Gertrude Stein | Oozing Cubism | 2

Summary

Legacy Podcast: Gertrude Stein | Oozing Cubism | Episode 2

Hosts: Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan
Release Date: February 19, 2026

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Overview

This episode continues Legacy’s deep dive into the life and impact of Gertrude Stein—literary innovator, cultural gatekeeper, and paradoxical icon. Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan explore Stein’s experimental writing, her famed Paris salon, complex relationships, and moral ambiguities during WWII. They scrutinize whether she deserves the reputation she holds and what her true legacy is, especially in light of her relationships, self-perception, and survival during Nazi-occupied France.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Gertrude Stein’s Experimental Writing: Genius or Nonsense?

• Afua acknowledges the influence of Stein’s cubist writing but admits, “I find it difficult to impossible to read…her writing doesn’t make that much sense to me.” (01:11–02:37)
• Peter respects the ambition but questions, “how self-indulgent is it?” and is struck by “the fact that Stein has such a high opinion of herself.” (02:09)
• Both hosts dissect Stein’s approach: prioritizing auditory and visual wordplay over conventional narrative, likened by Afua to “a chant or a hypnotic kind of sound bath.” (03:05)
• The conversation touches on possible gendered bias against Stein’s experimentalism (04:02), with Peter wondering if her work would have been received differently “if it was by a Frenchman in a poloneck.”

2. Commercial Success: ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas’

• When Stein writes in a more accessible mode, she achieves mainstream success, but only by “prostituting herself” (per Mabel Weeks), abandoning her experimental roots (05:03).
• The “autobiography” is actually Stein writing as Alice, about herself—Afua calls it “the ultimate hijacking of somebody’s personal narrative to further glorify and praise yourself.” (06:50)
• Stein’s self-regard is highlighted: “I’ve only met a genius three times… Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Whitehead.” (06:30)
• Stein’s global book tour underscores the power dynamic with Toklas—Toklas plays the supporting, nearly invisible, role (06:50–07:59).

3. The Paris Salon: Community, Competition, and Gatekeeping

• Stein’s Saturday evening salon at Rue de Fleurus becomes legendary, attracting “the lost generation” (a term Stein coins), including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Picasso (08:49).
• Peter is fascinated by the “romanticism” and chaos of the salon, while Afua points out its contradictions: while the idea is openness, “the reality is that Gertrude Stein… wanted disciples.” (15:32)
• Alice B. Toklas serves as a strict enforcer, controlling access and ejecting anyone showing disloyalty or overshadowing Stein: “If Alice doesn’t like you, you’re out.” (18:52)
• Afua notes, “She would take in a young writer and really support and mentor them, but when they started to obscure her light, they were out.” (16:45)
• The salon is male-dominated; Alice and Gertrude are “outliers” who “actually kind of support the patriarchal nature of this whole scene” (19:52–20:51).

4. Rivalries and Insecurities: The Shadow of James Joyce

• Stein is so threatened by Joyce’s critical acclaim after Ulysses that “you weren’t even allowed to mention his name in the room at her salon” (17:29–17:47).
• This adds to the paradox: the salon is rife with egos, unspoken rules, and sensitivity toward perceived slights (21:10).

5. The War Years: Collaboration or Survival?

• As WWII approaches, Stein and Toklas choose to remain in occupied France despite being Jewish and having safe passage to America offered (22:23–23:54).
• Stein’s justification for staying—*“fussy about my food”—*is met with disbelief by both hosts (23:54).
• Their survival is secured through the intervention of Bernard Faÿ, a collaborator with the Vichy regime and head of the National Library, who advocates for their protection. Stein, in turn, interacts with and even supports Pétain, leader of Vichy France, translating his speeches (25:13–27:21).
• The discussion underscores Stein’s political complexity—she is deeply anti-communist, leans conservative, and collaborates, in part, by choice due to not leaving when she could have (28:19).
• Afua sums up: “The whole thing is really problematic and a real stain on her legacy… She was the one who made choices with all the agency and resources at her disposal to be on this particular side.” (29:28–30:08)

6. After the War: Myth-making and Legacy Control

• After Stein’s death (1946), Alice B. Toklas devotes herself to curating Stein’s reputation, mirroring Jane Austen’s sister in controlling legacy through selective narrative and destroying some correspondence (32:16).
• Peter and Afua debate whether Stein is a feminist, given the exploitative dynamic with Alice and her complicity in male-dominated artistic culture (33:12–34:42).
• Toklas’s own difficult later years—eviction due to lack of legal marriage rights and loss of their apartment—reflects the limitations faced by same-sex couples at that time (36:28).

7. Stein’s Role as Enabler: Picasso’s Career

• Stein is credited as essential in launching Picasso’s career by providing financial, social, and emotional support—without her, “Cubism might have been delayed by years.” (39:14–40:26)

8. Literary Legacy: Radical or Unreadable?

• Peter finds Stein's work “radical” yet not “particularly enjoyable to read,” positing, “Had she been a man, had she been French, had she not had this complicated personal life… I think we would be taking her more seriously.” (41:17)
• Afua contends Stein’s writing is difficult but valuable for unpredictability, even calling her “the ultimate anti-AI machine” because her senselessness is impossible for AI to replicate (41:48–43:03).
• Peter tests this assertion, generating an “AI Gertrude Stein” quote which Afua decisively rejects: “It hasn’t got it. It has not got it.” (43:01–43:03)
• Afua argues for preserving nonsensical, human writing in an age of AI-predicted text (43:03–44:00).

