Questions and Answers

With all due respect to the musical The Sound of Music, one of whose songs contained lyrics bastardized in the title of this post, we must bid adieu to the Summer of Steins in San Francisco. Both exhibitions SEEING GERTRUDE STEIN: FIVE STORIES  at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and THE STEINS COLLECT: MATTISE,  PICASSO AND THE PARISIAN AVANT-GARDE at SFMOMA end tomorrow, September 6th.  And though both of them will be travelling, the first to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC from October 14th – January 22nd, 2012 and the other one to both Paris at the Grand Palais from October 3rd  –  January 16, 2012  and  then the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York  from February 21 through June 3, 2012, the Summer of Steins in San Francisco will not be able to be replicated as the Fall, Winter or Spring of Steins in any of the other cities – this summer was just too special!

the movie Von Trapps bid their adieus!

» Read the rest of this entry «

In my children’s book Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom, which I hope will soon reach the bookstores of the various museums where the Stein exhibitions are being held, the two young boys who visit rue de Fleurus encounter the atelier’s floor-to-ceiling paintings for the first time:

“Look at this really rambling room!” whispered Tom.  “There are masterful modern paintings floor to ceiling!  It looks like a museum!  I hate museums, everything in a museum is musty and moldy.”

Fritz pressed his nose against one of the paintings.  “This person has four flaming eyes and three thick ears and is not musty and moldy!”

Tom Hachtman's Fritz and Tom

I can assure you that there is also nothing musty or moldy at  The Steins Collect exhibition which opened last week at SFMOMA !

In the 25+ years that I’ve been obsessed with GertrudeandAlice I have had moments more extraordinary than the proverbial “aha!”  moments. I  would have to say that they are  more like  “ah Stein!” moments!

» Read the rest of this entry «

It’s Thanksgiving time and time to talk “food,” as if many of us need a holiday as an excuse to talk food!

In the annual food issue of The New Yorker magazine this past week, there is an article by Laura Shapiro, “The First Kitchen,”  about the cuisine in the White House during the tenure of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Apparently the food was quite horrible, but not because of the Depression or World War II, but because of the cook that Mrs, Roosevelt had hired, a Mrs. Henrietta Nesbitt.

I couldn’t help but wonder if during their visit to the White House for tea in December, 1934, GertrudeandAlice encountered any of Mrs. Nesbitt’s culinary curiosities.  And if they did, were they the perfect guests NOT whispering in Eleanor’s ear that “This Mrs. N. has got to go, for the health of the country!”

FDR carving the Bird!

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, let’s turn to tastier things.

» Read the rest of this entry «

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

» Read the rest of this entry «

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

» Read the rest of this entry «