Gertrude Stein: When This You See, Remember Me

You stay. In New York. By WATTIS. My writing is as clear as mud but much set of rules and clear streams run on. She looked like a Roman Caesar with more warmth of course.

A She looked like a cross between a Roman emperor. And a Girl Scout troop leader. She looked like a border to border the border.

And I am an American and I've lived half my life in Paris not the half that made me but the half in which I made what I made. It was not what France gave you but what he did not take away from you that was important.

We all came to Paris. It was where we had to be. My brother Leo had taken the pavilion and I tell you on the route of the Rece I joined him and I sat down in there and pretty soon I was writing. We were settled in Paris together and we were always together. The apartment consisted then as it does now of four small rooms and a very large studio adjoining. Everybody has to like something. Some people like to eat. Some people like to drink. Some people like to make money. And I like seeing painted pictures. They went to vote lards. The only picture dealer who had seasons for sale to look at them. His shop was on the ruler feet. In the center of the room was a huge dark man blooming. This was very loud

cheerful. They asked to see Cezanne's. He looked less gloomy and became quite polite. As they found out afterward the name Suzanne was to him a magic name. A bottle of wonderful small landscape. And two tiny canvases of nude groups. Later on Vuillard explain to everyone that he had been visited by two crazy Americans and they laughed and he had been much annoyed. But gradually he found out that when they left most They usually bought something. From that time on they went to Valadez all the time. They found two little Renoir's. They bought to go. Gertrude Stein liked the sunflowers but not the figures. They frequently bought in twos because one of them usually liked one more than the other did.

We were in Paris together and we were always together. My brother and myself had always been together. One should always be the youngest member of the family. It saves you a lot of bother. Everyone takes care of you. It's better if you're the youngest girl in the family to have a brother two years older because that makes everything a pleasure to you. You go everywhere and do everything while he does it all for you and with YOU. And so I was a little girl in Oakland California. And of course one did have to find out that stars were worlds and moved around and that there was wind and rain and grass and flowers. But most of all there were books and food food and books. When I went to school all the children had to write once a week how they had lent a hand and most of them had an easy time they could mind the baby or cut wood or help their mother. Nobody wanted us to do these things and I and my brother who spent our time at home mostly eating fruit and reading books

never could remember how we had lent a hand. Is life worth living. Yes a thousand times yes. When the world still holds such spirits as Professor James he is truly a man among men. And so Gertrude Stein went to Radcliffe. She enjoyed her life and herself. But the important person in her Radclyffe life was William James. A scientist of force and originality. He stands firmly no blame for the dignity of man. William James delighted her. Keep your mind open. He used to say. I was of course very interested in psychology. One of the things I did was testing reactions of the average college student. I was supposed to be interested in their reactions but soon I found I was not. But instead that I was enormously interested in the types of their characters the bottom nature of them. I came to feel that I

could come some time to describe every kind there is of men and women. And the bottom nature of them and the way it's mixed up with their other natures. It was a lovely spring day and it was the period of the final examinations and there was the examination William James's course. She sat down with examination paper before her and she just couldn't shut down Professor James. She wrote at the top of her paper. I am so sorry but really I do not feel a bit like an examination paper in philosophy today and left and then Miss Stein. I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself. He gave her work the highest mark in his course. For psychology. You must have a medical education. These first two years of the medical school Gertrude Stein liked well enough. She

had to take her turn delivering babies. And it was at that time that she noticed the negroes and the places that she afterwards used in her story. That was the beginning of her revolutionary work. Milbanke her in three lives. The last two years of medical school. She was bored. Frankly and openly bored. The practice and theory of medicine didn't interest her at all. One of the professors said he intended that she should be given a lesson and he refused to give her a pass mark. And so she was not able to take her degree. Of course Miss Stein all you have to do is take a summer course here and in the fall naturally you will take your degree but not at all Professor. You have no idea how grateful I am. You don't know how little I like pathological psychology and how all medicine bores me. But Gertrude. Gertrude remember the cause of women. You don't know what it is to be bored. And that was the end of the medical education of Gertrude Stein.

A. Before the winter was over Gertrude Stein and her brother decided to buy a big Cezanne. They chose the portrait of a woman. Gertrude Stein said to Vuillard. Now the picture is ours. They might have been ransoming someone they loved. Say John conceived the idea that in composition one thing was is important is another thing. Each part is as important as the whole. And that impressed me enormously and it impressed me so much that I began to write under this influence and this idea of composition. It was the first time in any language that anyone had used this idea of composition in literature. In looking in looking at this picture. Gertrude Stein wrote three lives. With this book I destroyed 19th century literature.

You certainly never have given to me what I said to you that night. I haven't. I didn't have a question like forgiving God in me. It's just only what you feel and for me that makes a difference to me. Suvi never did see no man like you. You're always wanting to have it all clear out in words always what everybody is always hearing. And I certainly don't see no reason why I should always be explaining to you what I mean by what I'm just saying. And you ain't got no even for me ever. To ask me what I meant by what I was saying when I was so tired that night. I never know anything right. I was saying but you don't have to tell me now so I really hear you see it you don't mean it the same way the way you said it to me. Oh shit you're so stupid always to me and always just bother and which you're always asking me. And I don't but anyway ever remember anything I've been saying to you. And always. My head. So it hurts me.

It kills me. And my heart jumps so sometimes I think I'd die so when it hurts me and I am so bulu always. I think sometimes I take something to just kill me. And I got so much to bother thinking always and do and. I got so much to worry and all that and then you come here to ask me what I mean by what I was just saying to you. Well I certainly don't know Jeff when you ask me. Seems to me. Sometimes you might have some kind of all right feel and to. To be careful to me now you ain't got no right Mileva it certainly ain't got no right always to be used your being and being sick and having pain like a weapon so as to make me do things that they never right for me to be doing for you. You certainly got no right to be always hold in your pain out to show me what do you mean by them words. Jeff Campbell I certainly mean I'm just like I'm saying.