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Notable Quotes

• Afua Hirsch:

  • “Her writing has no conventional sentences, no story, no narrative, no obvious structure… more like explorations of the sounds that the words create… more like a chant or a hypnotic kind of sound bath.” (02:37–03:05)
  • “That’s the ultimate hijacking of somebody’s narrative to further glorify and praise yourself.” (06:50)
  • “Gertrude Stein looked like she wanted peers, but really what she wanted was disciples.” (15:32)
  • “She was collaborating with it… a real stain on her legacy.” (30:08)
  • “There are elements of genius to Gertrude’s side… she certainly has created a legacy, demonstrated by the fact that we’re sitting here today, 100 years later, talking about her.” (38:56)
  • “Stein was trying to break with convention and reprogram the brains. She’s like the ultimate anti-AI machine.” (41:48)

• Peter Frankopan:

  • “But she is absolutely sure…that she herself is absolutely in the pantheon of people who are changing the way in which people think and how people write.” (16:45)
  • “It’s almost incomprehensible.” (23:54, on Stein choosing to stay in Vichy France)
  • “She becomes a fan of Petain… starts to translate a book of Petain’s speeches into English… it almost defies belief.” (27:21)
  • “Had she been a man … we would be taking her more seriously…” (41:17)

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• Stein’s Difficult Writing & Self-Regard:

  • 01:11–04:02

• Breakthrough with ‘Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas’:

  • 05:03–07:59

• Salon Power Dynamics & Alice B. Toklas as Enforcer:

  • 08:49–16:45

• Rivalries, Insecurities, Gender Roles:

  • 17:29–21:10

• Decision to Stay in France During Nazi Occupation:

  • 22:23–24:55

• Protection by Bernard Fay, Connections to Vichy:

  • 25:13–27:21

• Critical Appraisal of Her Post-War Reputation:

  • 32:16–33:29

• Stein’s Role in Picasso’s Ascent:

  • 39:14–40:26

• Experimentation, AI, and Unreadability:

  • 41:14–44:15

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Memorable Moments

• Afua’s description of Stein’s prose as “a hypnotic kind of sound bath” (03:05).
• The hosts’ incredulity that Stein stayed in France for “fussy about my food” reasons (23:54).
• The analogy with AI: “Gertrude Stein did not make sense. Her writing is nonsense…She was dispensing with sense and trying to do something else. That’s kind of the reason why it’s AI proof.” (43:03)
• Peter’s failed AI Gertrude Stein experiment: “What is remembered repeats. And what repeats becomes real. And what becomes real insists on being remembered again.” Afua: “No. It hasn’t got it.” (43:01)
• Afua on legacy: “She certainly has created a legacy, demonstrated by the fact that we’re sitting here today, 100 years later, talking about her.” (38:56)
• Announcement of the next episode: Ernest Hemingway (44:32)

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Flow and Tone

Afua and Peter maintain a witty, skeptical, but deeply curious tone—balancing sharp critique, historical analysis, and a sense of irreverent fun. Their dialogue is candid, often self-reflective, and unafraid to challenge each other and their subjects. The episode is structured to alternate between critique, admiration, and hard questioning of legacy, making it richly engaging and thought-provoking throughout.

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Next Episode Tease

• The next episode will profile Ernest Hemingway, continuing with 1930s Paris and another fiercely polarizing legacy.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankenpan.

[C]

I'm AFWA Haas.

[B]

And this is Legacy. The show that explores the lives, events and ideas that have shaped our world and asks if they have the reputations they truly deserve.

[C]

This is gertrude stein. Episode 2 oozing cubism. This is our second episode, Peter talking about Gertrude Stein. And she has been writing this experimental cubist literature. It has a huge fan base, especially in academic circles today. I'm just gonna be totally honest. I find it difficult to impossible to read. I don't know how you feel about her writing.

[B]

I'm still thinking about our last episode we recorded and about how difficult it is to be a genius. I've been reflecting on that. I've been trying to work do less because Gertrude Sire's advice that it's very, very tiring and you can't really do too much. And I've also been thinking about the words oozing onto the page and so oozing and cubism. Cubism always has these kind of lines and then the ooze always a bit more liquid.

[C]

Oozing Cubism.

[B]

So I don't think it's easy, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem because things that are difficult I quite enjoy. But I think the question with Stein is how self indulgent is it? And I'm slightly blinded by the fact that Stein has such a high opinion of herself that I find it slightly tricky to get past that. But maybe that's just being unfair. But she's obviously trying to do something that is groundbreaking and I think that that's harder than it sounds. And I'm happy to give some credit for that. But you're not so convinced.

[C]

I think it's really important that artists create and follow their instincts and their curiosity and don't think about what we will find makes sense to us. But I'm just going to put it out there that her writing doesn't make that much sense to me. And that's because her writing has no conventional sentences, no story, no narrative, no obvious structure. It's more like explorations of the sounds that the words create, how those sounds will look on the page, rather than trying to actually tell a story or create a sentence. And those words don't necessarily make sense. And in fact, Stein wasn't actually interested in sense. She was interested in this immersive reading experience that would kind of attune the reader to the present moment by creating these catalogues, cascades of repeated sentences and words and phrases and these slight variations that kind of carry the reader along on a current. I guess it's more like a chant or a hypnotic kind of sound bath. And I, you know, I appreciate the originality, I think, of what she was doing. But it is difficult to separate Peter from this slight narcissism and self indulgence and almost arrogant dismissal of the reader and where she's taking them. It's more about her and this oozing out of her expression.

