The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Gertrude Stein Remembered by Linda Simon
Ray Lewis White

Linda Simon, ed. Gertrude Stein Remembered. Nebraska, 1997. 195 pp. Paper: $15.00.

Had Gertrude Stein not possessed a truly fascinating personality, her publications would have remained interesting to only the few literary scholars intent on expanding the canon of works by early twentieth-century women writers. But because Stein was a woman of independent mind and means, living, writing, and collecting in Paris when that city defined modernism in the arts, and because everybody who was anybody in venturesome artistic style eventually became entangled in Gertrude’s web and emerged preserved in her conversation and in her memoirs, Stein has maintained and will maintain an honored place in cultural history.
In Gertrude Stein Remembered, Linda Simon, author of the unusually interesting Biography of Alice B. Toklas (1977), reprints selections from the memoirs of nineteen famous artists who encountered Stein and Toklas and who remembered their experiences vividly if not always pleasantly: Acton, Anderson, Barlow, Barney, Beach, Beaton, Bonney, de Morinni, Gilot, Imbs, Kahnweiler, Matthews, McAlmon, Preston, Severeid, Steward, Tchelitchew, Van Vechten, and Wilder. Supplementing these articles and extracts are two newly published items: an obituary of Stein written by three of her Radcliffe fellow students, and a memoir of Stein by a fellow student in psychology classes at Harvard.
The mystery of the present volume is that nowhere does Linda Simon mention her first book, a collection of similar materials, Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait (1974). The earlier volume, fairer overall for containing more negative commentary on Stein, contained articles and excerpts from Acton, Anderson, Hemingway, Olivier, Putnam, Rose, Sitwell, Vollard, and Wilder, among others. Readers new to Gertrude Stein or devoted to her life and works should own and enjoy both of Linda Simon’s volumes. [Ray Lewis White]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Gertrude Stein Remembered by Linda Simon Ray Lewis White Linda Simon, ed. Gertrude Stein Remembered. Nebraska, 1997. 195 pp. Paper: $15.00. Had Gertrude Stein not possessed a truly fascinating personality, her publications would have remained interesting to only the few literary scholars intent on expanding the canon of works by early twentieth-century women writers. But because Stein was a woman of independent mind and means, living, writing, and collecting in Paris when that city defined modernism in the arts, and because everybody who was anybody in venturesome artistic style eventually became entangled in Gertrude’s web and emerged preserved in her conversation and in her memoirs, Stein has maintained and will maintain an honored place in cultural history. In Gertrude Stein Remembered, Linda Simon, author of the unusually interesting Biography of Alice B. Toklas (1977), reprints selections from the memoirs of nineteen famous artists who encountered Stein and Toklas and who remembered their experiences vividly if not always pleasantly: Acton, Anderson, Barlow, Barney, Beach, Beaton, Bonney, de Morinni, Gilot, Imbs, Kahnweiler, Matthews, McAlmon, Preston, Severeid, Steward, Tchelitchew, Van Vechten, and Wilder. Supplementing these articles and extracts are two newly published items: an obituary of Stein written by three of her Radcliffe fellow students, and a memoir of Stein by a fellow student in psychology classes at Harvard. The mystery of the present volume is that nowhere does Linda Simon mention her first book, a collection of similar materials, Gertrude Stein: A Composite Portrait (1974). The earlier volume, fairer overall for containing more negative commentary on Stein, contained articles and excerpts from Acton, Anderson, Hemingway, Olivier, Putnam, Rose, Sitwell, Vollard, and Wilder, among others. Readers new to Gertrude Stein or devoted to her life and works should own and enjoy both of Linda Simon’s volumes. [Ray Lewis White]

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