I know Cawood you hear me Melinda. I never put my trouble back on anybody thinking that they made me. But I tell you straight now we think of Melinda. I ain't going to be as if I was the reason why you wanted me to be loving and to be suffering so now with me. Did I ever do anything but just let you do everything you wanted to me. Did I ever try to make you be nothing to me. Did I ever do nothing except just sit there ready to endorse your loving with me. But I certainly never. Did make any kind of way as if I wanted really to be having you for me. So that's the way you see it when you thinking right out about it. Well I certainly ain't got a word to say ever to you anymore. If that's the way it's straight out to you now. I certainly shall go crazy now. I certainly know that. Gertrude Stein story Malenko I got inside the characters and the rhythm of their

speech for the first time. I want to say frankly that I think you have written a very peculiar book and it will be a hard thing to make people take it seriously. We hardly see our way clear to making you any offer of publication. The book is too unconventional. Green all. Matisse said had a hard time. He spent the winter painting a very large picture with a magnificent dish of fruit. It was finished at last and sent to the cellar. And there it was refused. Matisse and some rebels from the old Halaal had created the autumn salon. There were a number of attractive pictures but there was one that was very strange in its color and its anatomy. The

picture infuriated the public. They tried to scratch off the paint. Matija this time was about 35 years old having gone to the opening day of a salon and seeing what they were trying to do to it. He never went again. He stayed at home and was unhappy. And now Matisse's serious troubles began. He was in an agonizing mental struggle concerning his work. One was quite certain that for a long part of his being one being living. He had been trying to be certain that he was wrong and doing what he was doing. And then when he could not come to be certain that he had been wrong and doing what he had been doing when he had completely convinced himself that he was not wrong in doing what he had been doing he was really certain then that he was a great one and he certainly was a great one. Certainly he was expressing something being struggling some were certain that he was greatly expressing this thing. People were roaring with laughter at the picture. Gertrude Stein could not

understand why the pictures seemed to her perfectly natural. It upset her to see them all mocking at it. She said she wanted to buy it. It was derided and attacked. And it was sold. Little by little people began to come to the root of Flurry's to see them as teachers and the Susanne's maties people. Everybody Brott people. And it began to be a nuisance and it was in this way that Saturday evening began. It was also at this time that Gertrude Stein got into the habit of writing at night. It was only after eleven o'clock that she could be sure no one would knock at the studio door. Gertrude Stein did not like the picture. She found something in the drawing of the legs and feet that repelled and shocked her. The art dealer said but that is all right if you do not like the legs and feet. It is very easy to guillotine her

and only take the head. Her brother wanted it and she did not want it in the house. The price asked was thirty dollars. It was very cheap. Finally it was agreed that since he wanted it so badly they would buy it in this way. The first Picasso was brought into the prairies. Picasso and Sanand came to dinner. Because it was thin dark alive his eyes having a strange faculty of opening wide and drinking in what he wished to see. That evening Gertrude Stein's brother took out portfolio after portfolio of Japanese prints to show Picasso. Picasso solemnly and obediently looked at print after print. He said under his breath to Gertrude Stein he is very nice your brother. But like all Americans he shows you Japanese prints. I don't like that. Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso immediately understood each other.

Yes. My impression is very simple. It is that the great man of the family was Gertrude Stein and not a Leo. Leo who was patent and was a pedant Besides who changed direction constantly. One moment in psychoanalysis Then after and something else on a great man the genius and she wrote that she was a genius. She really was a genius. GERTRUDE. Every afternoon Gertrude Stein mounted on top of an omnibus. The old horse pulled omnibuses as they went across Paris and up the hill to mamma. TRA. Why did Bokassa wish to have a model before him at this time. This I really do not know. She got out and climbed steeply in fact straight up and came to the Rue retinol with its steps leading up the little flat square with its few but tender little trees and to the left the low wouldn't building of studios that is still there. The bateau Lavoie. Heart of an art

movement of which the outside world at that time knew nothing. About it. The bottle of wine had once been. It seems a piano factory. A green building made of wood and which had been converted into studios and at some point where many painters lived Picasso saw what Greece grease Fandango and Moksha shock. Well there was one water faucet for about twenty eight studios. One sold toilet of course. All that was so poor and full of bugs. A miserable place. Gertrude Stein knocked and Picasso opened the door. His eyes were even more wonderful than I remembered. Picasso had never had anyone posed for him since he was 16 years old he was then 24 and they do not either of them know how it came about anyway. And she took her pose because her sat very tight on his chair and very close to his canvas and on a very small palette mixed some brown gray and the painting

began. I posed for him all that winter 80 times during these long poses. They talked about everything about pictures about dogs about death. Oh Pablo I forgot to give you these. Then it was then living with Picasso offered to read the fables of LA Funtime and allowed to Gertrude Stein. Fine and had been with him for a long time. Spring was coming and the sittings were coming to an end. All of a sudden one day Picasso painted out the whole head. I can't see you any longer when I look. He said irritably. And so the picture was left like that. Picasso went to Spain. The day he returned from Spain Picasso sat down and out of his head painted the head in without having seen Gertrude Stein again. When she saw it. He and she were content.