[B]

So hard. Because I think that there's also a sort of strong element of sexism in some of this. So when you read Derrida or Saussure or Foucault, all these sort of French writers who are deconstructing language or post structuralists, you know, you think, well, okay, there's something in what they're trying to do that's profoundly groundbreaking. And conventions and sentences and grammar, you know, those go out the window because they're sacrificed at the altar of comprehension. And it doesn't help that she's American, and it definitely doesn't help that she's a woman. And, And I think that that's. That's latent unfairness. I mean, there's. There's a whole story about legacies of women and their contribution to intellectual thought. But I wonder if her work was presented as being by a Frenchman in a polar neck, whether it would be taken more seriously. And I think that's a fair question to ask. But things change for Gertrude Stein. I mean, with her publication. We talked about that last episode, her publication of somebody else's autobiography. Talk us through what that is and why it becomes so important.

[C]

Yeah, so she's been, as we've just said, writing this very experimental, innovative, obscure, obscure Cubist writing. And as you can imagine, it's not the easiest way to attract a commercial mass audience or even critical acclaim because, frankly, many critics don't understand what she's really trying to do either. But when she decides to write a conventional book, the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, well, it's conventional in the sense that it's an actual story that you can follow in more conventional sentences. It's not conventional because it's not actually an autobiography. It's her writing about Alice B. Toklas in the voice of Alice B. Toklas. And her friend Mabel Weeks describes this as a kind of prostituting herself, because now, at the age of 58, having been determined to stick to this very avant garde Cubism, she's now writing a book in basically regular English. And guess what happens when you play to the crowd and write something with commercial appeal? It becomes a massive bestseller.

[B]

And it's a huge success with the readers. It's a huge success with critics, too. And it also allows her, because she's using the voice of Alice P. Toklas about herself, to completely dispense with all those problems about humility that we've talked about, which seems to so bother her problem. Stein talks about Toklas saying that I've only met a genius three times, of course, talking about herself. And each time a bell rang within me, and I wasn't mistaken. And I may say, in each case, it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. And the three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, and Alfred Whitehead. So it's a funny way to talk about yourself, about someone else calling you a genius, but it says a lot about how Stein sees herself.

[C]

Just imagine somebody else writing your autobiography about what a genius you find them to be. That's this kind of the ultimate hijacking of somebody's personal narrative to further glorify and praise yourself. It's quite, quite mind blowing. And I think, you know, that's one thing. Like, if somebody wrote my book for me and used it to talk about how amazing they were, I wouldn't be that happy about it. But there's also the context where there is this weird power dynamic in the relationship. And you can actually see this in the behavior around the book, not just in the book, because it becomes a huge bestseller. And Gertrude Stein then goes on this kind of tour, global tour of this book, in which she's the star on stage talking about her book, which is purporting to be the autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. While Alice B. Toklas unpacks her suitcase and gives her water and waits quietly in the wings watching her star rise. It is a very Strange situation. And among its critics, Peter, are none other than her once very close brother, Leo.

[B]

Well, Leo is mortified, I think, partly because seeing his sibling success, maybe that's what triggers him. But after his death, his letters get published and we find out that he was absolutely furious. He kept quizzing friends about their reaction, hoping that they'd also confirmed that his sister was a fraud. Her morrows were, as he calls it, fatuous idiots who go to hear her silly twaddle. So he doesn't rate her and he's very angry that it's done quite so well. And I think that speaks to that past complicated relationship we spoke about in the first episode, where Leo and Gertrude go their own separate ways. But I think it's that he sees that Gertrude has ideas above her station and that it's his job to take her back down to size. I'm not sure that's particularly helpful. But the idea, I think, that Gertrude's star is burning too brightly is something that he finds very, very difficult to deal with.

[C]

And he's not the only rival who's riled up by this book, because the other thing that Gertrude Stein hijacks Alice B. Toklas story to do is to settle her own scores with other rivals. So just to set the scene about what's going on in that social group, her salon in Paris has really grown from strength to strength. The apartment at Rue de Fleurus has become legendary. Anyone can walk in the door on a Saturday night and they might not even be offered anything to eat or drink. They are coming just for the conversation. And now, in the era after the First World War, in the 1920s, there is a complete boom because Americans are not only taking advantage of the advantageous currency situation where their dollars go further in Paris, but they're also running away from prohibition in the United States. And Stein is the one who coins the term for these artists and writers, the lost generation.

