Questions and Answers

90 Years Ago , October 24^th

In  Monique Truong’s  classic novel, The Book of Salt, one of GertrudeandAlice’ s cooks recounts his time at rue de Fleurs meshed with his own complex life story. In the opening pages he tells about their departure for the U.S. after thirty years in October of 1934. 

With bags packed and clearly labeled, take a look at my commemoration of this monumental journey from coast-to-coast to coast at scene4.com.

https://www.scene4.com/1024/hansgallas1024.html

I met Fritz Peters as a boy in chapter twelve of his 1964 memoir Boyhood with Gurdjieff, about his stay at the boarding school/institute outside of Paris run by the philosopher-mystic George Gurdjieff. In that chapter he tells about the visits that he and his brother Tom had with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1920s Paris. Those visits prompted me to write my picture book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom.

Now more than 100 years after his birth, five of his major books are back in print published by Hirsch Giovanni Publishing. See the 100^th birthday tribute I posted in 2013 https://gertrudeandalice.com/blog/2013/03/02/fritz-peters-at-100-a-tribute-by-any-other-name/

The books including Boyhood with Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff Remembered, Finestère, The Descent, and The World Next Door are reissued in playful, jellybean colored paperback editions. A screenplay is being written for Finestère and audio editions of Finestère and Boyhood with Gurdjieff have been produced. Plus, a documentary of his life is in the works.

Boyhood with Gurdjieff , the first of the two memoirs, offers a story-filled  account of his stay with Gurdjieff where he was not only Boy Friday, but also Boy-the-Rest-of-the-Week, as well as being groomed as the mystic’s successor.  The remaining three novels draw heavily on mental health issues many prompted by Fritz’s military experiences and his life as a closeted gay man.

As this year’s Pride Month ends, the rediscovery and re-appreciation of this incredible writer are something to be truly proud of.  Pick up one of his new editions.

One day after Alice’s 147th birthday, here is a piece I wrote for the online art magazine scene4.com about her estranged brother, Clarence. This article has some additional facts I’ve discovered since the one I posted here several years ago.

https://www.scene4.com/0524/hansgallas0524.html

And here they are! Why? See the previous post or go to the February 2024 issue, Scene4.com.

https://www.scene4.com/0224/hansgallas0224.html

Let the celebration begin!

As this year comes to a close and the year-end holidays are here, I send to you my GertrudeandAlice holiday card.

Wishing you only the best of everything in the new year with good health at the top of the list.

And now a smile or two: “Holiday Schlepping with Gertrude and Alice.”

Question: “What happened on April 30, 1877 in San Francisco, California at 922 O’Farrell Street?”

Answer: “Alice Babette Toklas was born.”

One thing I have enjoyed in this blog is adding photographs of GertrudeandAlice into my posts. Many of them are familiar to GertrudeandAlice fans and are widely featured in books and articles.  These are the ones that show up in most Google Image searches or on Pinterest. When I come across  unfamiliar photographs of them, it’s as if I’ve discovered an old, dusty, leather bound family photo album in the attic. 

Today, on Alice’s 143^rd birthday, I’ve compiled an album of pictures of Alice that are less well known. They are taken from a book by L. Arnold Weissberger (1907-1981),  FAMOUS FACES: A PHOTOGRAPHIC ALBUM OF PERSONAL REMINISCENCES (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York , 1973.) The 443 page coffee-table book contains 1477 photographs, almost half of them in color, taken of celebrities at parties and various events between 1946 and 1971. The book ends with a biographical index which does go from “A” to “Z.”

A friend was once very diplomatic and supportive when I mentioned to him that I was concerned that I posted to my blog so infrequently. “I like your blog because you only write something when you really have something to say. That’s what makes it enjoyable.” Now, that’s what real friends are for!

It is now almost three years since I posted a blog, filling the intermittent years with photos and holiday greetings. And it took our world pandemic and the requisite sheltering-in-place for me to get it together. Some friends from around the world, who I got to know because of our mutual interest in GertrudeandAlice, have kindly hinted that they missed my posts. Once again, thanks is due to real friends for the gentle prods!

I didn’t stop posting because I no longer had anything to say about GertrudeandAlice or my interest in them had lessened in anyway. I just seemed to stop and when WordPress changed the formatting of their program, I just didn’t have the patience to try to learn it – once I did, in the silence of my shelter in place, I discovered it’s very easy and very user friendly.

Lots has happened in the last three years in the worlds of GertrudeandAlice. Interest in them has not waned and I believe that it’s even increased based on the notices that I continue to receive through my Google Alerts. Productions of Stein’s plays are produced around the world; new works about them in all media are created; research papers just keep coming; and books, both scholarly ones and ones for young, potentially new fans are being published. (Hard to believe that the picture book I produced with Tom Hachtman will be ten years old next year and we’re still selling copies!)

So, I promise to get this blog on track again. Some posts in the next few weeks will serve as exercises in catching up and some will look ahead to the future, something most of us are doing a lot of right now.

I have no idea of the number of readers of this blog there still are, but once you receive this resurrected effort, I’d really like to hear from you at hansg@gertrudeandalice.com.

So, off we go with more questions and answers with Gertrude in the driver’s seat with Alice navigating and Basket II watching the world go by!