The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

"I am a pretty good housekeeper and a pretty good gardener and a pretty good needlewoman and a pretty good secretary and a pretty good editor and a pretty good vet for dogs and I have to do them all at once and I found it difficult to add being a pretty good author. About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography.  You know what I am going to do.  I am going to write it for you.  I am going to write it as simply as Defoe did the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe.  And she has and this is it."
~Gertrude Stein

It takes a certain kind of person to write someone's autobiography for them, & to have the autobiography subject make statements about the author such as "I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius...Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, & Alfred Whitehead."

For those of you who don't know, Alice Babette Toklas was the longtime companion of Gertrude Stein, in whose salon germinated the talents of Hemingway, Picasso, & most of the Lost Generation (when they were on speaking terms). Alice was "a background figure" at 27 Rue de Fleurus; Gertrude talked to the artists, & Alice entertained the wives. After the death of Stein, whom Toklas outlived by twenty years, Toklas actually published her own memoirs, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook & What Is Remembered, which I hope have a little more Alice & a little less Gertrude in them.  Stein & Toklas are buried side by side at Père Lachaise Cemetery, with Toklas' name engraved on the back of Stein's headstone.

The autobiography Stein created for Toklas, while a bit Stein heavy ("so Gertrude Stein says", "Gertrude Stein was at that time writing", "Gertrude Stein liked country-house visiting less than I did"), is a wonderful history of the era. The chapters range from "Before I Came to Paris" & "1907-1914" to "The War" & "After the War - 1919-1932".  The book seems a faithful description of the famous salon, even to a record of quarrels & falling-outs; everyone who was anyone in those years gets a mention, from artists to writers & then some. During the war, Stein & Toklas did their part for the war effort, & after, they traveled to Mallorca & other locales, though always returning to France.


The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a deceptively simple book. Gertrude Stein employs a simple & direct sentence structure for the most part, almost flat, the written equivalent of a monotone.  Still, having adopted this voice for Alice, Gertrude can't resist throwing in the occasional wordplay: "...The wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses.  I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not really geniuses.  I have sat with wives of geniuses, of near geniuses, of would be geniuses, in short I have sat very often & very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses." & a rose is a rose is a rose.

You may learn more about Gertrude Stein than about Alice B. Toklas in this autobiography, but it will not fail to entertain anyone interested in the period of Paris' Luminous Years.

Nadja by André Breton

It's not often I read a book that I feel like I could read all over again immediately after, but Nadja is one of the few. Billed as a "Surrealist romance", this 1928 French novel, at first reading very light in tone, seems like one that would benefit from rereading.

This "book which defined [the Surrealist Movement's] attitude towards everyday life" is written as a first-person account of a novel affair between the unnamed narrator & the madcap Nadja, a girl he meets on the street (not until page 63 of this 163 page book). But there are also references to fellow surrealists Tzara & Éluard, to the painter Chirico, & to Rimbaud, among others; the first sections of the book are more about the narrator's worldview than anything else.  Early on, Breton's protagonist declares, "Do not expect me to provide an exact account of what I have been permitted to experience in this domain."

Nadja chose her own name "because in Russian it's the beginning of the word hope, & because it's only the beginning".  Her relationship with the narrator seems to exist on a different plane; he is married, she sees other people, but it doesn't seem to matter.  They see each other frequently to talk, far-reaching conversations that range from the narrator's power over Nadja to "who she might have been, in Marie-Antoinette's circle".  People are drawn to Nadja; in a restaurant, a waiter fascinated by her breaks 11 plates in the course of serving their meal. The narrator even says "I have taken Nadja, from the first day to the last, for a free genius, something like one of those spirits of the air which certain magical practices momentarily permit us to entertain but which we can never overcome".

