Autobiography As Advertisement - Why Do Gertrude Stein's Sentences Get Under Our Skin

Autobiography as Advertisement: Why Do Gertrude Stein's Sentences Get under Our Skin?
Author(s): Helga Lénárt-Cheng

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 34, No. 1, Inquiries into Ethics and Narratives (Winter,
2003), pp. 117-131
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057768
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Autobiography As Advertisement:
Why Do Gertrude Stein's Sentences
Get Under Our Skin?*
Helga L?n?rt-Cheng
Because autobiographies are a convenient means for manipulat

ing public opinion, historically, their publication has been often
accompanied by scandals. Whether the reason for manipulation
is personal interest, public lobbying, or political maneuvering, the
seductive power of autobiographical writing to manipulate public opin
ion has always attracted writers. The abolitionists two centuries ago
already recognized this manipulative potential of the genre when they
incited crowds against slavery through shocking reminiscences of ex
slaves. The aspersions following the publication of these slave narratives
are reminiscent of today's scandals in which contemporary, best-selling
autobiographers (like Binjamin Wilkomirski and Rigoberta Menchu)
are accused of taking advantage of the public's gullibility and falsely
manipulating facts and history.
Indeed, it is interesting to observe how public events?even historical
periods or principles?are reassessed following the publication of an
influential memoir. Nevertheless, an autobiographer can manipulate
not only public issues in this indirect, suggestive way, but his autobiogra
phy can have a similarly decisive role in modifying public opinion
concerning the values of his own art. Hoping to positively influence the
evaluation of his artistic creation, an autobiographer can manage,
manipulate, or even correct his own public image through autobio
graphical writing. How many previously unknown but aspiring writers
have managed to draw attention to their own writings by effectively
marketing them within the frame of their own autobiographies? Has not
the public many times "upgraded" the entire lifelong opus of a writer
following the publication of his autobiography? We seem to take this
manipulative aspect of autobiography so much for granted that we fall
prey to its effects.
*l am grateful to John Stauffer for help and encouragement with this essay.
New Literary History, 2003, 34: 117-131
118 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
We rarely pay attention to seemingly innocent marketing strategies