[B]

So she becomes a cult leader. But, I mean, I've always been intrigued by Gertrude Stein's salon, but also by the idea of a salon altogether. I mean, my idea of. Well, I don't know whether my idea of a nightmare is people dropping in on a Saturday night unannounced. But there is something also very lovely about the kind of unexpected and of ships passing through, I mean, I think, and, you know, just dropping in on you and people getting to know each other. But I think it must be quite a. I mean, I would love to be part of somebody else's salon rather than have it myself. I Guess what? I. What I mean, but I quite like the idea of groups of people coming together. I mean, maybe we've replaced that a bit today with social media where you could drop in on other people's conversations and interact with them. But something quite interesting about the idea of knowing that they're going to be fiery creatives and that there's a chance to interact with them. And you know, of course in those days, things like substance abuse apart from alcohol has only got quite as bad as it might be today. But would you like to be part of a salon Afro? Do you have your own salon that you'd ever invited me to on a Saturday night or another evening where everybody just drops in on your household and helps themselves to a glass of port and talks about, about deconstructionism.

[C]

I can't count the number of times people I know have had the idea of kind of reinventing the salon and wanting to gather people with something to say and have that kind of atmosphere. I think the romanticism of the idea really lives on. A few people have kind of attended it. Yeah. And I think it's maybe the more that, you know, these kind of conversations become commoditized and something that's all for creating content. There's almost like a greater value placed on a completely agenda. Free, safe space to just gather and talk. No one's filming, no one's trying to turn it into anything. No one's charging anyone. It's just a kind of community of minds. I think people yearn for that more than ever because online spaces are often so kind of ridden with agendas and monetization. I mean, Peter, you could argue that's what we're doing. Legacy you might be, unless you subscribe, which would be great. You could be listening to this for free and just enjoying being in the conversation that me and you are having. But I think that people crave the in person experience of the salon and it's never gone away. And when I was in my twenties, I remember the idea being met with a kind of very self conscious eye roll. It's like the height of pretentiousness while people secretly kind of wanted it as well.

[B]

I guess it cause you've got to be quite extrovert, don't you? I mean, to want to turn up and then to try and dazzle. You've got to be really confident to think you've got a contribution to make.

[C]

I'll tell you what you need if you want to do a salon is you need an Alice B. Toklas. Because Gertrude's Stein, that's true. Is this like, magnanimous? Everyone can come and have the conversation. Meanwhile, Alice B. Toklas was her enforcer. She was the one. If Gertrude Stein decided someone had fallen out of favour, who would make the awkward phone call disinviting them or slamming the door in their face, or kicking everyone out when it was time for Gertrude Stein to go and have her genius recharging break. And I think if you have the luxury of someone who does all the dirty work, you can afford to be this very spontaneous, creative conversation facilitator, right? But this is how their dynamic worked. And Gertrude Stein never had to get her hands dirty in that way. Alice B. Toklas was always the one doing the gatekeeping. Because the reality is it's such a nice idea that anyone can come in and be part of the conversation, but you do need a gatekeeper, otherwise it can get completely out of control. So when we come back after the break, we'll hear a little bit more about exactly what kind of out of control situations did result from these often messy salons.

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[B]

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[E]

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[C]

Ha.

[E]

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[B]

So you mentioned Afra, that Alice was the gatekeeper. Does that mean that she's not allowing people in or. I mean, the bit I took away from that as made me think, which is that the idea of a salon is a nice one, but someone's got to clear all the glasses away and wash them up. So if you don't have to think too much about that, then a salon is great because you don't have to think about who's paying for things and who's doing all the hard work. But does Alice play a role in protecting and curating and selecting who can get through? Because, I mean, people like Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, they're all incredibly famous in their own right. Is it because, I don't want to use the word celebrity, but all these literary and artistic geniuses are finding each other, and the people who aren't quite good enough, we just forget about them or they're being kept away.

[C]

I think the idea of the salon is supposed to be. It's free and accessible. You can just come. There's no real criterion for entry, because otherwise, you know, you get like, some broke, obscure Spanish artist like Picasso, who you would exclude because he's a nobody, right? He's exactly the kind of person you want, the next genius, who's kind of yet to be discovered. But the reality is that Gertrude Stein looked like she wanted peers, but really what she wanted was disciples, so anyone could come. But if you failed to adhere to her standards of absolute loyalty, you're out, putting her on the pinnacle. If you became a rival or somebody she felt had in any way broken that loyalty, you were out. You were out. I don't think there was any grounds of appeal, and there wasn't even the right to a hearing. You would just get Alice B. Toklas giving you a phone call or slamming the door in your face. And that happened time and time again. And what often happened was she would take in a young writer and really support and mentor them, but when they started to obscure her light, they started to shine too brightly. They were out. And there are lots of examples of that, Peter.

[B]

So she's convinced that she is a genius, and she wants to be surrounded by geniuses. I mean, it's interesting. We talked just before the break about putting the words in Alice B. Toklas's mouth about who the geniuses were. And it was Gertrude Stein, who we're talking about, Picasso, who everybody's heard about, and then Alfred Whitehead, who perhaps isn't very famous anymore, but was a philosopher and a mathematician. But she is absolutely sure that it's not just that she's a good hostess or that she gathers people together, but that she herself is absolutely in the pantheon of people who are changing the way in which people think and how people write. And, I mean, that is a kind of particular confidence in your own. I mean, she's not somebody who seems riven with any particular self doubt, is she?

[C]

No, but she has a lot of insecurity. So, for example, she hates James Joyce because when Ulysses is published, it completely steals the modernist spotlight. I mean, it is the biggest book of the era, possibly the most successful novel of the 20th century, and we're gonna get.

[B]

We should do Q and A on that.

