The Biography of Alice B. Toklas
Linda Simon
Certainly, as Simon confirms in her preface to the most recent edition of the volume, her title both describes her book and points to Stein’s enormously popular Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, the writer’s playful 1933 work that subverts traditional notions of fact and fiction, author and subject
Linda Simon in her preface, though erroneously identifying Stein critic Lisa Ruddick as ‘Lois,’ demonstrates an understanding of much of the ongoing biographical and critical scholarship marking the period between the original publication of her book in 1977 and its 1991 reissue. Her recognition of the particular challenges confronted by Stein/Toklas biographers is regrettably timely, as Simon observes that [w]e can more easily trace Tokilas’s relationship with Ernest Hemingway than with her friend Lily Anne Hansen or Louise Hayden, a frustrating reality for anyone puzzled by references to Liliana or Louise in poems that contain an undercurrent of jealousy and betrayal. (xv)
In the first few pages of her book, then, Linda Simon forecasts her intention to build on Richard Bridgman’s early suggestion that Stein’s writing contains private encoding. By reminding us that Alice B. Toklas was usually the first reader of Gertrude Stein’s material, Simon also underscores the important consideration that, in her writing after Three Lives, Stein may, in whole or in part, have been sending personal messages to her lover and domestic partner
Simon’s four-part thematic division matches her subject’s life particularly well. Having opened with Toklas’s family history and first thirty years in and around San Francisco, Simon, in a section called ‘Two Are One,’ moves to Toklas’s resettlement in Europe and follows her relationship with Gertrude Stein to the end of World War One. Part Three, entitled ‘New Faces,’ begins with the arrival in Paris of the U.S. expatriates who were to populate Europe during the colorful interwar era and ends with Stein’s death from cancer in 1946. Part Four, ‘The Altar of the Dead,’ covers Toklas’s twenty-one years of single-minded devotion to Stein’s memory, a painful period that was finally brought to a close by Toklas’s death in 1967, several weeks before her ninetieth birthday. Finally, fitting epigraphs precede each part of Simon’s volume: two excerpts from Toklas’s favorite writer, Henry James, one extract from As You Like It, and a maxim attributed to Cosmus, Duke of Florence, which introduces the turbulent period of shifting literary alliances and personal antagonisms documented in print between the wars
That they were reluctant to openly name their lesbianism may be attributable, as Simon suggests, to the late-nineteenth-century, middle-class environments in which both women had been raised. As the biographer explains of Toklas, ‘she had been brought up to say ‘compromise’ for seduce; ‘outspoken’ for shameless; ‘impure’ for bisexual; and ‘inadequate’ for dead drunk’ (149). But a reticence in this regard unfortunately appears in Simon’s narrative as well, not in terms of Stein and Toklas, of course, but concerning some of the Left Bank lesbians with whom they associated. Thus Adrienne Monnier, Sylvia Beach’s lover of twenty-eight years is described as her ‘close friend’ (145), and Margaret Anderson’s lover of nine years is characterized as ‘her friend Jane Heap’ (171). Similarly, though Simon certainly points to long-term intimacy between poet H.D. and Bryher (heiress Winifred Ellerman), she nowhere explicitly states that Bryher was a lesbian and that she and H.D. were lovers for periods during their forty-three-year relationship
The Biography of Alice B. Toklas is much more reliable, though the work would be of greater value to many readers had Simon chosen to devote at least an entire chapter to the network of Paris lesbians who lived on the Left Bank and with whom Stein and Toklas interacted regularly. Similarly, the biographer needs to frankly acknowledge lesbianism where it demonstrably exists. But Simon’s difficulty arises, in this reader’s view, not from insensitivity, timidity, or inadequate research. Rather, the writer’s apparent decision to reissue her 1977 volume unrevised lies at the root of the problem. In her preface, Simon seems to justify this course by explaining that ‘new information about Toklas’s life and her relationship with Stein may surface, but I believe such information will not alter the image of Toklas that I have presented in this biography’ (xv). But feminist inquiry has so dramatically altered the intellectual landscape in the last fifteen years that material that fails to incorporate the developments in Stein scholarship, and in the critical and biographical analysis of feminist and lesbian modernism, must inevitably reflect a somewhat anachronistic perspective. In this regard, Simon’s appendix, designed to supplement Richard Bridgman’s 1970 study Gertrude Stein in Pieces (New York: Oxford University Press), may serve as a case in point. Finally, The Biography of Alice B. Toklas performs an important service in calling our attention to an often-overlooked figure who was present on the sidelines during much of the Modernist era. Linda Simon’s book is thoughtful, well researched, and valuable, but, unfortunately, it is not the latest word. ~ Anne Charles, NWSA Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 270-273
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Details
| ISBN | 9780385081405 |
| Genre | Autobiography/Biography; Grier Rated |
| Publication Date | Apr-77 |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
| Format | Hardcover |
| No. of Pages | 324 |
| Notes | Also published as Life of Alice B. Toklas.
Also look for 1991 reprint, with cautions as per above. |
| LoC Classification | PS3537.T323 .Z823 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Great |
| Subject | Authors, American – Biography; Paris (France) – Intellectual Life |
| BookID | 1174 |
