NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/rec/arts/books/23306

Text File | 1992-12-26 | 10.2 KB | 176 lines

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!black.clarku.edu!vax.clarku.edu!hhenderson
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Stein and Hemingway (was: *Any* kind of r.a.b. split...)
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Organization: Clark University
Date: 26 DEC 92 04:58:16 GMT
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Michael Wise writes of my earlier post re: Gertrude Stein:

>Her vitroil caused me to go back and re-read the AUTOBIOGRAPHY and Jeffrey
>Meyers biography of Hemingway (thus explaining my relative silence).

I've read the Meyers bio too.  It's painstakingly put together, but I thought
it was somewhat one-sided.  Meyers is bent on proving Hemingway's originality
as an artist, and thus ignores, or actively attempts to deny, other writers'
influences on him.  Meyers falls into the Hemingway trap: he often believes
Hemingway's own mythologizing, and fails to check out the different versions
of the facts.  This is especially true regarding Stein.  Meyers has a great
antipathy toward Stein, repeatedly calling her fat, ugly, etc.  (Though his
insistence on her unattractiveness is rather strange when he goes on to quote
the letter in which Hemingway says about Stein, "I always wanted to fuck her
and she knew it and it was a good healthy feeling and made more sense than
some of the talk".)  This antipathy, probably rooted in fear of Stein and the
need to deny the existence of a strong female influence on the tough-guy
rugged-individualist Hemingway, leads Meyers to twist the facts, or omit them
completely, to suit his purposes.

>I don't feel I was in error when I characterized Stein as a fat, lazy
>lesbian with a serious grudge against the more successful Hemingway.
>He was her pupil, but he also did a great deal for her, especially
>to help her get her work published

I suggest you read James R. Mellow's _Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and
Company_.  I found this to be an objective history of Stein and the people
surrounding her.  It is certainly not indulgent towards Stein:  Mellow is
unflinching in his discussion of her personality flaws, and in his analysis
of her true talent as opposed to the great genius she claimed to have.  He is
especially valuable when contrasting different versions of the same incident
(for example, the episode that gave birth to the "lost generation" quote) and
putting them in historical context.

Meyers buys Hemingway's version of the breakup with Stein, claiming that it
was due to Stein's jealousy of Hemingway's success.  There's no evidence for
this except Hemingway's own assertions.  There is far more evidence that
Stein's disaffection with Hemingway had much to do with his treatment of
Sherwood Anderson.

As Meyers says elsewhere in the book, when Hemingway "became bored with his
friends, discovered their faults, found a real or imaginary grievance, or had
no further use for them, he would ruthlessly, relentlessly and suddenly break
off their friendship." Meyers also admits that Hemingway, while generous to
those he believed to be his inferiors, was resentful and "intensely
competitive" with serious rivals.

Edmund Wilson wrote, in a review of _In Our Time_, that Hemingway was "the
only American writer but one -- Mr. Sherwood Anderson -- who has felt the
genius of Gertrude Stein's _Three Lives_ and has evidently been influenced by
it.  Indeed, Miss Stein, Mr. Anderson and Mr. Hemingway may now be said to
form a school by themselves."  It is interesting that Wilson is quoted as a
respected authority several times in Meyer's book -- Meyers calls him
"Hemingway's most penetrating critic" -- yet when this review of _In Our
Time_ is mentioned (not quoted), Meyers calls the comparison to Anderson
"facile", and ignores the comparison to Stein *completely*.  In fact, _Three
Lives_ is not mentioned *once* in Meyers' book.

Anderson was a close friend of Stein's and a mentor of Hemingway's (he had
introduced Hemingway to Stein).  Once Hemingway had no further use for
Anderson -- and when he began to feel stifled by the "protege" role -- he
stabbed him in the back, writing _The Torrents of Spring_, a cruel parody of
Anderson's latest novel _Dark Laughter_ (and also, in passing, Stein's _The
Making of Americans_).  Before the book came out, Hemingway sent Anderson a
letter explaining that the parody wasn't supposed to be a personal attack,
but instructive: "I feel [Hemingway wrote to Anderson] that if among
ourselves we have to pull our punches, if when a man like yourself who can
write very great things writes something that seems to me (who have never
written anything great but am anyway a fellow craftsman) rotten, I ought to
tell you so..."  Anderson considered the letter "a funeral oration delivered
over my grave.  It was so raw, so pretentious, so patronizing that it was
amusing but it filled me with wonder."  Anderson was disappointed in
Hemingway; Stein was angry.  Feelings cooled between her and Hemingway, and
in the _Autobiography_, published a few years later, she expertly mocked him.
Hemingway never forgave her for this, and for the rest of his life he
denigrated her personally, ridiculed her work, and tried desperately to deny
her influence on him.