For me it is. And it is the only reproduction of me which is always for me. In the long struggle with the portrait of Gertrude Stein Picasso passed from the harlequin a rose period to the intensives struggle which was to end in cubism. This one was one who was working. This one was one having something being coming out of him. Something had been coming out of him. Certainly it was something certainly it had been coming out of him. Certainly it was something certainly it had been coming out of him and it had meaning a charming meaning a solid meaning a struggling meaning a clear meaning. This one was one who was working if you were a foreigner I opened my first gallery which was then a very small shop barely 16 by 16 with a little back room in the spring of 1997. Gertrude came off onto the

roof as to Picasso. I had heard that he was painting a very strange picture of the person in question said something a Syrian looking world that interested me and I wanted to see it. It is then in fact that I went up to Picasso's place and that I saw the dam was. In New York. It filled the whole of this very little small room which was his studio. Even Picasso's friends were not prepared for this. Sure King said Picasso must have gone crazy Brock told him it was all you wanted to make us eat rope and drink gasoline. The sculptor Manolo's said what would you say if your father and your mother waited for you at the station of Barcelona with a face like that. Under-armed predicted. Someday they will find Picasso hanged behind that picture. She almost

wept. What a loss for French art. As Picasso once said the one who creates a thing is forced to make it ugly. Those who follow can make of this thing a beautiful thing because they know in advance what they are doing. On all the walls right up to the ceiling with pictures the pictures were so strange. It is very difficult now that everybody is accustomed to everything to give some idea of the uneasiness one felt when one first looked at all these pictures. I was confused. I looked and I looked and I was confused. Alice B tactless came from San Francisco in Paris. I went to see Gertrude Stein's older brother Michael and his wife Sarah and their other house I met Gertrude Stein. I have met many important people I have met several great people

but only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time abode within me rang and I was not mistaken. In this way my new full life began. I. Had been invited to the Rudisha release on Saturday evening which was the evening when everybody came and indeed everybody did come. Ah the Miss tuchis Picasso said with small feet like a Spanish woman and earrings like a gypsy. Ms Stein sat near the stove in a lovely high back chair. I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes he said. Everybody says that she does not look like it but that doesn't make any difference. She will Gertrude Stein then ask me to sit with friend and. Fan and had two subjects hats and perfumes. She had the true French feeling about a hat if her head did not

provoke some witticism from a man on the street. The hat was not a success. You couldn't leave the slightest subject without critical analysis. The slightest flaw in his companion's statement caused him intellectual indignation of the most intense kind. Elaine was one of those admirable maids a most excellent cook. Did not like Matisse. She said a Frenchman should not stay unexpectedly to a meal particularly if he asked the servant beforehand what there was for dinner. Delaunay was the founder of the school of painting houses out of plumb. What Gertrude Stein called the catastrophe school. They would always ask how old was Picasso when he painted that. When I am that age I will be able to paint as well. Marie Lawrence had painted a strange picture. Portraits of Gideon Picasso Fernand and herself. Gertrude Stein bought it and the real Rahsaan was so pleased. It was the first picture of hers anyone had bought. Brocky was to hold up the big pictures to hang because he

was the strongest. It wasn't These days the intimacy between Broc and Picasso grew black and Iran had gone my market from the tea sites. They had become followers of Picasso the poet. Apollinaire was extraordinarily brilliant. He wrote the first little pamphlet about them all by Picasso as an example of what physical culture could do. KHYAM as a coffee pot. Picasso was more than ever the little bullfighter followed by his squadron on Napoleon followed by his Grenadines. Picasso was every inch a chief. If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him. Would he like it. Would Napoleon would Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon. If I told him if I told him if Napoleon. What do you like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon Picasso asked me Do you think that I really looked like your President Lincoln

had thought a good many things that evening. But I had not thought that. And so one of the most important evenings of my life came to an end. Gertrude Stein was working tremendously working every night. She was often caught by the dawn coming. I was writing the way I was writing and it came to be the writing of the making of Americans. The making of Americans had changed from being a history of a family to being a history of everybody. The family knew I had the idea of describing everyone everyone who could or would I had been living watching people for Windows and so on until I could put down every type of human being that could be on the earth. I wanted to realize every variety of human experience every time every nuance I made endless diagrams of every human being. I went on and on to a thousand pages of it.

I did not show what I was doing to my brother. He looked at it and he did not say anything. Repeating is what I am loving. There are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them repeating and I hear it. I love it. And now I will write it. This is now a history of my love of it. I hear it and I love it and I write it they repeat it. They live it and I see it and I hear it. They live it and I hear it and I see it and I love it. And now and always I will write it. When Jesus said Verily verily the second verily added to the expression. But if he had said Verily verily verily verily verily verily verily it wouldn't have been so good. I worked over it for three years. A lot of Tommy rot. Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can ever really be agreeing with you completely in anything. So you say I will write for myself and strangers Gertrude writing in Picasso's painting. Absolute rubbish.

It destroyed him for me and it destroyed me for him. I joined Gertrude Stein in the Rue de Flaherty's one day after I was seen at home when she went for a long term I didn't see him so I said. But haven't you any more. I said. That's a funny story. So I pushed her a little bit to see what you see when we were children. We are blessed to live. Well life should not be so very happy about. You write a book and while you write it you're ashamed for everyone must think you're a silly or a crazy one. And yet you write it you have a queer feeling and you're not very certain and you go on writing then someone says yes to it and then never

again can you have completely such a feeling of being afraid and ashamed that you had one Sunday evening. I called Gertrude Stein to come in from the Antalya for supper. No you have to read this first. I guess to see the little tiny pages of The Notebook. It was the first portrait she ever wrote that portrait called Ada. Ada was the one and all her living then one completely telling stories that were charming completely listening to stories having a beginning and a middle and an ending. Trembling was all living living was all loving someone was then the other one. Certainly this one was loving this Ada then and certainly Ada all her living then was happier living than anyone else who ever could who was who is who ever will be living. Gertrude Stein always says that I'm impartial on every subject except that of Spain. It was there and at the time it was 1914 that Gertrude Stein