used by autobiographers, even though they often influence decisively
our assessment of them?and ultimately our literary canons. By examin
ing the autobiography of Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas, the present essay highlights the manipulative aspect of autobio
graphical writing by showing how the text of an autobiography can serve
as a quite practical means to promote one's own art.
"Gertrude Stein was in those days a little bitter, all her unpublished
manuscripts, and no hope of publication or serious recognition,"
admitted Stein retrospectively about the hopelessness of the years
preceding the publication of her autobiography.1 It is well known that
even though Stein bombarded editors with her manuscripts with a
famed perseverance over several decades, she could not find any
prestigious supporters, and by her fiftieth birthday she still had thou
sands of pages of unpublished manuscripts lying in the drawers of her
desk. Although some of her pieces were published at her own cost and
in smaller, less known literary magazines, her "gnomic, repetitive,
illogical, sparsely punctuated"2 Steinese texts were so hard to digest that
they only elicited mocking on the part of the readers. Gertrude Stein,
who?in her own words?"always wanted to be historical, from almost a
baby on"3 did not take this hostile reception with a bitter resignation,
but rather as a challenge. She continued to assert with an enviable
conviction that the only reason for her failure was in publishers, who
prevented the wide circulation of her writings. Yet, in spite of her
unwavering self-confidence, her art continued to be the object of
derogatory parodies and vehement attacks.
However, the year 1933 brought a radical change in Gertrude Stein's
career when the Atlantic Monthly and Harcourt Brace published her
autobiography, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Knowing what had
transpired before, it is telling that in September 1933?only ten days
following the publication?all the copies of the book at Harcourt Brace
were sold and two more editions followed within a year.4 The general
critical reaction was characterized by an appreciative and even praiseful
tone. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is "an altogether delightful book,
rich as a plum-pudding with good-humored, amusing and sensible
tidbits," reported for instance the Washington Post.5 Another contempo
raneous reviewer rhapsodized, "the book is far more than a mere
amusing autobiography?it is literature of a high order, one of the most
intrinsically important works of the year."6
The success of Stein's autobiography guaranteed not simply a steady
publication record for her book, but also a more favorable overall
reception for her work. Suddenly all her other writings were printed,
one after another, by various prestigious literary magazines and publish
AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS ADVERTISEMENT 119
ing houses. Even her lifelong dream was fulfilled when both the Atlantic
Monthly and the Saturday Evening Post agreed to print some of her works.
The success of her memoir triggered an avalanche of positive changes in
her entire artistic career. "Until this year the public has steadfastly
refused to read Miss Stein, preferring to deride her at a safe distance,"
remarked a reviewer in October 1933, "but during recent months the
tide has turned with a vengeance, and it is apparent that the reading
public, having thoroughly digested the work of her followers and
imitators, are turning their attention, at long last, to the far more
impressive original."7 Another commentator guessed that "many who
will read [The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas] will do so as [she] did?
read other things she has written and try to understand them, because
they like her so much."8
As the latter quotation suggests, not only did her writings become
popular overnight, but so did her eccentric person. In the years
preceding the publication of the autobiography, the public image of
Stein was quite scandalous, and her personality was surrounded by the
distrust attributable to notorious eccentrics. It is enough to look at a
picture of Gertrude Stein from that period to understand the reserva
tions of the audience?a rich, eccentric, lesbian American Jew living in
Paris who wore monk-style clothes and hairstyles?no wonder she gave
to many of her contemporaries the impression of an unapproachable,
rigid Sphinx.9 After 1933, however, even in the United States where
initially she had been received even less favorably than in France, Stein
was at once surrounded by attention only due to Hollywood stars. "In the
matter of fans you can only compare her with a motion-picture star in
Hollywood and three generations of young writers have sat at her feet,"
observed her friend, Carl Van Vechten.10
Confronted with this sudden turn in Fortune's wheel, Gertrude Stein
herself was perplexed and struggled to find an explanation. "Since the
Autobiography I had not done any writing, . . . somehow if my writing
was worth money then it was not what it had been, if it had always been
worth money then it would have been used to being that thing but if
anything changes then there is no identity," she pondered retrospec
tively in Everybody's Autobiography?1 Seeing Stein's unexpected transfigu
ration, the audience was equally at loss and many contemporaneous
reviewers seemed puzzled: how could "out of the dark seed of such
books as Geography and Plays, The Making of Americans and other pieces
that have amused and bemused simple literal folk [have] blossomed a
masterpiece which is crystal clear in style, exuberantly live, strangely
fascinating and filled with the miracle of laughter?"12
Although a few critics did see the autobiography as a logical continu
ation and culmination of Stein's previous stylistic experimentation, most
of them treated it as a work apart and emphasized the chasm between

