Questions and Answers

As I discovered last week, it is impossible to come to Paris and not encounter something that relates to GertrudeandAlice, even if you’re not specifically looking for something pertaining to them.

We had made plans about a month ago to end our around the world trip with seven days in a rented apartment in Paris. We’d rented apartments in the city before and our primary criterion this time as it was August, was to find a place that had air conditioning. It was a smart decision as the temperatures during our stay were in the upper 80s, low 90s.  We found a rental on rue de Seine.

rue de Seine, August 2009

» Read the rest of this entry «

Sixty three years ago today Gertrude Stein died at the age of  72.  Alice would live alone for another twenty one years.

Several years ago I wrote a short piece called “Alice: A Reverie, July 27, 1946.”  On this anniversary of Gertrude’s death, I include it here.

GertrudeandAlice's grave, Père Lachaise Cemetery Paris

Alice: A Reverie, July 27, 1946

“Then the whole afternoon was troubled, confused and very uncertain, and later in the afternoon they took her away on a wheeled stretcher to the operating room and I never saw her again.” – the final sentence of  Alice’s 1963 memoir, WHAT IS REMEMBERED

» Read the rest of this entry «

In the previous blog I wrote about well-known people who had met GertrudeandAlice. One American icon that I forgot was T.V. news great Walter Cronkite, who died last week. He met them when he was a student at the University of Texas-Austin.

COPYRIGHT HANS GALLAS ©2009

Walter Cronkite and JFK

He wrote about that meeting in the university newspaper and it was re-posted this week:

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/walter-cronkite/daily-texan-talks-great-depression-with-author-1.1775552

At the beginning of Jill Godmilow’s 1987 film WAITING FOR THE MOON GertrudeandAlice, played by Linda Bassett and Linda Hunt, are sitting in the garden of their country home proofreading a manuscript.  This was probably not an uncommon scene in their lives. What makes the film’s opening shot so unusual is that there is a crying baby in the picture.

Linda Bassett and Linda Hunt in WAITING FOR THE MOON

When I first saw the movie when it was released, I assumed that the child was Hemingway’s son and that GertrudeandAlice were babysitting. It was not until the DVD version of the film came out a few years ago with a director’s interview as an added feature that I learned  the baby was supposed to be GertrudeandAlice’s child.

Ms. Godmilow says in the interview that since it is impossible to make an historically accurate, biographical film about famous people, a film may include any incidents or characters which tell the story the way the filmmaker wants to present it. In this case GertrudeandAlice  have a baby. (The film was criticized for its historical inaccuracies, but that’s another blog.)

Children and GertrudeandAlice, however, seem to fit.

» Read the rest of this entry «