style gradually changed. Hitherto I'd been interested only in the insides of people their character and what went on inside them. It was during that summer that I first felt a desire to express the rhythm of the visible. Shirokov things that led up to. Why. I went to her house with georgann. One evening I'd been reading the writing for five or six years but now remember in Harvard in 1920 when you wrote me some tender but I said to you at that time you should put this to music to me to put to music anything that had no clear meaning. Because there is no temptation to illustrate the burly babbling by a brook. You could say it for its clear value of English words. The very first one I did was begin. Sweet sweet sweet sweet

sweet tea Susya side. Then there was another one called princess still the old portrait of a Spanish dancer turned out to be. Please be please began. Please get set please get wet wet. Naturally naturally and whether that amounts to a great climax and she says diamonds bright diamonds white diamonds in the light diamonds white diamonds bright diamonds in the in the light diamonds light diamonds diamonds hanging to be four to four. All this for this being Leslie almost a green guest. Go go go go go go go go go. Not guest. Go go. Toasted Susie is my ice cream. Great fun. Marvelous. No I was fun. I carried that book around used to read aloud to all my friends but everybody else

did that with any buttons. Yes I roared with laughter. Very high class non-SS. Alas a dirty bird. How does it go. No. Not until now. Yes that's a dirty word. That's a dirty word. Yes every chicken. Alas a dirty word. Alas a dirty third alas a dirty third alas a dirty bird. A cup is neglected by being full of sighs. It shows no shade income little wood cuts and blessing. Not at all so polite not nearly so behind. Why is a cup a stir and a behave. Why is it so seen. I was trying to name objects without using their names. She was living word against word relating sound to sound feeling for the taste the smell the rhythm of the individual word elephant beaten with candy and little pops and shoes all boats and reckless reckless rats. This is this.

If this is literature or anything other than stupidity worse than madness then alas for literature the newspapers started their long campaign of ridicule. She could not understand why since the writing was also clear and natural they were enraged by her work. Just read the words on the paper they are in English. Just read them grotesque one works with words and one would like words that have a taste on the lips that have a perfume in the nostrils rattling words to throw into a box and shake making a sharp jingling sound words that when seen on the printed page have a distinct arresting effect upon the eye. I think that these words of Gertrude Stein is due in a very real sense recreate life in such words a very Valentine for Sherwood Anderson. Very fine is my valentine. Very fine and very mine very mine is my valentine. Very mine and very fine very fine is my valentine and mine.

Very fine very mine and mine is my valentine if Picasso was applauded for painting pictures which do not represent anything if Schoenberg can paint a score that sounds entirely new why should an employer or English words be required to form sentences which are familiar in meaning shape and sound. He says I've always been convinced that it was the same state of mind in Cubism and in the literature of Gertrude Stein. Yes I am convinced of it. Cubism tried to give a representation of the exterior world which is no longer an imitation. And the literature of Gertrude in a certain sense is in my opinion the same thing with a craft that is a blind class a kind in glass and a cousin a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement and a

system to pointing the difference is spreading it to the store like the cube is they always chose very simple objects to start with. Gertrude always took simple words also it was no longer a question of a connected story but of a free invention made of words the same words that our generation became once satisfied with. The crossroads. What we wanted. Is to make enough of. Their imagination human imagination not fun. Place. To visit. I was the only one who understood Picasso at that time because I was expressing the same thing in

literature. And one day she said to me. Of course you don't know English literature. But after all. This Shakespeare and me who do you see. Just. Look. Just like. That. Said the girl. Would you like to pose for me for that. Oh she said I would be delighted. She was not interested in sculpture at all. Not at all. And I have to confess I wanted too interested in sculpture. I don't think that they succeeded. But we became very good friends good friends. At that time she was you know like a good.

Lipschitz was an excellent gossip. He was able to supply several missing parts of several stories gossiping together. It was marvelous. It was very good you know. She paused. But she was always a good friend for me. I couldn't help that just like stops. Sculpture always has the bother that one can go all around it. And the material of which it is made gives an impression of form before the sculptor has worked on it. Yes I think she liked it. Yes I think she liked it. Dear Mademoiselle we are in the trenches and we are attacking just now the cannons fire a good deal but I am used to that. Thank you very much for the warm clothing. We shall not forget all that you have done for us your godson about. Luckily.

We decided to get into the war. American fund for French wounded. That. Is what we are going to do. You will drive the car and I will do the rest. Out of the fort was called until after Gertrude Stein and Pauline who always behaved admirably in emergencies. The roads were frightful my wrapped snow slush. We went into all the devastated villages. We drove by day and we drove by night. Visiting hospitals and giving away our stores. We were the first to bring the news of the armistice to many small villages. I remember one of the French soldiers in the hospital. Well here is peace I said to him. At least for twenty years he said. Madame we have been requested by the French government to transmit to you. They men die. Dlouhy commissars française.