Stein's earlier writings and her autobiography. "Lurking, for more than
20 years in a Cretan labyrinth of'elemental abstraction,' Gertrude Stein,
at 54, has at last emerged to seek a share of the popular recognition
hitherto denied her by a writing style that has elicited little save profane
guffaws," remarked the critic of the Covington Post.13 The commentary of
the Dallas Times-Herald also drew the attention to this abrupt change:
"Gertrude Stein is articulate! And that is something analogous to the
Sphinx speaking."14
In the last few decades of Stein criticism many theories have been
created about how and why The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas does not fit
into the whole of Gertrude Stein's work.15 Critics generally assume that
the main reason for the sudden success of Stein's book was the drastic
change in the her writing style. "At last Gertrude Stein comes away from
her repetitive wrangle of words and writes for an audience to read,"
claimed the review article of the Durham Herald, echoing the generally
accepted critical explanation.16
Although The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is indeed narrated in a
gossipy, unusually light and playful tone which certainly contributed to
its popularity, the stylistic change in itself does not account fully for why
Stein's writing became so popular overnight. Instead, as I will argue,
autobiographical writing offered Stein a perfect occasion to stage an
advertising campaign for her own writing and public image, and she
fully and effectively exploited this potential. Instead of waiting for the
benevolence of editors (and without even hiring a public relations
expert or a press secretary!) Gertrude Stein set out on a lonely
enterprise to transform her public image from that of a "Radcliffe
aesthetic bluestocking"17 into the image of the most influential Ameri
can writer of the twentieth century.
Exactly at what level of consciousness Stein conceived of the possibility
to manipulate her public image through autobiographical writing is
debatable. Nevertheless, the following dialogue between Samuel Stew
ard and Gertrude Stein points to the fact that Stein was quite conscious
about the potential power of her autobiography in advertising her art
and promoting her own career. "'You really have two styles of writing,' I
said," recalls Samuel Steward. "'Maybe more than that,' Gertrude said.
'The style in the autobiographies is what I call moneymaking style. But
the other one is the main one, the really creative one.'"18
While one might debate the level of consciousness with which
Gertrude Stein applied her methods of strategic self-promotion, the
effectiveness of her methods cannot be questioned. Stein's contempo
rary readers took up the autobiography hoping to have a peek into the
innermost life of a rigid, obscure, eccentric writer; but by the time they
put down the book, Gertrude Stein gave the impression of a kindly,
good-humored, chatty "neighbor" who was at the same time a remark
ably talented writer. Convincing the audience about the versatility of her
personality was certainly not a difficult task for Stein, for it is well known
that it was precisely this ability that fascinated her admirers most: "In her
maturity, she gave the impression, not merely of doing what she liked
but of being almost anything she wanted to be. She seemed, as the many
surviving likenesses of her suggest, at once female and male, Jew and
non Jew, American pur sang and European peasant, artist and public
figure, and so on" (GI xi).
Thus, Stein's personality became immediately accessible, and this
confidential initiation evoked in the public a feeling of complicity so
greatly longed for by readers in an era that marked the literary market's
depersonalization. "Mahomets in their own right, they [the readers]
insist that Mountain Stein should come to them. And now [with The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas] at last the mountain has come. At one
long deferred bound she has moved from the legendary borders of
literature into the very market place, to face in person a large audience
of men in the street."19
For decades, it was considered a sacrilege in critical circles to mention
the name of an esoteric modernist writer and the words "market place"
or "men in the street" within the same sentence. Because modernist
writers were surrounded by the myth of the purity of art, critics did not
question the methods used by these authors to win over audiences. In
recent years, however, modernist writers have been dragged from their
pedestals and the critically suppressed relationship between canonical
modernist writers and the commercial marketplace has been reconsid
ered. Numerous recent studies aim at providing a metacommentary on
"exclusionary and political effects devolving from such a pristine con
ception of modernist poetics, its dense and mysterious 'purity.'"20 With
titles such as "Making Poetry Pay: The Commodification of Langston
Hughes," or "Make It Sell! Ezra Pound Advertises Modernism,"21 the
authors of these articles aim at demonstrating how market-oriented and
entrepreneurial in spirit modernist writers really were. In a similar fashion,
critical articles addressing the question of Gertrude Stein's place in the
literary marketplace often focus on her attempts to secure a readership
for her works by using crafty career moves.22 In connection with The
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Bryce Conrad, for instance, gives a rich
account of how Stein capitalized on her connections to the French art
world and the Relief Fund in order to popularize her image in America.
Nevertheless, while many of these studies masterfully analyze the
various efforts made by modernist authors to strike the best possible
deals in the literary marketplace (they quote, for instance, precise
amounts from contracts with publishers, or from self-promoting inter

views given to popular magazines), they fail to recognize the crucial role
that autobiographical literature itself plays in modernist writers' self mar
keting. Gertrude Stein did not only use clever maneuvers of career
development, but, as this article will demonstrate, the text of her
autobiography itself functions as an advertisement.
Dissecting the complicated relationship between advertising and art,
critics have centered their attention both on the role of advertising in
art, and on the role of art in advertising,23 but the question of art as
advertising has not yet been explored. In the following, therefore, I
examine Gertrude Stein's autobiography in light of a few accepted
basics drawn from advertising in order to shed light on how Stein made
use of the manipulating, self-promoting opportunity offered by the
genre of autobiography.24
Rule #1. A Good Advertisement Conceals its Strategy.
A strategy is more effective if only those who initiate it know the tactics
used to reach the goal. In advertising this means that the planners of
advertisements do not reveal to the public the secret methods used to
influence them. Similarly, Stein did not warn her readers in the
introduction by saying that they should be on the lookout because her
autobiography was self-promoting. Instead she concealed her self
promoting strategy in a way that allowed her to convince her readers
that the book was not about herself. "My sentences do get under their
skin," she used to say with the satisfaction of someone who managed to
create an influential advertisement, "only they do not know that they do"
(ATT 66). And if Stein's self-advertising strategy escapes our observation
it is because it is precisely from us, readers, the targets of her strategy,
that Stein needed to conceal her methods. This explains why the opinion
is widely held that Stein's autobiography is not primarily about herself,
but rather about Bohemian adventures at the beginning of the century.
In reality, the anecdotes about the evocative Bohemian life in the
Parisian caf?s and Stein's salon that form the core of the book's
reputation only serve as decorations to a more important, central, but
well-concealed theme of the book: that of the representation and
promotion of Stein's artistic career. Already the very first sentence of the
very first chapter describing Gertrude Stein introduces this theme: "This
was the year 1907. Gertrude Stein was just seeing through the press
Three Lives which she was having privately printed, and she was deep in
The Making of Americans, her thousand page book" (A7T6). From this
moment on, Stein does not allow her readers to lose sight of the
development of her artistic career. Even if the reader gets absorbed in

