Gertrude Stein Overview

Gertrude Stein may challenge Jacqueline Susann as the biggest self-promoter of twentieth-century letters. Stein had a habit of proclaiming herself a "genius" and each of her works a "masterpiece." She was perhaps stretching it a bit, but she did become a pivotal figure in Modernism, influencing a whole generation of artists and writers. Stein was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in 1874 and was raised in Oakland, California. But her hometown lacked culture and stimulation -- as she famously observed of it, "There is no there there" - so she moved east in 1892. She enrolled in Radcliffe, where she was mentored by William James. His influence led her to medical school at Johns Hopkins, but it didn't suit her. She left and began writing in fits and starts. Backed by family money, Stein moved to Paris in 1903. She began collecting modern art and artists, hosting a salon frequented by Picasso and Matisse. She started work on "Three Lives" (1909) and "The Making of the Americans" (1925), but her writing failed to really take off. It would gel in 1907 when she met her muse in the small, dark form of Miss Alice B. Toklas. After the mutual thunderbolts and fireworks, the two moved in together to quietly and happily spend the rest of their lives in marital bliss. Their relationship was remarkable, not for its homosexuality, but for its duration, harmony, and productivity -- a rarity among the disastrous affairs that were common in their circle. With Toklas serving as helpmeet, Stein became quite prolific. She eventually published close to 40 books, the best known being "Tender Buttons" (1914) and "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (1933). As time went on she refined the style that would become known as "Steinese." It is hyper-simple, sing-songy, disturbingly repetitive, and maddeningly opaque; part Cubism, part coyness, one either loves it or hates it. Stein wrote during a time in which overtly lesbian texts were not just daring, but prosecutable. Her coded prose style gives you a sense of a suggestive subtext while the interpretation of it remains controversial: for example, does the phrase "a wife had a cow" refer to orgasm or excretion? About this and other matters, Stein was never explicit. Stein succumbed to cancer in 1946. More than 50 years later, the literary merit of her works is still hotly debated. Was she the genius she claimed to be? Stein considered herself ahead of her time; maybe she's ahead of ours, too.