Questions and Answers

I’m writing this in London a few days after the official beginning of summer on the calendar. (London was a city Gertrude didn’t particularly like though GertrudeandAlice crossed the Channel several times for various visits and lectures.)

For almost 20 years, summer for GertrudeandAlice meant packing up the Paris apartment to head to their country place in Bilignin. The village was in the heart of foodie heaven in one direction, as it was not far from Lyon, one of France’s gastronomic centers, and the grandeur of the Swiss Alps in the other direction.

a birds-eye view of the house and gardens at Bilignin

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As mentioned in the previous two posts, it has been eighty years since GertrudeandAlice returned to the U.S. for Gertrude’s headline-getting lecture tour.

The tour wrapped up in April of 1935 and in that final month,  GertrudeandAlice returned to California. Gertrude had turned her back on the Golden Gate in 1893 and Alice had last trekked the earthquake-rubble strewn hills of San Francisco in 1907.

Alice a bit droopy, Gertrude still smiling!

In a nutshell, here is their April itinerary:

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At last, 140 characters or less to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Gertrude Stein’s jubilant 1934-35,  U. S. lecture tour.  But not just any words, but tweets from Alice, based in fact. (All dates are accurate. Twitter address and tweets, liberties taken!)

22. Oct 1934

SS Champlain grande experience. Food wonderful, seas calm and we both a bit nervous about seeing the Old Country again after 30 years.

#

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The conversation begins:

A:

Lovey, I promise to never again move all of your notebooks while dusting without first asking!

G:

I’ll believe that when I see it. Pussy, I promise to never stand over your shoulder when you’re cooking, whispering in your ear any secret ingredients to add to your recipes.

A:

Right! I promise to always use the fine, horse-hair brush to brush your corduroy skirt in the same direction, so that the nap is smooth and velvety to the touch.

G:

Thank God, nothing worse than uneven, nappy corduroy. And I promise to do the dishes and pots and pans on weekends when Helene is gallivanting about Paris.

A:

Right! And rough up your writing hand!?

B:

Promises, promises! We’ll see, I’ve been around the block with these girls for a long time.

HAPPY 2015!

A post from Paris via Fogo Island, Toronto and San Francisco.

As the year ends with the usual holiday celebrations, it is also time to celebrate another event, the 3rd anniversary of the publishing of GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM.

Sometimes it feels as if this happened a long, long time ago, but whenever I pick up a copy of the book to send out, there are still very positive feelings of accomplishment, newness and satisfaction.

A few weeks ago, those feelings hit an all time high when a package arrived from Toronto. In it was an exquisite bottle of Turkey Hill maple syrup – “Canada No. 1 Light,” some Mary MacLeod’s Shortbread – “Handmade All Butter,” two, attractive greeting cards (one with the Cat in the Hat, the other with the image of a folk art style elephant), several photographs, and a block letter written note, which looked very much like the one from Fritz and Tom in my book.

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More than thirty years ago I began collaging postcards for the holidays and mailing them to friends.  At one point they began having only GertrudeandAlice themes.  I wonder how that happened?!

Here is this year’s card which is only available in this online version. Sorry to all of you who used to receive them the old-fashioned way via post.

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In November 1954,  the first edition of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book hit bookstores in the U.S. and U.K.  Since then it has never been out of print. Here is my tribute to this culinary classic in the online magazine scene4.

http://www.scene4.com/1114/hansgallas1114.html

copyright 2014 S. Maude Thornton

Eighty years ago this month, 27 rue de Fleurus was busy, busy, busy!  New suits, new gowns, new gloves, new handbags, new hats all had to be made or purchased under the watchful eye of Alice, the stylist!

In a few short weeks, GertrudeandAlice would be returning to the U.S. of A. for the first time in 30 years for Gertrude and 27 years for Alice.  They would crisscross America, coast to coast to coast for 191 days visiting 37 cities in 23 states. Gertrude would present 74 lectures and be interviewed for radio programs and newspapers and magazines. GertrudeandAlice would eat and drink and schmooze, always under the curious and watchful eyes of the media.

“Lovey, I’ll take the berth under the porthole.”

In the next 6 months, from time to time I will be posting overviews of their activities.

I’ll take a look at who they met, what they did, what they ate, what they and their contemporaries thought about this visit and what was going on around them both in the U.S. and other parts of the world.  Once we reach the week of May 4th, we may all be as exhausted and over-stimulated as they undoubtedly were.  Hopefully, however, the journey will have been worth it.

In the early 1960s, there was, for a short time, a television program in the U.S. imported from the U.K. called “That Was The Week That Was.”

The show was a satirical look at the week’s news presented in short skits and songs.  There will be no skits and songs as we relive the 1934-35 GertrudeandAlice U.S. lecture tour, but it should be an enjoyable and informative journey into “Those Were The Weeks That Were,” eighty years ago.

This may be the shortest post that I will write, but enjoy.

In 1931, GertrudeandAlice self-published Gertrude’s How to Write. 1000 copies were printed. Chapter two begins with:

“A Sentence is not emotional a paragraph is.”

Fast forward, July 2014:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc

The role of a critic in any field, whether in the arts, food, fashion and so on, is a balancing act. If a critic is too “nice,” (s)he is often suspected of being in cahoots with what is being evaluated.  If a critic is too harsh, (s)he is often branded as someone who has lots of bad days and is taking it out on someone else. And if a critic is wishy-washy, readers often question the critic’s credentials and move on to the critiques of other writers.

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me an e mail mentioning a new novel which features Gertrude Stein as a central character. It was written by a respected Moroccan poet, Hassan Najmi , and has recently been translated into English. It is simply called GERTRUDE, but that is where the simplicity ends.  My response to the book after reading it is far from simple and is, in many respects, very complicated and perplexing.  The book is published by Interlink Publishing whose tagline is  “Changing the Way People Think About the World.”

How about replacing a few words making it “Changing the Way People Think About Literary Icons by Dragging Them Through the Mud?”

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