The night of the armistice Guiana pollen and died. Always had a quality of keeping people together. And now that he was gone everyone ceased to be friends. We returned to a changed Paris block and Picasso were on the outs. Matisse had moved to the south of France. The old crowd had disappeared. December 3rd 1921. Dear Miss Stein I am writing this note to make you acquainted with my friend Ernest Hemingway who with Mrs. Hemingway is going to Paris to live. Mr. Hemingway is an American writer and I know you will find Mr. and Mrs. Hemingway delightful people to know. Sherwood Anderson. I remember well the impression I had of Hemingway that first afternoon he was an extraordinarily good looking young man. There was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good

things to eat and tea and natural distils liqueurs made from yellow plums or wild raspberries. He was twenty three with passionately interested eyes. He sat in front of Gertrude Stein and listened and looked. Gertrude Stein was about forty eight. She had beautiful dark eyes and a live emigrant hair. She talked like an angel. They talked then and more and more he asked her to come and look at his work. His first apartment was in my mantra. He and Gertrude Stein went over all the writing he had done. Begin over and concentrate that nothing else get in but that clear vision which you are alone with. If you have an audience. It's not art. If anyone hears you it's not pure. Remarks are not literature. And I guess when Hemingway met Stein she kind of pursed his writing of. The extra adjective of the pretense worked him down to the essential to the emotion itself as if it were practically naked on the page.

But with a style that had had its own beauty. You know that line. Only your looked on beauty bear. Well Stine's stripped down prose had that kind of beauty. So. Hemingway once said you know that he had two teachers Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound was occasionally right. Gertrude was always right. He came to the house about ten o'clock in the morning and he stayed he stayed for lunch. He stayed for dinner and he stayed till about ten o'clock at night. Isn't writing a hard job though. It used to be easy before I met you. There's one theory if I may express it that Hemingway rather fell in love with this older woman. He was a boy you know very handsome boy a. Young man of about twenty two. And he fell in love. Or he wanted to make love. That's his own expression like this is really true. He wanted to make love to Gertrude Stein.

It's one way to win isn't it. I don't like women's liberation movement but one way to win an argument with a woman is make love to her. And. Not to their arguing. But she was a dominant figure. And there's. This supposition that perhaps Alice Rosander didn't. Broke off their affair when she went out for a walk I used to say. Don't you come home with Hemingway on your arm. She did. Well she see you bought into this. I think first and foremost and she asked of got Hemingway to come and see how she did that. He brought a heavy load and always has been that. Of the heavy shapeless and not prepossessing at all. He always had an open shirt you know lack of us you know

he was and he was very angry and he had sneaked into his feet I'd like to divert not know and he would sit in it and they would sit over there like my old house like this you know with his feet up here. So I was to post to give him but think about all the people that I was sure of. And he hit the wall as old heavy mud with his nails which he insisted on the way in the cellar. But I sold the whole thing was kind of a voluntary pest. I just thought it possible that so neatly over his feet. So I said to him Take your feet in one day you will me them said well really came to doing it. To my mind.

Yes I know but I have a weakness for him in a way. The making of Americans her first major novel which incidentally Hemingway typed in the first 50 pages or so probably has the greatest influence on his own writing. It was Hemingway who first caused to be printed a piece of the making of Americans in trans atlantic and Hemingway said the thing that must be done is to get Styne into print finally not just talk about STEIN But read her. She was one of the most talked about non-red figures of her time at that time. She wrote the writing so uncommon so unusual in language what she wrote was an experiment you see not do your writing. And that's why publish it the way they felt immediately it wouldn't be popular. Obviously she printed herself. She had it done and they are very charming books. And then of course the happy days

the 20s all of the Americans were here you see setting. Up the meeting place of a marvelous generation. She knew all this as Americans and friends of the period and they knew they could go on Saturday. And you would get after you went to your yourself friends and you talk to some sometimes would be very talkative sometimes. It was really interesting. It's interesting. OK. Very interesting. When I was a young part surely I went very often to Gertrude's and when she gave little receptions at home. But they were never these late evenings and they were very proper evening. There was no fooling around there.

You know Providence is a nervous attraction. You know some kind of kind of a point of focus. There were always excellent little cakes but one must like that these were made by a star class. I was always a little offstage always taking care of people that want to talk to. Yes. Yes. I always sat with Alice because she had such good savages. They were first class losers. Yes. It was one of good Chinese too. Yes. Yes. No. Anyway it was not for little cakes. And then I went to her place in. The. And when you were have an evening at Gertrude's you all found each other more or less at

the bar of the co-partner and then you had a good time. Laughter was the most warming the most menial. It was and then in chat and in warm though it was the heat of the lovely lovely. I was a little bit and giggled maliciously from one side. You know there are several chairs you can chair which is made up to keep Why you know that this thing and they were designed by Picasso who made the drawing and decided to call us. Ezra Pound fell out of Gertrude Stein favorite little arm chair and Gertrude Stein was curious. I do not find Ezra Pound amusing. He is a village explainer. Excellent if you're a village but if you're not not there was a review of Gertrude Stein's book geography and plays

signed Edith Sitwell. Gertrude Stein had not cared for it. The three Sidwell's have among them enough genius for one English literary man. A year later either said Will wrote for an important and beautiful book she had found it to be. She and Gertrude Stein became friends at once. T.S. Eliot said that if he printed anything of Gertrude Stein's in his magazine the criterion it would have to be her very latest thing. She began to write a portrait of T.S. Eliot and called it the fifteenth of November. That being this day and so there could be no doubt but this was her latest thing. As you both get a difficult woman. Then she got to golf course and she didn't get calls very quickly because she was impatient by nature. Ulysses is a most god damn wonderful book. But if you mentioned Joyce more than once you would not be invited back. Joyce is an incomprehensible that anyone can understand. Ezra Pound met Gertrude Stein in the Luxembourg Gardens. But I want to come

up and see you. I'm sorry but at this season miss touchless and I are very busy picking wild flowers. But all of a sudden is she good. She wouldn't something and then you could expect almost anything. Hell I'm fairly well known for saying things about anyone and anything I say them about people I say them to people I say them when I please and how I please. It is hard living down the tempers. We are born with Belle and then she got into his head the way she puts him out of night. I wasn't there with my husband that many other people and he was drunk. It was going to release and he walked up to her and she looked at him and she said. When you've all to thank you and never again saw him on the bed.