the charming details of the Bohemian life in Paris, the narrator, Toklas
(Stein's faithful lover-secretary-companion) never forgets to mention?
between two chatty gossips ?what books Stein was working on at that
time. For instance, Stein inserts the following few lines in between two
stories of road-adventures: "It was at this time that Gertrude Stein
conceived the idea of writing a history of the United States consisting of
chapters wherein Iowa differs from Kansas, and wherein Kansas differs
from Nebraska etcetera. She did do a little of it which also was printed in
the book, Useful Knowledge. We did not stay in Paris very long. As soon
as the car was made over we left for N?mes" (AAT 170). On another
occasion, she interpolates a remark about one of Stein's poems between
two stories about Bilignin and Avignon: "We are still here in Bilignin in
the valley of the Rh?ne. She wrote at that time the poem of The
Deserter, printed almost immediately in Vanity Fair. Henry McBride had
interested Crowninshield in her work. One day when we were in
Avignon we met Braque" (AAT 175). Scattered around the text, we find
a myriad of such seemingly passing comments: "Gertrude Stein was at
that time writing The Making of Americans,"(AAT 106) or "It was at this
time that she wrote Elucidation,"(AAT 197) and so on. At first sight, this
motive of the promotion of Stein's art seems unimportant, interspersed
among omelette recipes and spicy details of Picasso's love affairs. Yet, it
is precisely these tactics?the fact that Stein embeds the serious presen
tation of her art among such chatty gossips?that ought to draw our
attention to its significance.
Rule #2. A Good Advertisement Is Easy to Understand.
Since an advertisement can only reach wide audiences if it is clear and

easy to understand, Stein had to make a compromise in the interest of
her self-promotion and compose her text in an easily understandable
way. The fact that her autobiography has often been called "the one
book by G. S. that an ordinary person can read"25 is the best proof of the
success of this compromise.
Although countless scholarly studies analyze the ways in which Stein
adapted her difficult style to the needs of her public, few of them focus
on the equally important thematic changes between Stein's earlier
writings and her autobiography. Apart from the obvious novelty of the
light, gossipy subject of Bohemian life, the innovative way in which Stein
presented her artistic development in her autobiography seems to
escape critical attention. Stein, convinced that her writings were
epochmaking in the history of literature, dedicated many of her works
to the explanation of her own art: How to Write, Lectures in America, What
Are Masterpieces, and Composition as Explanation all served the purpose of
self-exegesis (although, paradoxically, these texts often need more
elucidation than the original works which they were supposed to
decipher). Thus, it struck readers as a novelty that in her autobiography,
instead of reflecting on the philosophical-aesthetical background of her
writing technique, Gertrude Stein chose to approach the problem of
artistic creation from a much more popular and comprehensible
perspective. With Stein's own wording, "she began to describe the inside
as seen from the outside"(AAT 147).
Presented this way, Stein's commentary on her own art was no longer
a perplexing jumble of self-explaining words that made no headway.
Instead, on the pages of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, readers can
follow step by step an easy to understand, schematic process of the
unfolding of an artistic "genius." Starting from the hopeless years of
obscurity, Gertrude Stein recounts every little detail (including exact
dates and names) of her long struggle with the publishers for recogni
tion. The obscure theoretical statements characterizing her other writ
ings are here replaced by perfectly lucid explanations such as "It was
William Cook who inspired the only movie Gertrude Stein ever wrote in
english, I have just published it in Operas and Plays in the Plain
Edition,"(AAT 53) or "There were printed of this edition I forget
whether it was seven hundred and fifty or a thousand copies but at any
rate it was a very charming little book and Gertrude Stein was enor
mously pleased" (AAT 147). Thus Stein managed wonderfully to make
the abstract process of artistic creation more intelligible to her readers
by centering her narrative around the history of the publication of her
works which, ultimately, served as a perfect backbone to the presenta
tion of her otherwise abstruse art.
Rule #3. In a Good Advertisement the self-praise is indirect.
Let us ponder the everyday publishing practice, in which the back

