Gertude Stein: An Afterlife, by Francesca Wade review: 'tremendous'

In this insightful biography of Gertrude Stein, Francesca Wade paints a colourful portrait of her subject and also engages critically, creatively and respectfully with her work, writes Stuart Kelly

When I had finished reading this tremendous biography, I was so exhilarated and intrigued that I started to look for archive footage of Gertrude Stein. Although I found some, far more gobsmacking was a clip from a 1978 Swedish film (in ten languages) with none other than Bernard Cribbins as Gertude Stein and Wilfrid Brambell (Steptoe Snr.) as her life-partner, gatekeeper and muse, Alice B Toklas. It is absurd, unsettling, wry and provocative, much like the real Stein. In the actual film of her, there is a twinkle that can be discerned in the prose which is often absent from the images created of her by Picasso, Picabia, Lipchitz, Davidson and Cecil Beaton, where she tends to be, frankly, monumental.

Nevertheless, the peculiar film, and this book, captures something of the antic incredulity of Stein’s life. One of my favourite anecdotes here is when, on her tour of America, after the success of The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas and the opera with Virgil Thomson, Four Saints in Three Acts, Stein is invited to dinner with Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Hellman, Anita Loos (of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) and Dashiell Hammett, the writer she was most keen to meet. Hammett (we are told in a footnote) nearly did not attend as he thought the invitation must be an April Fools’ Day prank.

At her apartment in Paris, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) poses in front of the portrait of her painted by Pablo Picasso in 1906 | AFP via Getty Images

There are many reasons why I think Wade’s book is especially impressive (and I would hope to see it on non-fiction prize shortlists). The first is the structure, which had a salient link to Stein’s most famous work. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas is, in Wade’s words, “a joke, a myth, an audacious act of knowing artifice. It contravenes every rule of autobiography”. Stein ventriloquises her life via her lover in a bravura act of self-regard and self-erasure. Wade, in a similar way, writes a biography and a book about the act of writing a biography, divided into “Life” and “Afterlife” (or should that be “The Life”?). This is not dry academia, but an insightful examination of how lives are protected, memorialised and canonised. One puzzle can stand for the whole: what were Stein’s last words? ““What is the question?” – a pause – “What is the answer?”” or “If there is no question there is no answer” or ““What is the answer” – silence – “In that case, what is the question?”” Carl van Vechten, who was almost as possessive of Stein’s legacy as Toklas, wrote to her for clarification; but the source for all three was Toklas. In a way readers of Stein appreciate, the different nuances of seemingly similar arrangements have vast consequences. Another layer of complexity is introduced by Toklas being one of the very few people who could decipher Stein’s handwriting. Stein’s papers, sent to Yale, were in little discernible order; not so much a curated archive as a slab of life or avant-garde artwork in itself.

Wade also engages, critically, creatively and respectfully with Stein’s work. I was still reliant on an old hardback of van Vechten’s selection of Stein (apart from the paperback of the Autobiography and Three Lives); and Wade is illuminating about the sheer extent of Stein’s output. Particular attention is paid to Q.E.D., a lesbian bildungsroman written before Stein met Toklas, the fractious textual history of which gives a clear insight into the depth of their feelings for each other. Stein is a difficult writer, but not in the same vein as the polyglot James Joyce or the esoteric Ezra Pound. Her modernism is not outré in the same way; and Wade does help the reader in tuning into Stein’s frequency. Her syntax and repetition have unique pleasures, which (personally) I would associate more with musical pioneers like Cage, Glass and Reich.

The Stein that emerges in these pages is more than just an iconoclast of the sentence. Her very early work on brain modelling with William James did have an impact, even if she denied it. Likewise, the war reportage and crime fiction are not often associated with Stein; nor the substitute and replace technique in the notebooks which align her with writers in the OuLiPo group and with almost Situationist derangement.

It is difficult to deny some of the more acerbic taunts, like the famous New York Times headline “Gertrude Stein Arrives and Baffles Reporters by Making Herself Clear”. Although Stein was naïve about Petain, her war record is far more creditable that that of, say, Ezra Pound or Wyndham Lewis, both of whom seem to relish, distastefully, their anti-Semitic and misogynistic jibes against Stein. It seems typical: I was disappointed to learn Don Marquis joined in the baiting, as his “Archy and Mehitabel” poems have long been a joy of mine.

“Is Gertrude Stein serious?” asked the novelist James Branch Cabell (the question might equally be posed to the author of the 26-ish volume Biography of the Life of Manuel). Yes, yes, yes; and thank goodness Wade takes Stein seriously. At her best, she (and the equally eccentric e e cummings) write most joyously about love.

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, by Francesca Wade, Faber & Faber, £20. Francesca Wade is appearing at Topping and Co., Edinburgh, 21 May and Topping and Co., St Andrews, 22 May