Well next the same evening she calls up for two o'clock at night. Norma I want to tell Mr. Bradley I. So they for once. My husband is sleeping. You both a very bad sleeper so I'm not going to wake him. Will she take it softly. It's urgent Q's absolutely urgent. I said you can telephone early in the morning. This time I'm not going to wake him. So she turned off and. I. Five o'clock. Possibly but up phone again she said. Had I told you what I'd done. Is that just like you see. What have I done. You mustn't get Hemingway back. Then you pass. When my husband asked Hemingway if he can get and he said no of course Sherwood Anderson wrote a book so silly I couldn't help parodying it in torrents of spring.

She couldn't forgive that. I had attacked someone who was part of her apparatus. Newspaper people never become writers. He is a rotten pupil. The young when they've learned all they can learn. Accuse me of inordinate pride I admit it of course. I realise that in English literature in my time I'm the only one she never could write dialogue. She learned how to do it from my stuff. She could never forgive. Learning that. Hemingway are 90 percent Rotarian could you make it 80 percent. No. I'm sorry I can't. All that talent gone to malice and nonsense on woman. What a lousy stinking life. He is obsessed by sex and violent death. You can tell by the way a man talks about sex whether he's impotent or not and if he talks about nothing else you can be quite sure he is impotent physically and as an artist to a rose is arose as an onion.

When I think that he had the Nobel Prize and that sold in the wild has. Left you are racing all the. All but. Roy Jones was a disappointment to me. I could not understand the reason for the waiting all the time. He was a disappointment to me. For me I did not understand all the reasons for the waiting for the. So called honeysuckle road turn. Over time

over and over. Time. Lucy church amiably there is a church and it is in Lucine and it has a steeple and the steeple is a pagoda and there's no reason for it. And it looks like something else. Select your song she said. And it was done with a nod. And then she bent her head in the direction of the

falling water amiably. One day we saw the house of our dreams across the valley. I was going to ask the farmer whose house that is since it is an important house and it is occupied. Go and ask him. I did. He got well by one of a typical rageous guys which died maneuvers. They discovered it was owned by a colonel in the French army. And he was assigned to a post about five miles from Bellingen and he had been a colonel for about fifteen years. He didn't want to be promoted because he was so happy in his home. He was all set polite. Gaekwad decided this is the place he wanted so she went back to Paris and raised hell with a military in France that this fellow had been promoting 15 years. So that made him a general and of course he was transferred at once and in a rage you got to move well and go with what billet. He had no idea what it was like inside. It's beautiful. Louis 13. The

man laughed with a wall paintings and beautiful fireplaces and floors Packett floors. The Terrace hasn't changed tall because this border is a box. What we're always here. They've been there for centuries I guess it takes a long time to grow that and it smells so good. And then the three towers the middle one which has little tables and things you could keep We in chairs there. But Gurpreet really not the best of in the morning she was also come down and walk herself with her own bathrobe fastened for the large safety stand and look around to see who she could have Noyer bother. You know Gertrude never did any work Alice ran the house on the principle that Gertrude must never be annoyed displeased or disciplined by Bacula sort of a folding chair you know like that. I think she'd like to get good Gertrude would fall around all day and have company write notes

until the moment occurred when she was right. But she kept up religion right. Alice made like the lady genteel cutting garden of flowers and vegetables over dead wood cut roses and things. All right good good girl to do any work in the garden. Gertrude never did any work anywhere except her own. She wouldn't even wash the drug. Is. Wrong. There was one good cure. And in no shape in this why you're not she to catch him. I can see that you

happen to have his cup of hot and very handsome. She was a listener. She listened though she was making up her own mind of what you were saying or what every action of that would be. She was not a person it was scattered in any way. She was on her own province. Alice was conscious reflective and creative and rather malicious Gurka could be destructive but malice was not her gift. I had a gift for it. I spoke to Alice who was known as the executioner. She would arrange for a kind of disappearance. I don't know how she did this exactly Toklas his contribution this time was an essential one. She was not only a secretary. But she was. Well. I may shock somebody. But there was a point of co-authorship. The relationship between Stein and Toklas was

one of the richest that I've ever known. I think that a single contribution there of a certain nature of course which would. Not that that Alice had any great influence on the way she hold it in many other ways on the observation psychologically she certainly showed the way very often without doing so. She got extremely smart extremely. Try to find the right one. And

I'm not. A very good except that I think I started you off a little fast. After is a vision of the Holy Ghost and St. Ignatius is meditating in wonder just what he has seen so about like this I should say. I proposed she write me a libretto for an opera. And we sat together choosing a subject and she did. For that is a very diverse arrangement the first of the operas and we chose the subject together. But now what kind of mythological subject should we choose. Well we thought we wouldn't bother with Greek mythology the Duncan family had kind of monopolized that and Wagner had already done more with Scandinavian than anybody had any right to attempt in our century. And but then we said

of course history can be considered as mythology. Fine phrase Good good. What about George Washington. No says I because that's 18th century. And in the 18th century they all were the same kind of clothes and they all look alike on a stage. You can't tell one from another. Well what about the lives of the saints that I said is pure mythology that's just fine. So we looked around for saints but Spanish saints says GERTRUDE Oh yes fans die. Now she knew a great deal more about Spain than I did I'd never been to Spain. And she'd become as you might say very intimate was sent to Russia from living in adolescence. And so she decided that would be just fine fine by me. Did she get better. I kept putting these Spanish seats in the Spanish landscape that she knew so well and loved so well. For opposing of me been three three.

