Questions and Answers

This year is the 5th anniversary of my book GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM. I know it’s a cliche, but I must say it anyway – “Where has the time gone?” 

The book has found its way to readers around the world and just last week I shipped another five copies to Shakespeare & Company in Paris, which has sold more copies of it than any other bookstore or online retailer, which I find so appropriate and gratifying.

Would I do it again? Yes! Do I have more tales to tell, yes! But for now, here is my post from five years ago, as I awaited the first shipment of books from Singapore:

Wasn’t it Lady Macbeth who said “What’s done is done,” at some point either before or after that bloody dagger scene? (Just checked, it’s after the dagger scene – that would be logical !)

…the deed is done!

Well, I’ve done it too and feel a bit like a parent dropping off his first child at kindergarten hoping for the best as tears well-up and Miss Crabtree leads the young one away to join the other rascals.

Miss Crabtree in charge

So what is it that’s been done – the children’s picture book which I’ve been working on for…let’s just say many,many years is on its way to a printer in Singapore!

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One of the purposes of a blog is commenting on happenings in a timely manner.

Well, this morning before my GoogleAlert for Gertrude Stein even had a chance to send me any alerts, I got an e mail from a friend on the East Coast with this heading:

“Lesbians Booted from Gertrude Stein Exhibit – San Francisco…”

And why did a security guard try to get them to leave the Contemporary Jewish Museum…for defacing a painting? Pressing their noses against one of the Plexiglas vitrines?  Relishing an Alice B. Toklas treat while touring the show?

No, no, no…for holding hands!!!

"Semper fidelis," (detail) by Bruce Kellner, 1982

Word about this incident is apparently spreading like wildfire within the community of Stein fans, as well as in newspapers across the country. (One of my friends has proposed a “Hand-Holding, Sit-In” type of day at the museum.)

How can I not comment on this in a timely manner considering that many items from my collection are featured in the exhibition, which I hope this couple was able to view before they were so unconscionably treated!

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One year ago today I began this blog and have in those twelve months written 16,394 words – not quite a novel’s worth of words, but  a good start even though Gertrude Stein’s major opus THE MAKING OF AMERICANS contains 517,207 words.

"Gertrude and Alice," hand-in-hand for the blog anniversary by Bruce Kellner, 1982

Over the years I have seen many attempts to copy Stein’s writing whether as an exercise in a creative writing class, as a spoof ( something that has been done ever since her first writings appeared more than 100 years ago), or as an acknowledgement of the power of her creative use of words. As a tribute to her and the power  words, I have taken the first two words and last two words of each blog to create the following Steinian piece:

***

BLOG LOG, LOG BLOG

One of to follow

When I the morning

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Last summer when I told one of my friends, who is also a big GertrudeandAlice fan, that I was going to write a blog devoted to them, his first response was that he hoped I’d be writing about things that hadn’t been written about and that I wouldn’t write silly things making fun of them.

I did mention the chickens in England  named Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein in an earlier post about items I’d received through my GoogleAlert.  I guess that was silly. Sorry.

But now to some  items about GertrudeandAlice that, though factual, could fall into the “Believe It or Not!” category.  Some are the kind of tidbits that scholars love to unearth or reference to indicate that they are really in the know and that they’ve scoured those boxes in the lower basements of research libraries.  For fans like me, they are like the shiny nuggets among the pebbles in a gold miner’s pan and almost as exciting as finding a previously unseen photograph of GertrudeandAlice tucked away in the pages of a rare book.

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When I began writing this blog, I had no idea how personal some of what I’d write might be. This is an issue that  bloggers face.  I assumed that I would write relatively spontaneously about various things that came to mind about GertrudeandAlice and my relationship with them over a period of almost 25 years- personal insights, but not really personal.

About a week ago, however, we had to put our nine year old English Springer Spaniel Ollie to sleep after a very sudden and unexpected illness. So this post will be quite personal.

Dogs are family and the sadness and loss felt when they are gone and the tears shed for them are family tears.

The French poodles, Basket I and II and the two chihuahuas, Byron and Pépé were an integral part of GertrudeandAlice’s family.  The Springer Spaniel, Oliver, Ollie for short, was an integral part of ours.

Ollie, summer 2009

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