A few years ago a friend mentioned that the editor of a small press that he knew refused to ever publish anything by or about Gertrude Stein or Alice B. Toklas because he felt that they had “become an industry” and he wanted nothing to do with it.
What had this editor seen over the years that had caused him to come to this conclusion?
For someone who had been drawn to GertrudeandAlice because of their place in popular culture, a place that Gertrude held from very early in her career even though the number of books that she published and sold was quite small, this attack on GertrudeandAlice as an industry was puzzling.
Maybe the editor was set off after seeing the ceramic “Gertrude stein” from the mid 1970’s with a small knome-like figure on the handle which is supposed to be Alice?
Gertrude Stein stein, 1976
Or maybe it was reading Tom Hachtman’s hilarious and often irreverent comic strip “Gertrude’s Follies,” also from the ‘70s, which drove him over the edge?
"Gertrude's Follies" collection, 1980
Both were certainly anti-academic and anti-scholarly in the ivory-towered, ivy-league sort of way, though the “Follies” are grounded in a fractured-fairy-tale historic sensibility. But then, isn’t it often universities and professors who create industries around well-known people with their symposia and publish or perish mind set?
Are that stein, strip or hallowed hall scholars really the contemporary harbingers of a GertrudeandAlice industry? Neither stein, strip or scholarly works, I’m certain, made millions of dollars for anyone involved.
In the last 50 years there have been many books including conventional and graphic novels featuring GertrudeandAlice, even a murder mystery by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s son Elliott. Plays and musicals have been written featuring them, two alone in the last three years, and composers have set innumerable Stein texts to music.
(Note I am not mentioning the names of any of these works as I’m afraid I may be promoting the GertrudeandAlice industry. But feel free to contact me if you’d like the names.)
“Rose is a rose is a r….” has been reproduced as a rubber stamp, on a commemorative postage stamp and on a pot holder!
Ooops…maybe there is an industry!
People who become famous, particularly in the arts, often straddle the fence between mainstream popularity (industrialization?) and being taken more seriously. While they are alive these celebrities can sometimes, but not always, manage this dichotomy. In the days before social networks, 24-hour cable TV with minute by minute star sightings and online and supermarket tabloids, well-known people had only to manage satirical cartoons, nasty letters circulating among rivals, caddy newspaper columnists with funny names like Hedda Hopper, and in-jokes written into the lyrics of popular songs!
gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, 1951
One era’s tweet about stepping down as an American Idol judge is another era’s Cole Porter lyric – “Some get a kick from cocaine…”
The origin of the word “industry” lies in the words “skill” and “diligence.” In looking at the lives and accomplishments of GertrudeandAlice – partners, collectors, writers, editors, publishers, mentors, confidantes, and cooks among other things- “industry” seems to be a term that fits well.
As for the small press editor, I encourage him take a big sip of Hefeweizen from the Gertrude stein and have a chuckle or two as he pages through “Gertrude’s Follies.” Life’s too short to worry about whether GertrudeandAlice will become the next IPO!
COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2009