[C]

Many of the people in the room covet that status for themselves, including Stein. You might think that's Hemingway, who also felt he kind of looked up to Joyce, but also felt rivalrous and insecure about his success. But Stein was so threatened by Joyce's success that you weren't even allowed to mention his name in the room at her salon. So it seems like it's all free speech and anything goes. But actually there are quite a few rules about what you can and can't say. And another rule is that around what's sometimes described, the wives, because we've kind of made Tochla sound a bit like she's this passive domestic drudge, but she's not. She has her own grievances and rules, and she is keeping a keen eye on the women in the room.

[B]

Yeah, tell us about that. The iron in the glove. Yes, Alice, she might be busy doing all the cooking and becoming a very important person in the culture of. Of cuisine, but she's also an enforcer. How does she do that? In practical terms? She's not waiting for Gertrude to tell her what to do. She's picking her own fights.

[C]

It's very simple. If Alice doesn't like you, you're out. And that includes writers who she feels are disloyal or who've criticized Stein, anyone who she would probably say criticizes. But I think that also includes critiques. Critiques of Stein are not. Okay, you're out. But even the wives and girlfriends who aren't necessarily creating their own work, if she doesn't like you, if she doesn't like your energy, if she feels that you're a threat in some way, you're also out. And these people, even people who'd been around who'd been in their inner circle for sometimes years, would just get cut off with no explanation. So Alice is not just kind of having to do the drudgery of gatekeeping. She's actively doing it. She's, as you said, an enforcer.

[B]

And there's a big gender division as well, Aphra. So paint me a picture of what the room actually Looks like because it's not one that is sort of free for all. There's a big gender split in the way that Stine's and Toklas's salon looks and works.

[C]

Well, it's interesting, isn't it, because they are obviously like real outliers as these two women at the center of the scene, but the artists are men. You know, we've got Zelda Fitzgerald, but she's more there as a wife than she's a writer in her own right. We've got Picasso, we've got Hemingway, Hemingway, who we'll see when we do our series on him, is not just a man, but quite a hyper masculine man. He always has a different partner, you know, he's a serial monogamist. Oh, we haven't even mentioned Picasso, who is a terrible and abusive partner to the women in his life. So it's a very male dominated space and they don't seem, these women at the center of it, Alice B. Topless and Gertrude Sign, they're not conventional allies to other women. You could say they're kind of enablers of this hyper masculine world by being women at the center of it who actually kind of supports the patriarchal nature of this whole scene. And there are women creatives in Paris at the time. They're just not really showing up in the same numbers in the salon.

[B]

But they're made to sit on a different side of the room because the geniuses all tend to be men. I think you'll have to listen to us on Hemingway. I think you meant that Hemingway's a serial philanderer rather than a serial monogamist.

[C]

Well, yeah, that's true. Serial monogamist is actually too much of a compliment. I mean, by serial monogamist I meant he always had a wife. Not that he was faithful to.

[B]

Because I don't want to do a spoiler alert when we get to him too. But these big competing egos are really important and none of them tolerate criticism. All of them want to be the star of the show. And so they're all kind of rotating around each other in sort of, you know, with the constant electricity of things all ready to kick off. Because if the praise isn't enthusiastic enough or is not delivered honestly enough or doesn't appear to be, people take those, take these slights incredibly personally. So there's, there's a lot of competition for position. And the fact that they're all drawn to Stein, it gives them a sort of. It gives them a playing field to go out and fight with each Other and compete. That's why I think when we talked last episode about what that competition looks like, does it actually, it makes you into a bad person, I think, because you're unwilling to give out praise easily and, and honestly, but you're worried about criticism, but whether it actually makes you a better writer or a better artist or how you identify what those boundaries are. But this all then takes a turn because in 1939, as though dark storm clouds over Europe start to gather, war breaks out. And that has a profound effect, of course, on all of Europe and all over the world, but has a really important effect on the decisions that Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas are going to be making and a huge part in their story.

[C]

So in 1939, as you said, Peter, dark clouds brewing across Europe. Stein and Toklas, who are both Jewish, you might think, would be seriously questioning whether it is wise for them to remain in France. They're both American citizens. They could easily return to America. They have the access and the financial resources to do so. They are also super aware of the risks. In an article published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1940 called the Winner, A Picture of Occupied France, Stein records the tenseness of the time. She understands that there is a serious risk. And so the fact that she decides not to leave is quite hard to understand.

[B]

Peter Well, I mean, it's sort of breathtaking, particularly because she and Alice are both Jewish. I mean, they also have American passports, which is also part of it. I mean, Americans don't allow everybody in. I mean, there's a famously a ship that arrives with Jewish refugees in New York that's turned away. And so, so that there is an opportunity. But in the article you mentioned in the Atlantic Monthly Affair, she talks about how scared she is about everybody having tension in their stomach. And she speaks to the American consul in Lyon who says, I'll sort your passports out. Don't hesitate, you should leave. But the next day, on the way back from seeing the consul, who again tells them to go, she says, well, I don't know, it would be awfully uncomfortable and I'm fussy about my food, so let's not leave. And they decide to stay. And it's almost incomprehensible.