Nadja has many delightful turns of phrase: "Perhaps life needs to be deciphered like a cryptogram"; "The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life's meaning-that event which I may not yet have found, but on whose path I seek myself-is not earned by work"; "Life is other than what one writes"; "Time is a tease-because everything has to happen in its own time"; & my favorite, "How does it happen that thrown together, once & for all, so far from earth, in those brief intervals which our marvelous stupor grants us, we have been able to exchange a few incredibly concordant views above the smoking debris of old ideas & sempiternal life?"

The novel is not such much a linear storyline as a kind of stream of consciousness; it ebbs & flows on some internal tide of its own.  Much is suggested rather than explicated.  Nadja is an interesting portrait of the time, the place, & Surrealism itself.

The novel is supplemented by 44 pictures, "various 'surreal' people, places & objects which the author visits or is haunted by", which enhance the reader's understanding of the book.

Down & Out in Paris & London by George Orwell

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?-for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living.  In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable.  In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service & the rest of it, what meaning is there except "Get money, get it legally, & get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue.
~George Orwell

In 1928, George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Blair) moved to Paris, joining the cavalcade of artists & writers attracted to the City of  Light during its Luminous Years.  By 1929, he had returned to England, & in 1933 he wrote a semi-autobiographical account of his life during this period called Down & Out in Paris & London.  It was his first book.

The novel is split into two sections, based on geography.  In Paris he works in restaurant & hotel kitchens, primarily as a "plongeur" (dishwasher).  In London, he finds himself living the life of a tramp when the job he expected to find waiting for him is not yet available. Both sections are written in the first person & read like a memoir, but there has been some debate as to the factuality of Orwell's account.

But no matter.  Even in this first book, Orwell's prose is entertaining, his pictures of the kitchens of 1920s Paris vivid enough to put you off your next restaurant visit; his tales of "screevers" (sidewalk chalk artists) more harrowing than Dick Van Dyke's attempt at a Cockney accent in Mary Poppins; & descriptions of various shelters, dormitories, & "spikes" will make you grateful to be able to take a bath without sharing water with 20 or more filthy men. 

If you enjoy reading about working in restaurants & hotels, try also:

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

Waiting: True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg

Hotel Bemelmans by Ludwig Bemelmens

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

“I wished I had died before I loved anyone but [Hadley].”
~Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast 

This is a gem of a book. The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of the first of Hemingway's four wives, Hadley Richardson, is written primarily from her perspective.  Why is Hadley the Paris wife?  She & Hemingway moved to Paris together in the early 1920s, & most of the time Hemingway spent in Paris was with Hadley & their son, "Bumby".  (Hadley & Ernest-or Hash & Nesto, or Tatie, or Tiny-were crazy about nicknames.) They were married for six years.

The story begins with their meeting in 1920 & ends with Hemingway's death in 1961, although after Hadley & Ernest divorced in 1927, they met only once.  Paula McLain seems to really have gotten under the skin of Hadley-a portrait she bases on sources such as A Moveable Feast & Bernice Kert's The Hemingway Women. I found myself drawn to the character of Hadley right away. The prose is beautiful ("My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, & make it work for me" was one of my favorite lines) & the details of Hadley's early life, her meeting with Hemingway, & her reaction to his death are very moving.

If the story of the Hemingway marriage isn't gripping enough for you, there is quite a cast of supporting players: Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas; Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald; Gerald & Sara Murphy. All are very realistically portrayed, & woven into the fabric of the story in a very natural way. The hard drinking & fast living lifestyles of these Jazz Age characters is brought vividly to life.

The Paris Wife is an intense, compelling read, even for-or perhaps especially for-those who know how the story will end.  Whether or not you are familiar with Hemingway's life, you will enjoy this delightful portrait & finely crafted tribute.  You will not want to put it down-I didn't! 

To read an interview with Paula McLain, visit The Hemingway Project website.

For more books about Hemingway ex-wives & family, consider Caroline Moorehead's Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life, about the journalist who was Hemingway's third wife, & Running with The Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways, written by Valerie Hemingway, Ernest's secretary & the wife of his youngest son.