How many how many how many how. Many faiths was only saw very. Boring around. How many We didn't see. You when you train many. How many. Ones. One two three. And after which I put it to music and since I didn't know Spain.

The music came out to be virtually a total recall of my Southern Baptist upbringing and. For. Most to say. The opera was finished the summer of Prunty eight no production until 1934 when it was first in Hartford and then in New

York and later that fall in Chicago. That was the what is referred to as the original production of the cellophane scenery and the cast and so forth. But it reflected from the way that. I was the first time that in American theatrical production had used

negro artists for playing non negro parts. Who do. You. Think that they can leave it to me. A

See the public reaction was virtually all the same. They would start by laughing and giggling. By the end of ten minutes they were not giggling anymore. They were listening avidly and always the audiences for that work have complained bitterly. If they did not understand every word. If they had not then a beautiful dry October in Bielema in France in 1932. The autobiography of Alice B toques had been written. I suggested to my secretary Alice be tactless that she write her life story and she kept putting it off finally to encourage her one day I sat down in the garden and wrote a chapter. Then it seems to me so I kept on writing and writing and I wrote the whole autobiography in six weeks.

I wish I'd always promised to write autobiography I hadn't. So here she was Do you also graduate but why did to write a book of memoirs. And she found the gimmick the device describing her life as Alice saw it so that you begin by began by saying Gertrude Stein was one of the three geniuses she had ever met Gertrude could say that of herself in Alice's person she couldn't read very well then in very close contact with Gertrude and she sent us a script of every chapter. So my husband and myself read it and be simply and share it with the book. And when the book was completed my husband said now she must be known for that and have a good publisher and that but our first success really in this state. Gertrude Stein has the clearest intelligence I have ever encountered. Her influence on American writing so much greater than is known or conceded.

After that it was easy and every body about its three lives had said that before that nothing. I had never made any money before in my life and I was most excited. I bought myself a new eight cylinder Ford car and the most expensive coat made or of a basket the white poodle and two collars studded. The painters were angry because Gertrude claimed that nobody was really any good except Picasso. The autobiography of Alice B Talk less is the lowest literary prostitution. For one who poses as an authority on the subject of art it is clear Gertrude Stein never went beyond the stage of the tourist two maiden ladies greedy for fame and publicity. A clinical case of megalomania. She never understood anything to. Gertrude really lived in her own world and not in the real world. Her imagination created a world and she remained in that world.

Well anyway my success did begin. And slowly everything changed inside me. I began to think about how my writing would sound to others. I used to tell all the men who were being successful young how bad this was for them. They were young and I am not. But when it happens it is just the same. I was not writing. There was no word inside me. I was not writing. Well it all happened many years ago in fact over 35 years ago. Back in 1934 when I happened to be. President of the Arts Club of Chicago. We were really interested in having Gertrude Stein come and. Lecture to us. And when I was in Paris I called her up down in the country. And asked her if there was any possible chance for coming to the United States. And she. Finally decided that perhaps she could make it.

Better. And I went down to the doctor Meador to our studies but there are about 30 interview reporters and photographers down the dock to be done. And she got off the boat with the topless and always in charge of any situation. She wasn't at all fazed by this battery of reporters and photographers. We thought it was astonishing but she just took it as a matter of course. And they come to get it. And. I just watched Goldstein handle it as far as she did it so surprised that they all went away and wrote lovely stories about little jokes about a rose is a rose is a rose which was a standard way of kidding which Don but they obviously like. I didn't realize. What a furor of publicity she would create. Because I thought that her writing was so esoteric there would be many people who would know about her. And then we went to lunch and I literally fell in love with her style. She was one of the most wonderful women I think I've ever met. Warm.

Interesting people. Wonderful sight. She. Was a. Strong face and kind face and topless was a nice woman so trailing behind a fluttering. Interesting in her own right. She never got a word in while she was around. But when Gertrude left the room was booed and turned into quite a personal sound. Well. We became close friends at once and then I got on an NBC coast to coast radio. You come to your time. Implies that there are many people who'll be able to comprehend your ideas intelligible enough for a. Room. But Anderson Cooper spoke about this in the Roosevelt Room of the habit of talking. In other words that I'm bad is something you don't. Enjoy if you're the service and not the people of injustice among the people who run the further. And further in terms of this about what the from to ask for my support for this what my proof is what my point is.

Perhaps but in closing this time with you explain those lines in front of the crowd and they seem to be getting tied and untied her tie isn't untied. That is all that is about hard and I'm tired and the size and hours. And. Hours. And. Hours. And hours. Fast. As. Working for the Bills were the words look like cows at this is if you know that besides cause on of I were well to Margaret normalness of what is a normal. Life normal. And how. But Afro American missing girls you understand it. Does not to make a fuss about it. The real answer. I had never seen a plane near before. One of the nice things about not going to the movies is that you get a lot of surprises. When I looked at the earth I saw the lines of cubism made it a time when not Andy painter had ever gone up in an airplane.

Were full of adventures. But Chicago besides being an adventure was home. Gertrude was really a. Very good guest. She entered into everything with the greatest enthusiasm. And she had a rollicking charm that was contagious. She loved our parrot who sang pro-poor a butterfly. She said she was going to write an opera for him. And she was very happy about the forsakes I had taken the box for her in a rare and some seats down the front and she sashayed back and forth from one to the other wishing to see the performance from all points of view and she was thrilled to hear him a set of music. And I asked President Robert Hutchins from the University of Chicago and Thornton Wilder to. Come to meet her. Thornton had. Of course been interested in her literature for many

years but he had never met her. And he was simply fascinated and she took to him immediately and they were soon fast friends. So much so that she asked him to come and stay with her down in Berlin gala next summer. Well we send you on a tour all over the country every place he went. She was an absolute sensation. Front page story. Now listen I'm no fool. I know that in daily life we don't go around saying A rose is a rose is a rose. Yes. I'm no fool. But I think that in that line the roses red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years. I just went to see what she looked like and then she took the door of my mind right off its hinges and now it's wide open.

