One thing I am sure of is her value
October 1, 2025 12:04 AM Subscribe
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas has become notorious as a compendium of name-dropping, of Picasso and Matisse and everyone else, but it¡¯s in fact far denser with the names of single women: Janet Scudder, Mildred Aldrich, a network of lesbian coding. Its major subject is always marriage ¨C an assertion of Stein¡¯s love for Toklas, and Toklas¡¯s love for Stein ¨C as the centre of a new history of literature, whose creator exists because another person loves her. from Devotion to the Cut by Adam Thirlwell [LRB; ungated]
posted by chavenet (3 comments total)
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¡°Yet surprisingly, most of Stein¡¯s critics have given her a relatively free pass on her Vichy sympathies. Others have tried to ignore or justify equally inexplicable events: for example, Stein¡¯s endorsement of Adolf Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934, or her performance of the Hitler salute at his bunker in Berchtesgaden after the Allied victory in 1945. ¡±
posted by Ideefixe at 7:24 AM on October 1 [5 favorites]