Re-reads

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein

As you can see, there’s something odd about the title/author. This “autobiography” wasn’t written by Alice, nor is it about her. She exists only as an appendage to Gertrude Stein. It is about their life together, full of people, activities, travel. The writing is straightforward and makes for fairly pleasant reading. Stein occupied a central place in the Paris scene in the early 1900s, when major changes were taking place in painting and writing. But, as for the many artists and authors who populate these pages, a lot of them famous, we get very little in-depth characterization. For example, Picasso appears quite often, but I don’t know much about the man. Parties, visits, talk – Stein loved these things, and, though we’re told they happen, they don’t come to life. Stein deals in externals, not feelings (and this includes her relationship with Alice). The section of the book that had more of a story line concerns the years of WWI, when she and Alice delivered supplies to French hospitals. My picture of Stein herself is a bit hazy. She seems pleasant, intelligent, opinionated, strong-willed. People seemed to have liked her, liked to be in contact with her mind. She has fall-outs with some, but she writes critically of only one of them: Ernest Hemingway. She uses slang for the first and only time to call him “yellow” – a word whose intent is to be hurtful (he was still alive when the book came out). This from a woman who elsewhere never displays cruelty. It doesn’t reflect well on her (nor do I think Hemingway was yellow, and Stein offers no reason for using that word). In closing: Stein was disappointed that her writing was not appreciated – something she dearly wanted (“One writes for oneself and for strangers but with no adventurous publishers how can one come into contact with those same strangers”). Well, Gertrude, I can answer your question (which doesn’t contain a question mark). Just as you appreciated the new movements in art, which turned away from a depiction of humans – cubism, surrealism, etc. – you also turned to writing which was unfathomable to humans (such as the 1000+ page The Making of Americans). Anyway, in a business in which Who Do You Know matters so much – and you knew everybody of importance – your obscure work did get published (though probably read by very few). You were fortunate to live in a time and place when innovation (however worthless) was valued, and even considered to be genius. When you were accessible, such as in this book, people did read and enjoy you. A pity you turned to “experimental” writing. Experiments are for labs. 3

 

Three Women – Gertrude Stein

The first and last stories (“The Good Anna” and “The Gentle Lena”) were about simple, one-dimensional characters, and their portrayals were done with an effective simplicity. But I found the long story, much longer than the other two put together, to be unreadable. I tried, but had quit on it. For starters – the title: “Melanctha.” Whoever heard of such a name, and how the hell do you pronounce it? She’s referred to as Black, but Stein makes her of mixed race. Probably her white blood, in Stein’s mind, qualified her to be a suitable subject to write about, for her characters who are just plain “niggers” (a word Stein uses) are not worth bothering with. I objected to her portrayal of Blacks; I don’t think Stein knew squat about that race. Melanctha (I’m using copy and paste) is exceedingly complex. She engages in long, long, very long conversations with a Black doctor (also of mixed race). Their discussions, full of repetitions and done with a sort of cadence, is monotonous and pointless. This is self-indulgent writing. I think Stein put words on paper, never revising, letting her genius flow, pure and unadulterated. The Melanctha section of Three Women is an early example of the experimental writing that I referred to in the previous review and which would take over most of Stein’s work. (Delete)

A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway

When I first read this memoir I may have been in a stage when I had a romanticized view of authors and writing – and of Hemingway. That’s long gone. Still, I enjoyed his account of how things were when he was in his twenties, living in Paris with his wife Hadley. Not that I believed much of what I was reading. He’s the hero of the piece, in that he’s always in control, a solid, sensible, all-knowing presence. A man who has little to say while others around him carry on, often foolishly. Feast is a falsification of the past – or, rather, a glamorization. Hemingway was in his late fifties and early sixties when he wrote the book, which was done in stages, and he wasn’t sound mentally and emotionally. So maybe he was indulging in a pleasant fantasy. He often claims that he was poor in the Paris years, and this simply isn’t true. He and Hadley had plenty of money. But poverty fits in with the image of a struggling writer living in a garret. As for the many authors he interacts with, one was Gertrude Stein. If you read my review of her Autobiography you probably wonder if he gets revenge for her comment about his being “yellow.” Not really (he even considers “Melanctha” to be “very good”). His portrayal of her isn’t a positive one – she comes across as dictatorial – and there’s a scene where he overhears her begging in a demeaning way. What I did find cruel was how he treated Scott Fitzgerald. Even if what happened between the two was true, it should not have been written. Maybe jealousy played a role, for Fitzgerald was his competitor as a writer. The book ends in an elegiac way: all that was precious would be destroyed. Hemingway blames it on the rich who invade his and Hadley’s lives. He writes of seeing Hadley waiting for him at a railway station: “I wished that I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.” But he would have an affair that would lead to the end of the marriage. As for Hadley’s presence in the book, it’s scanty. Her name doesn’t appear until page 54 (she’s previously referred to as “my wife”). The Scribner hardcover edition has an insert – a strange one, written by Jane Kramer. It mostly criticizes Hemingway and debunks the “facts” of Feast, often harshly. She calls it “an old man’s book, petty and incontinent.” She finds the sentences “pretentious,” as if “some besotted Hemingway student wrote them” (and then she gives a telling example). She attacks him as a man, especially his treatment of Hadley. So, the question arises, why was this introduction allowed by the lifelong publisher of his books? Hemingway committed suicide before Feast was published. It was edited by his last (fourth) wife, Mary, and there’s some controversy about how much was omitted and altered in her editing. It’s all so sad. 3

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Surprisingly, I thought this novel was very good. My surprise is due to the fact that I normally don’t care for EH’s work, and I thought that Sun was on the MMB list because, when I first read it, I was an impressionable teenager. In my review of his letters I wrote that I liked them because they were spontaneous. This novel has the same spontaneity; we don’t see the author laboring to find the one true word. My interest was constant, and I glided along. The first-person narrator, Jake Barnes, is mostly a detached observer. He gets involved, has feelings, but they’re muted. In place of a plot we get episodes, mainly the Fiesta in Spain, where the bullfighting sequence takes place. The novel is saturated with drinking; people are often drunk. The two main characters that Jake interacts with are Brett Ashley and Robert Cohen. Both people are based on real life figures, and both are portrayed unattractively. Cohen’s Jewishness is a factor in his unattractiveness; there’s a definite strain of anti-Semitism in the book (the word “kike” appears too often). As for Lady Brett, she’s no lady. To me, she isn’t. She’s an alcoholic, a beauty in her mid-thirties, and is a user. She uses men as sexual partners, then drops them. She’s not malicious, but she still causes harm. She claims, and probably believes, that she loves Jake, but there can be no sex between them due to a war injury he sustained. Except in regard to her, no reference is made of this loss; Jake seems detached even from that. Still, as noted, he’s an observer, and the descriptions in the book are excellent (I especially liked the fishing episode). The dialogue, of which there’s a lot, is spot on – Hemingway gets the various voices right. Is there a higher meaning in Sun? I don’t see one. It’s just a well-written, entertaining excursion into a world long gone. It was Hemingway’s first – and, many consider, his “greatest” novel. I would amend that by calling it his best novel. He wrote it while still married to Hadley, but it was published after their separation. He dedicates the book to her and to his son. 4