LEADER 03606nam 2200589Ia 450 001 9910451661903321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-281-73516-7 010 $a9786611735166 010 $a0-300-13771-0 035 $a(CKB)1000000000477735 035 $a(StDuBDS)AH23049872 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000263218 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11221015 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000263218 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10274064 035 $a(PQKB)11758911 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3420297 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3420297 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10192317 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL173516 035 $a(OCoLC)923591809 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000477735 100 $a20070425d2007 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aTwo lives$b[electronic resource] $eGertrude and Alice /$fJanet Malcolm 210 $aNew Haven, Conn. ;$aLondon $cYale University Press$dc2007 215 $a1 online resource (229 pages) $cillustrations, facsimile 300 $aFacsimile of a page of one of Stein's manuscripts printed on lining papers. 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-300-12551-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references. 330 $b"How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis? Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism. The pair, of course, is Gertrude Stein, the modernist master whose charm was as conspicuous as her fatness and thin, plain, tense, sour Alice B. Toklas, the worker bee who ministered to Steins needs throughout their forty-year expatriate marriage. As Malcolm pursues the truth of the couples charmed life in a village in Vichy France, her subject becomes the larger question of biographical truth. The instability of human knowledge is one of our few certainties, she writes.The portrait of the legendary couple that emerges from this work is unexpectedly charged. The two world wars Stein and Toklas lived through together are paralleled by the private war that went on between them. This war, as Malcolm learned, sometimes flared into bitter combat.Two Lives is also a work of literary criticism. Even the most hermetic of [Steins] writings are works of submerged autobiography, Malcolm writes. The key of 'I' will not unlock the door to their meaning you need a crowbar for that but will sometimes admit you to a kind of anteroom of suggestion. Whether unpacking the accessible Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which Stein solves the koan of autobiography, or wrestling with The Making of Americans, a masterwork of magisterial disorder, Malcolm is stunningly perceptive.Praise for the author:[Janet Malcolm] is among the most intellectually provocative of authors . . .able to turn epiphanies of perception into explosions of insight.David Lehman, Boston Globe Not since Virginia Woolf has anyone thought so trenchantly about the strange art of biography.Christopher Benfey 606 $aAuthors, American$y20th century$vBiography 606 $aAmericans$zFrance$zParis$xHistory$y20th century 607 $aParis (France)$xIntellectual life$y20th century 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAuthors, American 615 0$aAmericans$xHistory 676 $a818.5209 700 $aMalcolm$b Janet$0169162 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910451661903321 996 $aTwo lives$91977904 997 $aUNINA