[C]

It's really shocking because there are so many Jewish people in Europe who are desperate to leave. I mean, I'm thinking about my grandfather and his family in Nazi Germany who, you know, were having to take extreme measures to smuggle their children and themselves out of the country. This is someone who can actually call the American consul, and he's offering to essentially arrange their return to the US problem free. And still she decides to stay. And the reason that she gives is that fussy, she's fussy about her food. It's mind blowing. And, you know, I, I think maybe have to take that with a pinch of salt. You know, the way that Gertrude Stein writes is sometimes ironic and obviously there is real fear, but it suggests that she is weirdly, a little bit dismissive of the risk, or maybe she doesn't put herself in the same category as other Jews and thinks that she'll be protect, protected. And actually it's not without foundation. Peter.

[B]

Well, they spent the first part of the war in occupied eastern France in a place called Bouget. And I think the question of how a pair of lesbian Jewish women who are Americans managed to survive suggests something is going on. And as you said, afwa, there is a reason for it. And it turns out that they're being protected. Who is it? Who's protecting them and why?

[C]

So it later emerged that a French university professor and writer, himself a gay man in his late 40s who comes from a wealthy country conservative Catholic family named Bernard Fay, has been close friends with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas since the 1920s. And he collaborates completely with the Vichy regime, occupied France. His right wing connections lead him to be appointed as head of the Bibliotheque Nationale, replacing the former head who was a Jew. So he's being complicit in this whole system of Jewish people losing their jobs, being deported, and as we, you know, as they would later know, if he didn't know at the time, to concentration camps. He was a fan of the avant garde arts. He'd studied at Harvard, he had promoted Stein's writings. Later he would be convicted of war crimes.

[B]

There you go. Sounds like a lovely guy.

[C]

You know, there is no doubt that he was complicit in the Nazi regimes and the horrors of the war. But he later admitted that he had been the protector of Stein and Toklas during the war. And one of the things he did when he was head of the Bibliotheque Nationale was he wrote to Petain, who was the leader of the Vichy regime, and once a month traveled from Paris to Vichy to confer with Petain. And he spoke to Petain about Gertrude Stein and kind of pitched her as somebody who should remain in France. Her genius, the peril she was in, that she might freeze to death in the winter. And this led to Stein personally becoming in contact with and even collaborating with Petain. So this is not just a kind of remote thing, a friend looking out for her. She is doing what she needs to to protect herself and Alice B. Toklas. And again, you know, you can understand that somebody in a perilous situation will do what it takes to protect themselves. But the thing that's so hard to understand about this is that they didn't have to remain in France, they had the option to leave. And so by choosing to remain in France, they chose to put themselves in a situation where they would need to collaborate with Nazis. And that's the thing I find very hard to understand.

[B]

Well, and it wasn't just being protected. Stein leans into it. I mean, she becomes a fan of Petain. She starts to translate a book of Petain's speeches into English, instigated obviously by Fei. And it's true that Gertrude San is by no means the only person who is sympathetic to Petain, the hero of Verdun after all. But the idea that she was able to look past what was happening, you know, mass deportation of Jews, the way in which France been occupied in the first place, and the sort of the collapse of the, the of. Of arts culture and so on, and of those literary salons while warfare is raging across all of Europe, it almost defies belief to think you could be that blind to it and to not just be tolerating the protection, but also to be helping and to be admiring some of the times of one of the most horrific moments in the whole of history of Europe. So that does ask questions about her political views. Daphne, what else can we tell about those?

[C]

I mean, it's difficult, as I said, to really understand the logic of this. We can look at the fact that she was someone who was very fearful of communism. She had socially and politically conservative views, she had a real reactionary streak. In the Spanish Civil War, for example, she'd been anti loyalist. She was somebody who preferred to side with fascists than she did face the threat as she saw it, as communism. And I think there are parallels of that today with people who, you know, would say that they're not comfortable with fascism or racism, but you know, it's necessary to protect against Marxists. You know, these are things we actually hear from the far right saying today that they're, they're doing what they have to to prevent against this, these kind of threats. And I think it's difficult to think about Gertrude Stein today, what she might have been aligned with. And when you think about Bernard Fay, her protector, you know, who wrote about his real anti Semitic, anti Bolshevist, pro Nazi views. You can imagine that she was his token Jewish friend, that he might have used that to try and make the case that he wasn't really anti Semitic because he was friends with her. So the whole thing is really problematic and a real stain on her legacy. And I don't think we can even say, well, you've got to judge it by the standards at the time. The people around her in these salons, these artists and writers on the whole were very, very consistent in their anti fascist views. And she was the one who made choices with all the agency and the resources at her disposal to to be on this particular side. During a time when her country, the resistance in France, the uk, many people in Europe were trying to work out how to defeat this evil. She was collaborating with it.

[B]

So she'd been her late 60s when the Germans had occupied France with Alice Toklas. And after the war had ended, side didn't survive much longer. Liberation of France happened in 1944. Gertrude and Alice returned to Paris, back to their apartment in Rue de Fleurus. She was publicly very enthusiastic about the roles that the Americans had played in the liberation of France and welcomed U.S. soldiers. But then when Faye was arrested, tried and imprisoned, Stey didn't publicly defend him, but she also never repudiated him. During this period, her reputation in the US rose very sharply. She was seen as a grande dame of modernism and she enjoyed a really important late surge in her fame. And that was really important. By 1945 she was ill, suffering from severe abdominal pain and fatigue and also weight loss. She'd obviously not had a particularly healthy life and she was diagnosed with advanced cancer, eventually dying in July 1946 at the age of 72. And Alice was with her at her side when she died. So it's a complicated life after her. What I really like to hear talk to you about is about her legacy, both as a writer, as a personality, as an American, as a lesbian woman. And when we come back from the break, let's think about her legacies from after her life until today.