Sylvia Beach & the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties & Thirties by Noel Riley Fitch

This is simply one of the best biographies I have ever read.  Detailing the life of Sylvia Beach & her milieu from her birth in 1887 until 1962, the year she died, Sylvia Beach & the Lost Generation is the most comprehensive study I have read of the era.  It is such a full and vibrant portrait of Sylvia Beach & all the literary figures, American, French, English, that passed through the doors of her famous bookshop, Shakespeare & Company, that you will never be bored, despite the 400-plus pages of this tome.

For me Sylvia Beach was one of those names you hear in connection with Joyce & Hemingway, a woman who owned a bookstore that both those illustrious Lost Generation authors frequented. Reading about her life, one of three sisters, daughter of a pastor from Princeton, New Jersey, who ended up living in Paris for over 40 fascinating years & meeting everyone worth knowing, was quite an education.  Sylvia & her family first went to Paris in 1902, when her father was associate pastor of the American Church of Paris.  They moved back to Princeton in 1905, but Sylvia, & to a lesser extent her mother & sisters, had already fallen for Europe's charms.  Sylvia went to Italy in 1907, to Spain in 1915, finally returning to Paris in 1916.  She opened Shakespeare & Company in 1919, with the help of her family & of Adrienne Monnier, owner of her own (French) lending library, La Maison des Amis des Livres, who for 38 years would be Sylvia's "sister, lover, mother & mentor".

Shakespeare & Company was an English language bookstore & lending library that attracted English-speaking literary lights of the early 20th century but also famous French friends, such as the poets Paul Valéry & Léon-Paul Fargue (who alarmed her with his nocturnal prowlings, which he called his "ministry of the night"),  & writers Valery Larbaud, Jules Romains, & André Gide (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1947).  The walls were full of pictures of "the Company", many taken by Sylvia, & out front was a hand-painted sign featuring a bust of Shakespeare.  In the confines of the shop, Sylvia rubbed shoulders with Gertrude Stein (at least in the early days), Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, Kay Boyle, Janet Flanner, John Dos Passos, & Elizabeth Bishop, to name a few luminaries. Shakespeare & Company also sold books by mail to other writers such as Yeats & the Sitwells, as well as the little literary magazines of the era, such as transition, This Quarter, Criterion, & Poetry-with Sylvia contributing to them a few times (mostly translations). The bookshop was not just Sylvia's job, it was her vocation.

In 1920 she met Joyce, which would be a turning point, because for a decade her life would be wound up with the Irishman & his family; Shakespeare & Company published Ulysses, & Sylvia was one of the two women who financed the Joyces' extravagant lifestyle while he wrote-the other woman was in England, so Sylvia also found herself running Joyce's errands & acting as his secretary on many occasions. This took up a lot of her time & Adrienne thought affected Sylvia's health. Also, Gertrude Stein no longer visited the shop, since she was feuding with Joyce.

Besides her long-running commitment to the welfare of James Joyce (& publishing 10 editions of Ulysses), some of Sylvia's other projects during her years in Paris including putting on an exhibition about Walt Whitman & putting a roof over the head of composer George Antheil.  In fact, a great deal of Sylvia's time seems to have been spent as a facilitator-finding someone to translate something, finagling a loan for someone, giving discounts to those in need (in fact, letting Hemingway walk out with any books he wanted).

Sylvia kept Shakespeare & Company going through the Depression, but it would not survive the war-she closed its doors dramatically in 1941, worried the Nazis would confiscate her stock. There is a Shakespeare & Company operating in Paris currently, but it is a different store, opened in 1951, & renamed Shakespeare & Company after Sylvia Beach's death.  This bookstore also has a grand literary tradition, serving as a base for writers of the Beat Generation-but that is another story.

