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2000-10-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780312267131

Off and on, during the entire period they were together, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas wrote each other little love notes. Calling her "wifey" and most often addressing her as "baby precious," Stein scribbled her love for Toklas in quick moments of unself-conscious desire. And on occasion, Toklas penned or typed letters back to her "husband." Because the couple was virtually inseparable, the notes were written and exchanged at home. Baby Precious Always Shines presents selections from this previously unpublished correspondence. In first-person documentation, in direct address, these brief mantralike enticements—tender, beseeching, funny and game, sexually charged and sincere, quotidian and queer—disclose the intimacies of a deeply committed, very rare, and at the same time, very ordinary marriage between two of the twentieth century's most famous women. Toklas called their notes "a beautiful form of literature." They are indeed, and when pieced together, they create a tantalizing mosaic, a portrait of a marriage that helped shape the course of modernism and modern lesbianism.

Happy Birthday, Alice Babette

Happy Birthday, Alice Babette
Author: Monica Kulling
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781554988204

It's Alice's birthday But her friend Gertrude seems to have forgotten. No matter, Alice goes out and enjoys her day just the same. A beautiful spring afternoon in Paris -- what could be better? Little does she know that her dear friend has a few surprises up her sleeve. While Alice spends the day walking around Paris -- riding a carousel in the park and watching a puppet show -- Gertrude turns her attention to the kitchen. She is determined to make a lavish dinner with all of Alice's favorite things and write a poem to match the occasion. But the lure of the perfect poetic line proves to be too distracting, and just as Alice's day takes an exciting and unexpected turn, Gertrude's big dinner falls all to pieces. The poem turns out beautifully, of course, but the house is a bit of a mess. It's a good thing Alice doesn't mind cleaning up. And that she has such a good brownie recipe for their guests. Inspired by the lives of artist Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Monica Kulling's warm and whimsical narration is perfectly balanced by Qin Leng's bright and energetic illustrations. This is a sweetly joyful story of love, friendship and creative inspiration.

The Notebooks of Gertrude Stein

The Notebooks of Gertrude Stein
Author: Leon Katz
Publisher: Editions Rue de Fleurus
Total Pages: 810
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781087986760

Back in 1936, Thornton Wilder had warned Gertrude Stein to get her unpublished manuscripts into the safekeeping of the Yale Library because of the danger of another world war's breaking out on French soil. Charmed by the notion that all her work was to be safely harbor-ed for later publication and study, Gertrude packed several cases of manuscripts, letters and miscellany and sent them off. The packing was done with characteristic Steinian abandon: neatly piled manuscripts were dumped into crates, and correspond-ence, carefully alphabetized and filed at the end of each year by Gertrude's amanuensis, Alice Toklas, was pulled out in drawerfuls and overturned into the crates. Finally, all the scraps of paper that Gertrude never threw away, budget lists, garage attendants' instructions about the Fords she owned during the 10's and 20's ("regardez le carburetor"), forgotten old dentist's bills, were tossed in, too. Alice re-monstrated about their inclusion, but Gertrude used every hoarder's excuse: "You can never tell whether some laundry list might not be the most important thing." Two packages in brown wrapping paper at the bottom of the armoire, lying among chunks of manuscript of her novel, The Making of Americans, fell into the crates along with all the other papers...