[F]

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[C]

We talked before the break about How Alice B. Toklas was the gatekeeper at the salons during their lifetime. The same thing happened after Gertrude Stein's death. Alice becomes the fierce protector of Stein's legacy. And actually, much of the narrative we have about her today is filtered through what Alice B. Toklas wanted in the public domain and what she didn't. It reminds me a bit of Jane Austen when she died, and how her sister really decided to curate the narrative to protect the legacy, you know, destroying letters and shaping the ideas that we still have today. And she took that task very seriously. And it's interesting how much historians are still rewriting that story now, uncovering, for example, the story we just told about her role during the Second World War, her connection to Petain. So it's a kind of shifting legacy as we discover more about the true picture. Peter.

[B]

But queer theory has a real debt to Gertrude Stein, and, but I wonder, do you think she's really a feminist? I mean, there are so many different parts about the chauvinism, her own personal relationship, the way she reacted to men. How do we do the gender side of how we think about Stein?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, everybody who knew them knew they were a lesbian couple. That was really unusual at the time. They were such a high profile lesbian couple, and they both had this incredible talent, but it combined into quite a complicated relationship, as we said, you know, this image of Stein touring with her smash hit book, the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, while Alice B. Toklas stands mutely in the wings, nodding. Yeah, it's really weird dynamic. And there's no doubt that that feels like an exploitative element to the amount of labor Alice B. Toklas did and the way that Stein felt entitled to that. And, you know, in terms of the kind of their queerness, their lesbian ness, it's interesting because they just didn't use that language at the time. And so it's always tempting to kind of like superimpose our contemporary ideas about that. But at the same time, they didn't hide it. There's no suggestion they were ashamed of it. And that, you know, I can imagine that were they alive now, they would have been, I don't know if they would have been at a pride march together, because Gertrude Stein wasn't exactly a person of the masses. But, you know, I think they would have been out and celebrated in a way as kind of a high profile lesbian couple.

[B]

I mean, but Alice becomes the sort of the guardian of Stein's legacy. She inherits the almost impossible task of managing her estate. So she sells off all that priceless art collection. We talked in the first episode, a single painting that cost 800 francs sold recently for almost $120 million. And that's used specifically to fund the publication of Stein's unread and radical manuscripts. At Yale, she then is in charge of managing the archive and guarding against nosy biographers. And it's interesting, alice in the 1950s Converts to Roman Catholicism. I mean, she's been obsessed with Catholic Catholicism and for saints and mortality and the future feeling of genius for a long time. But she goes through her own journey in the last 10 or 15 years of her life. She lives about 20 years after Stein does as well. But that torch bearing of what happens to Stein's reputation afterwards is a really important part of the story as well.

[C]

In terms of their Jewish identity, it's just a real puzzle. They never draw attention to their Jewishness. It's not something that's particularly visible in how they self identify. On the other hand, I think you can see traces of their Jewish heritage, their kind of cultural and scriptural influence. Even the way that Stein calls this famous Belleapo generation of writers the lost generation, you know, has traces of Genesis and, you know, this biblical language. And I think you can see its influence on who she was and what shaped her is a fascinating thing to investigate. Like how does identity show up in a person who never overtly self identifies but is clearly shaped by the identity, identity in other ways.

[B]

And Alice suffers because she in 1963, is evicted from the apartment in Rue de Fleurus where she spent all of her life. Partly because the apartment didn't belong to Gertrude Stein, she'd leased it. But also because they weren't married and they were, you know, same sex relationships were not legal, it meant that she didn't have those rights. So Alice's story is one of, sort of has its own way, particularly Sacha Ford, part of Stein's literary legacy, the autobiography of Alice B. Tokler's. So that journey about what happens to Stein afterwards is kept alive by Alice, but it has a very sad ending to it. Eventually.

[C]

Her devotion is just incredible because she could have sold some of those works for personal gain and made sure she was set up well for life. Instead, she made sure that the archive of Stein's writings would be available in perpetuity, you know, at Yale and other institutions. So she was a picture of devotion. I mean, and it wasn't just control that Stein was exerting over her in life either. It was control that survived Gertrude Stein's life, or it was genuine desire to protect her in her belief in the genius of Gertrude Stein. So there are many people who do believe that Gertrude Stein is a genius, but some don't. And I'm going to quote from her brother Leo, who had his own ax to grind because they had this terrible falling out. This is what he said. Not without its own narcissism. She's basically stupid and I'm basically intelligent. Such sibling behavior. But Gertrude's sort of massive admiration and in part self assurance. Sorry, but Gertrude's sort of massive self admiration and in part self assurance enabled her to build something rather effective on her foundations. I, on the other hand, through the upsetting, complicating and stultifying effects of a terrific neurosis, could build nothing substantial on my intelligence, which came through only in fragments and distorted bits. It's the ultimate backhand compliment. He's basically saying that she wasn't talented, but she still, out of the scraps of her stupidity, did. And he's acknowledging that she did build something that has lasted. And I think that is unfair. I think that there are elements of genius to Gertrude's side. Maybe not the way she thought she was a genius, but she certainly has created a legacy, demonstrated by the fact that we're sitting here today, 100 years later, talking about her.