Check out Sylvia Beach & The Lost Generation to learn about this remarkable woman, the linchpin of a literary generation, & also for its anecdotal history of other writers: the profligacy & dependency of the illness-ridden Joyce; Hemingway's many women, his delight in fatherhood, & the ox-tulip incident; the unfulfilled life of longtime member of the Company Robert McAlmon; & all the others who flit in & out of this stunning biography.

Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb

I feel like I am cheating slightly by including this in my Paris: The Luminous Years challenge, as very little of this book takes place between 1905-30.  I'm grandfathering this book in because who could be a bigger player in Paris' Luminous Years than the city itself?  Plus, this book is good.

I think I can safely say that I have never read a history of a place like this one before.  The idea of an "adventure history" piqued my interest, & I have not been disappointed by Parisians.  Author Graham Robb has taken incidents in the life of Paris between 1787 & the present day, using French historical figures from Napoleon to Marcel Proust to François Mitterand as narrators, & has woven together a very illuminating read. Different sections take different forms-"Expanding the Domain of the Possible", about the student riots in May 1968, takes the form of an examination, & "Lovers of Saint-Germain-des-Prés", starring Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Juliette Gréco & Miles Davis, is written as a script-without being annoyingly gimmicky.

I really felt like I learned something about the city & its people from this book & its judiciously chosen snatches of history. From Charles-Axel Guilliamot & the beginnings of the Catacombs to the files of Sûreté to the alchemists of Notre Dame, from the real-life Mimi who has been immortalized in La Bohème to Baron Haussmann to Madame Zola to the creation of the Paris Métro (or Métropolitain), Robb takes highlights & sideshows & scandals over history to create, perhaps not the most complete portrait of Paris, but one of the most entertaining you will ever read.

Proust at the Majestic by Richard Davenport-Hines

"Surely some of you know what we're talking about: that shelf filled with books you meant to read or, more likely, fully intend to read some day. When Luis introduced that phrase [the Shelf of Constant Reproach] at a meeting last week, we all admitted to some revered works of literature on our shelves. 'Anything by Proust!' some of us shouted out."

~'The Shelf Of Constant Reproach': Best Books You Never Read by Lynn Neary

Marcel Proust has been malingering on my Shelf of Constant Reproach for quite some time-ever since I first started to try to read Lydia Davis' acclaimed translation of Swann's Way.  So, since Proust fit neatly into my Paris: The Luminous Years reading challenge, I thought I would try to tempt myself back to Swann's Way with a little light reading about the author himself.
                          
Unfortunately, I was somewhat underwhelmed with my choice. Proust at the Majestic is a bit of a misnomer, I think, for a book where Proust's appearance at a party at Paris' Hotel Majestic plays such a tiny part. The first & next-to-last chapters make a nice framing device for the book: Chapter 1 introduces the party at the Majestic, which was attended not only by Proust but also by Picasso, Stravinsky, Joyce, & Diaghilev; while Chapter 8 introduces us to Sydney & Violet Schiff, the hosts of the infamous party, & their relationship with the author. Other than those chapters, the party was only mentioned once or twice.  I didn't understand the significance of the party to the book.

The rest of the book meandered a bit, trying to decide if it was a biography of Proust or literary criticism, & featuring long tangents into the lives of other celebrities of the era. It seemed to be well-researched & had a lot of interesting information-it just lacked focus.  Perhaps the author was trying to set a scene, but it was just too dense & a little too dry.  I did learn a lot about Proust, the role of homosexuality in his life & work, his illness (he "renounced his life, & forfeited his creative spirit, in order to fulfil his vocation"), his interest in all the social classes ("he ardently, sincerely found transcendant profundity in people & things that were generally dismissed as mundane"). It was just not a compelling read for me.

Maybe Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris by Graham Robb, in which Proust plays a part, will manage to tempt me back to Swann's Way.  But for now, it's back to the Shelf of Constant Reproach.