>That she was fat, that she was a lesbian, is hardly
>in dispute; that she lived on her father's money is easy to determine;

I don't see how any of this can devalue her writing or her wit.  Are we to
throw out the work of all authors who have come from privileged backgrounds?
Who have sexual preferences that aren't socially acceptable?  Who are fat or
ugly or black or Jewish?  Who are drunks or drug addicts or wife-beaters?
Who are dead white males?

>that she failed as a great Cubist art critic is supported by Braque's
>comments that she hadn't the faintest what they were trying to do.

You're getting that line straight from the Meyers biography.  Meyers makes no
case of his own regarding Stein's influence on art, whether as critic or
patron; in fact, Meyers avoids any mention of this aspect of Stein's life.
He spends a great deal of time discussing her ugliness, her fatness, and her
lesbianism, but never once mentions her friendship with, and influence on,
Picasso.   He never mentions Cubism at all.

Braque's remarks are convenient, since Meyers can claim that Stein's
reputation as a critic was "devastated" by them, and leave it at that.  But
Meyers, who chose to see Stein through Hemingway's eyes, is blind to the
details of Stein's life as it existed separate from Hemingway himself.
Meyers ignores the context of Braque's remarks and the possible motivation
behind them.  Braque made those comments following the publication of the
_Autobiography_.  He and others, including Matisse, Andre Salmon, and Tristan
Tzara, wrote journal articles complaining about the tone and content of the
_Autobiography_, and attempting to discredit Stein (the book was selling
quite well at the time).  Salmon spoke of her "incomprehension of an epoch".

All these individuals had reasons of their own for feeling slighted by Stein.
In one of the more memorable scenes in the _Autobiography_, Salmon passes out
drunk at a party for Rousseau, is stowed away in the room where the coats are
being kept, and at the end of the evening is discovered to have chewed up
part of Alice Toklas' hat.  Matisse was upset by Stein's description of
Madame Matisse as having "a firm large loosely hung mouth like a horse".
Tzara, who did not impress Stein very much, was mentioned dismissively in the
book.  As far as Braque is concerned, he comes off well in the book, but was
probably not pleased by Stein's fondness for repeating a quote from Picasso:
"Yes, Braque and James Joyce, they are the incomprehensibles whom anybody can
understand."

If you think Stein was a bad person because she was fat, and lazy, and
because she lived off her father's money, that's your opinion.  It's an
idiotic, bigoted opinion, but one that you have a right to hold.  In any
case, your opinion of her has nothing to do with my original claim, which was
that Stein was a witty woman, and my recommendation of _The Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklas_ as an entertaining book.  I suspect that your "Dykes may
call it literature" flame in response to my post was not meant to further the
discussion thread in question (books with a sense of humor), or confirm or
deny the wittiness of the _Autobiography_, but to vent long-standing
resentment of feminist criticism of Hemingway.  Well, imagine what you'd
think if I busted in on a discussion of Hemingway's writing and said
"Hemingway was a vicious, twisted bastard, and, as Rita Mae Brown aptly puts
it, 'He was so excessively butch that he was a caricature except to other men
also nervous about their masculinity'".  I think you'd consider it a boorish
non-sequitur.

>I do not fault Heather for being straight with me. I fault her for wanting
>me to change my opinions so that they would be germane with hers.

I don't mind if you say, "I don't like Stein's writing."  Not everybody can
deal with her style (myself, I only like *some* of her prose, and find her
poetry completely unreadable) but many people enjoy it.   As Abraham Lincoln
said, in a strangely Steinian locution, "People who like this sort of thing
will find this the sort of thing they like."

But you didn't say "I don't like Stein's writing."  The only mention you made
of her writing was to say that "she never wrote any prose beyond a third-
grade reading level".  That's a dumb statement (especially coming from an
admirer of Hemingway!) and I heartily disagree.  In my second post I quoted
two passages from the _Autobiography_ which, to my mind, disprove that
statement.   Evaluation of her prose is, of course, subjective; but your
characterization of her relationship to Hemingway is incorrect, and based on
misinformation.  You've bought the Hemingway party line on Stein, but that
party line omits most of the important facts.  Worse than that, you evidently
believe that literary worth is based on an author's looks and sexual
preference and the financial situation of the author's family.  This is
simply bizarre.  I don't care if you change your opinion of Stein, but I
certainly hope that you change your criteria for literary worth.  Otherwise
your students will be in deep shit.

Any questions?

Heather
[e-mail]