[B]

Well, before we wrap up and do the legacy of her writing, I mean, what's interesting is that those combustible relationships she had with just about everybody apart from Alice, see sort of ruptures and breakdowns, but. But just frame how important you think Stein was in Picasso, his success and who he became.

[C]

I think it's not a slam dunk answer, but it's a fair question. Would Picasso have become Picasso without Gertrude Stein? Because it's hard to see how he could have evolved when he did in the way he did. You know, this rapid ascent from a nobody to defining modernism, surpassing his great rival, Henri Matisse. Without Gertrude Stein, she provided the absolutely essential catalyst to his career. Financial means which allowed him to physically survive. Intellectual validation. She really shored him up. This, you know, everyone who is a creative can relate to this. The need for validation, for somebody to understand and see what you're doing and cheer you on. And the salon, the very tangible material access through introductions to collectors, to other artists. So she was totally crucial to Picasso's success. And without her, Cubism might have been delayed by years or might have taken on a completely different form. And she absolutely deserves the credit for enabling Picasso in All his complexity as she did.

[B]

And look, as far as her writing goes, sympathetic to experimentation, innovation and achievement. And I think that she was a radical Gertrude Stein. I mean, always it's tricky to separate the person and the art. But you know, what she did was to break completely with traditional narratives, those, you know, repetition. That quote you read in the first episode. I'm sure if you got to this part of episode two, you'd have heard that fragmentation, the way in which rhythm is used to treat words as material, and in fact even the parallels with people like Alfred Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher who believes in the separation of substance and matter and ideas. I think it's not necessarily enjoyable to read. I don't think Gertrude Stein, you're going to find me sitting in my summer holidays turning the pages and smiling on.

[C]

A sun lounger, not able to put.

[B]

Down famous last words. But. But I do think there is something that, that she is in that continuum of very interesting ideas that had she been a man, had she been French, had she not had this complicated personal life, and I don't just mean with her sexuality, but in all the ways she treated other people, I think we would be taking her more seriously as people take Lacan, Foucault, Saussure, Derrida, etc. As well. It just happens that many of them are French. But I think she plays an important role as a result in the literary canon. I mean, I wonder what you think. Afraid that's me being too generous.

[C]

I think it's an interesting time to be asking these questions. I've already said I find her writing quite inaccessible and self indulgent. That doesn't mean it's not valuable. We're at a moment where there's so much discussion of AI overtaking human writing. You know, I cannot tell you the number of emails I get every day that are written by AI by the way, like we write our own scripts. We don't just let a robot do it. And I personally really believe in human creation and writing. And for all of the things that are frustrating to read about Stein, you could argue she is the ultimate antidote to AI because AI is predicting the next logical word. Stein was trying to break with convention and reprogram the brains. She's like the ultimate anti AI machine. AI could never write the way she writes.

[B]

Well, have a look. I'll tell you what, while you're talking, I pulled up a large language model.

[C]

Ask it to write a legacy. Sign off in the voice of Gertrude Stein, see what it says.

[B]

In the meantime, I'VE asked it to make up a quote that could be by Gertrude Stein, but is not. This is what it says. What is remembered repeats. And what repeats becomes real. And what becomes real insists on being remembered again.

[E]

No.

[B]

You don't think so?

[C]

No. It hasn't got it. It has not got it. That makes me happy. It can't do Gertrude Stein, but unfortunately for me, one of the reasons I think that a robot could not write like Gertrude Stein is because AI is sense driven. Like it's a language model that is studied how humans make sense and tried to emulate it. Gertrude Stein did not make sense. Writing is nonsense. And not. I don't mean that as a criticism. I mean by design. She was not. She was dispensing with sense and trying to do something else. So that's kind of the reason why it's AI proof. And I'm not sure that really helps us because it has, you know, its own value and that's very subjective. You should read a bit of Gertrude Stein and see whether it moves you or stimulates you or does something to your brain. For me, I would like a future in which writing that isn't nonsense also remains protected from robots.

[B]

I think Aphra, it's a work in progress. I love. That's a great line. Gertrude Stein is the kind of anti AI machine. It would be probably better if it was more readable, though. So our search for the perfect machine maybe continues.

[C]

I don't want to get too deep into philosophy here, but that could be a complete contradiction in terms readable. Gertrude Stein would not be Gertrude Stein.

[B]

Now listen, afo, tell me who we're going to do next because we're going to stick with Paris, the 1930s and perhaps completely different kind of personality. We have mentioned him once or twice. Who are we going to look at next time?

[C]

We are going to look at the writer beloved by the manosphere. Now, whether you think that's fair or not, it is a fact.

[B]

You're coming for me.

[C]

Ernest Hemingway.

[B]

Thank you for listening.

[C]

Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can watch all our episodes on YouTube so make sure you're subscribed there too.

[B]

And of course, we're on all the socials, so the links are in the show notes for this episode or just search for us on Legacy Podcast. I'm Peter Frankopone. I'm Afua Haas and we'll see you next time on Legacy.

[D]

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[B]

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