Americans in Paris 1903-1939 by George Wickes

If you are interested in Paris: The Luminous Years, but not sure what that period entails, this is the book for you. Americans in Paris, written in 1969, is a wonderfully informative guide to the people, the places, & the artistic movements of this era, although it might well be subtitled Who Gertrude Stein Knew (the author is either a big fan or just got a lot of his stories from her writings).

The book is split into sections, including "E. E. Cummings & the Great War" & "Man Ray, Dada & Surrealism". Each section begins with a brief timeline. The section "Ernest Hemingway in Montparnasse" includes a lot of details of the "little magazines" that were so influential during this period. "Virgil Thomson & Other Musical Saints" has a lot of information about Les Six, Nadia Boulanger, & Stravinsky. I was also thrilled to find out from "Henry Miller Down & Out in Paris" that he arrived in Paris in early 1930, so now I can include Henry Miller in my reading challenge books this year!

I did question that the book contains a chapter about George Antheil, a young composer whose early promise never really came to fruition, but only briefly mentions Isadora Duncan, one of the most famous American expatriates from that time, but that was really my only caveat. I'm not sure who George Wickes is (I found George Wickes, professor in the department of English at the University of Oregon in Eugene, listed online-however, this book was not in his bibliography), but he's penned a really interesting study of the arts in Paris from 1903-1939. Sometimes literary criticism, sometimes historical, sometimes a little bit gossipy, Americans in Paris was an entertaining read.

Paris: The Luminous Years (a 2011 reading challenge)

We recently saw the program "Paris, The Luminous Years: Toward the Making of the Modern" on PBS. We had been thinking of coming up with our own book challenge for 2011, since we enjoyed Our Mutual Read so much, but so far have not been inspired by any of the book challenges for next year that we'd seen.

"Paris, The Luminous Years spotlights now-famous figures in the world’s first international avant-garde, tracing who came to Paris, when and why, whom they met, what they made there..." [from the PBS fact sheet]

We recommend you watch "The Luminous Years" before starting the challenge, but even if you don't (the New York Times was rather dismissive about it), you can still explore this fertile territory in your 2011 reading. Not only is it an important literary period (Hemingway, Joyce, Dos Passos-you've got practically the whole Lost Generation to choose from-& then also Anais Nin, Henry Miller, & Langston Hughes), but you might also read about composers (Aaron Copland to Les Six); dance (Ballets Russes to Isadora Duncan); artists including Picasso, Matisse, & Miró; architecture; movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Fauvism, & Cubism; café culture; Montparnasse or Montmartre; Left Bank women; famous expatriates such as Josephine Baker; & of course jazz.

We'll be trying to read Luminous Years books ourselves this year & blogging about our reading periodically. Feel free to leave Luminous Years related comments on these posts, or check out the Luminous Years section on our Book Banter (top right of the sidebar) to leave some posts of your own!

Guidelines for the challenge:
1) Read 6-12 books in 2011 that have some connection with Paris during the years 1905-1930

2) 3 books must be non-fiction (biographies, books about the period)

3) 3 books must be fiction, plays or poetry. These must be either: set during 1905-1930 in Paris; written during 1905-1930 in Paris; or written by authors who lived in Paris during those years.

4) If you read more than 6 books, you can choose to read fiction or non-fiction for the remainder of the challenge.

5) Anyone can participate in this challenge, but we'd love to know if you're doing it, so please leave a comment!

6) Challenge begins 1/1/11 & ends 12/31/11.


Books we may read:

Le Corbusier: A Life by Nicholas Fox Weber
Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple
Chagall: A Biography by Jackie Wullschlager
Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties by Noel Riley Fitch
Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light by Tyler Stovall
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
Down & Out in Paris & London by George Orwell
Man Ray's Montparnasse by Herbert R. Lottman
Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story between the Great Wars by William A. Shack
Quartet by Jean Rhys
The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy
Nadja by Andre Breton

Q & A with filmmaker Perry Miller Adato