And the students crowded around her and were simply fascinated. She would read an excerpt from one of my books which nobody understood. But. When she was finished she'd take her glasses off and say you know what I mean is this. And then she would explain in the most clear and. Understandable terms what she was driving. She knew what she was doing. Miss Stein. Why did you write the way you talk. If you invited Keats to luncheon and asked a perfectly simple question would you expect him to answer with Ode to a nightingale. Finally we said we would publish everything she wrote and she was delighted with that. It seems like a fairy tale but it is true. I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. And so we happily very happily went on to the SS Champlain. America is my country but Paris is my hometown. When I was over in Paris she persuaded me to come down for a weekend and I persuaded

Joe Davidson the sculptor. To fly down with me. And we got the Bennion. It turned out Gaekwad was the unofficial mayor of the town. People came to her with all their problems she said. They gave advice on babies which she knew very little about anything else that she was never reticent about giving advice whether she knew what she was talking about or not. And the highlight of that weekend. Was Saturday morning Picasso. He had written some poetry and he wanted his opinion of his poetry. So she took the poetry and walked into another sad Picasso down a chair with a jelling made entertainer. Well his French was very bad and my French and Joe's French are even worse. So it was a rather stilted conversation as I read. Anyway he's on pins and needles waiting for his judgment. At about a half hour later she came back in the room. Put the poetry down on the table and went out and put both hands on my

shoulders. And said because I'll go home and pay. For it and wilder was wiser than the rest of us. He took note of his conversations with Gertrude Stein. They would talk long and at night he would go home and write them. So I remember saying how much I admired his The Ides of March. You know it deals with Julius Caesar in terms of diaries and letters and so on and I said it was an extraordinary technique and he said Well I he got the idea from Gertrude Stein. She said. The author must write as if he's discovering something rather than just telling a fairy tale. Well that's an example of how the conversational remark with Thornton Wilder for instance affected what was one of his most important novels. I was looking for Gertrude Stein who I had photographed before the war. I found

her in a small village in the southeast of France. They are always trying to get us to leave France. But here we are and here we stay. I think that she was perfect. I'm sure that she was protected and that she escaped because she was never put on the lists of Jewish people and American people or wherever she was. Well when I saw them for the first time the next day they were really almost frightening the way they looked because they were wearing enormous. They were supposed to be more or less hidden in Savoy's so they had to be completely conspicuous. They had to sort of blank into the face. But then you see they were when they were wearing suits made in what we call saling cloth. In Orange and bright red.

Both of them within Nova's straw hats Mexican straw hats in matching colors and they were really so visible in that little town of Italy where they were supposed to hide. It was almost shocking that at that time that I made for them some to eat foods that were a little more discreet but still they were very aware made in the same manner. They had insisted on having a certain pattern for his kids that he wanted to use. There was a certain she was trying this girl not standing but sitting down with the legs the knees apart so that she would have enough room to sit where she wanted to sit. And. You that was very funny with you the first time she had a fitting for a skirt. And she said that's a sit down as it was all right and comfortable in it. I was it was great great fun for us.

Here we are in the heart of the French country with nearly 100 German soldiers right in the village and wire entanglements all around the railroad station and some villages have been burned. And that's all anybody knows. In the beginning they were building and then they moved to another house a beautiful house in kilo's. And I remember I arrived there for lunch one day. And in the house they had. The wonderful Picasso portrait. And this is an portrait facing each other in the library. I arrived in kilo's and I noticed that there was only the biggest supporter and no longer the season. So I asked. Alice just. Where it was and she eluded the question she didn't give an answer. Then as I'm very insistent Osgood's where is this is that she said. Well my dear we were eating it because I had to

sell. It. Today is the landing. Everybody's been phoning to us congratulatory messages upon my birthday which it isn't. But we know what they mean. I said Is it true there are Americans. Well lead me to them. And there were Americans. God bless them and we were pleased. We held each other's hands and we patted each other and we talked and how we patted each other and the good American way. And I had to know where they came from and where they were going and where they were born. And this certainly this is the last boy to remember. Picasso had been impatiently waiting our return. We were very moved when we embraced and we kept saying it is a miracle. All the treasures which made are you. The pictures the drawings the objects are they.

They were really so simple with the eyes with just American soldiers in Paris wanting to see the great sign that they would receive them very gently very nicely very friendly. She was inspirational she was. Full of life. She. For instance it's rather well known that she said that it's not what France gives you. It's what France doesn't take away you can say that it. You can say that a Gertrude Stein too wasn't exactly what she gave you but it was what she didn't take away. And she let you be yourself she encouraged you to be yourself to grow. And everybody who came in contact with her was felt that. When I first met her I felt it almost instantly. They come to see Picasso and they come to see me not because we're celebrities but because we're rebels they know Pablo and I have had to put up a fight in our time and we've won. Off we went to see Germany. Right about us. They all said. And write about them I will.

And the most extraordinary of those late work is Bruce Willis which is almost a transcript. Of the American language as spoken by her friends. She began this. Slow return to naturalism. So that is the end of her life with the mother. So she and Willie and the play. Yes. For a very young man it's his naturalistic is it could possibly be almost. My writing is as clear as mud. But mud settles and clear streams run on. Identity always worries me. And memory. And Eternity. What is the answer. In that case.

What is the question. I. Can. Hear. A great many. Gee.

I wonder. Why for. My. One