This Week in Literary History: Alice B. Toklas Moves in with Gertrude Stein

Click here to read this email in your browser.

Alice B. Toklas moves in with Gertrude Stein.

On September 9, 1910, almost exactly three years after they met, Alice B. Toklas moved in with famous comma-hater Gertrude Stein at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris—that would be in the 6th arrondissement on the Rive Gauche, of course (as the saying goes, “La Rive Gauche pense, et la Rive Droite dépense”). Their relationship, and their place at the very center of the Parisian avant-garde scene, would become the stuff of legends—not least because of Stein’s most popular book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—though it was only later that Toklas would find her own voice as a food writer (with a legendary recipe for hash brownies, no less).

Maira Kalman, who illustrated a recent edition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, explained that she was drawn to the project because of the relationship between the two writers. “Neither one of them could have flourished without the other,” she told Literary Hub. “They are eccentric, electric, artistic, domestic. Unique in so many ways. Determined. Unapologetically opinionated. The intersection of art and domesticity speaks to me as well—how do you create a grounded home as a jumping off point for your work? That is something that I have sought in my life.”

Toklas, the much less assuming (and much less famous) of the two, was often referred to as Stein’s “secretary-companion,” though by all accounts, Toklas had her own special power. “People have told me that when this small ugly woman was in a room they were keenly aware of her, before they even recognized her as Miss Toklas,” wrote M.F.K. Fisher in the foreword to a recent edition of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. “She seemed to send out waves of inaudible sound, like bells clanging somewhere in another space than ours.” No wonder that Stein, in tune with many of the secret spaces of the world, instantly claimed that they would be together forever only a few minutes after they met. And in fact, they were: the two stayed together until Stein’s death in 1946. They are buried side by side in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery.

SPONSORED BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

In the 1970s, three-fourths of Americans reported having trust in medical professionals. Today, only about a quarter report confidence in the healthcare system, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. As medicine continues to advance, so does the need to listen to patients with narrative competency. Columbia University’s Master of Science in Narrative Medicine prepares health professionals, writers, advocates, and scholars to apply the skills and values of narrative understanding to improve outcomes for both patients and caregivers, and to investigate issues pertinent to health and healthcare in a rigorous transdisciplinary setting. This flagship graduate program is the first of its kind, and is a worldwide leader. Graduates are poised to become educators and leaders in healthcare and beyond. RSVP to learn more today.

The Haunting of Alice B. Toklas

The US Tour That Made Gertrude Stein a Household Name

The Creative Communities That Changed Literature Forever

AN ARGUMENT FOR CLOSE ATTENTION

“I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.”

In other (old)

news this week

Harriet E. Wilson, often considered the first African American novelist, published her novel Our Nig—also one of America’s first works of autofiction—anonymously (September 5, 1859) • Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, a book lots of people like, is published (September 5, 1957) • The poet Léopold Sédar Senghor is elected as the first President of Senegal (September 5, 1960) • The word “hippie” appears in print for the first time, in the San Francisco Examiner (September 5, 1965) • Arthur Conan Doyle’s very first story (though perhaps not one of his favorites), “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” is published in Chamber’s Journal (September 6, 1879) • P. G. Wodehouse leaves his job at the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Company in London to become a freelance writer (September 9, 1902) • Virginia Woolf’s London house at 37 Mecklenburgh Square is destroyed in the Blitz (September 10, 1940) • The film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club premieres at the Venice Film Festival (September 10, 1999)

INSIDE THE DECADES-LONG CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY TO WEAKEN ROE V. WADE

LINDY WEST ON BREAKING THE SILENCE AROUND ABORTION

THE ABORTION CLINIC THAT WASN’T

“Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.”

–JENNIFER EGAN

Born this week in 1962

“Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They’ve got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery, it’s a marvel they can breed. They are nothing but frog-spawn—the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime.”

–D.H. LAWRENCE, AFTER SONS AND LOVERS WAS REJECTED BY A PUBLISHER

Born this week in 1885

Copyright © 2021 Literary Hub. All rights reserved.

Unsubscribe | Manage Preferences