cover of a book is plastered with superlative quotes from writers of
prestigious magazines, critics, or artists. This practice is so widely used
because the reader, given his trustless nature, only accepts a recommen
dation if it comes from an independent and generally recognized
source. An artist would try in vain to promote his/her own art. Self
idolatry is unacceptable?even in advertising.
Stein herself admitted the strategic importance of such independent,
public reviews and lamented the lack of serious critical attention
concerning her writing: "It was difficult to get serious reviews" (AAT
230), she confessed. Determined to solicit fame, she set out to create a
market for her own art. But how could an author popularize his own art
in an autobiography written in first person singular without violating the
taboo of direct self-praise? Gertrude Stein tactically escaped this problem
when she decided to write her autobiography in the third person, as the
autobiography of her friend.
Toklas, an unconditional believer of Stein's genius and a loyal
supporter of her art, became in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas an
easily manipulated instrument of Stein's self-promotion. Toklas's famous
introductory sentence, "I met Gertrude Stein. ... I may say that only
three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me
rang and I was not mistaken,"(AAT 5) is only one of dozens of
statements in which Stein?in Toklas's name?asserts her own special
talents. "Ultimately, the stratagem, far from corresponding to an inner
'doubling' or social anxiety, is a cunning form of self-hagiography which
neutralizes or forestalls criticism," comments Philippe Lejeune on
Stein's ingenious solution.26 The strategic importance of this idea lies in
the fact that the "ad copy" that Stein could not pronounce directly, seems
perfectly natural and acceptable from Toklas mouth.
Nevertheless, to have only one's best friend attesting to one's talent is
certainly not very convincing. First, Toklas was too closely associated with
Stein in order for her opinion to be accepted as an independent source.
Second, the name "Toklas" did not evoke reputation that would have
lent weight to her opinion. Consequently, Stein had to place within the
pages of her book a series of independent, distinguished "experts"
who?through Toklas, in a doubly indirect way?bore witness to the
unique values of Stein's writings. Most readers are likely to smile at a less
known friend's na?ve indignation about why Stein's name never ap
peared in Who's Who ("I hate to look at Who's Who in America . . . when
I see all those insignificant people and Gertrude's name not in,"[A7T
183]), but a similarly enthusiastic recommendation from a famous T. S.
Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, or Pablo Picasso certainly has its intended
effects.
Expanding her own vast repertoire of praises, Toklas quotes dozens of
such famed supporters. For example, "Elliot Paul, when editor of
transition once said that he was certain that Gertrude Stein could be a
best-seller in France. It seems very likely that his prediction is to be
fulfilled"(ALT 53). On another occasion Alice remarks, "The other
thing in connection with this her first book that gave her pleasure was a
very enthusiastic note from H. G. Wells"(A7T 106). As a consequence,
given that Stein chose a context in which so many respectable artists
chant her praises, what reader would not start doubting the validity of
his own negative prejudices or that of the mocking reviews?
Furthermore, Toklas's quotations from laudatory critical reviews pub

lished about Gertrude Stein's works also serve the author's indirect self
promotion. On one occasion, for instance, Toklas cites an article by
Edith Sitwell praising Stein's Geography and Plays: "A year later in the
London Vogue was an article again by Edith Sitwell saying that . . . she
had spent the year reading nothing but Geography and Plays and she
wished to say how important and beautiful a book she had found it to
be"(A7T218). Another prestigious review by the French critic Marcel
Brion, which compares Stein's sentences to Bach's music, gets men
tioned at least three times in the autobiography(ATT 47, 199, 235). In
addition, serving as a faithful "campaign-aid," Toklas draws attention to
all the instances when the media reacted favorably to Stein's works.
Commenting, for instance, on the publication of Three Lives, Toklas
reinforces the positive opinion of the media by repeating it: "It is rather
astonishing the number of newspapers that noticed this book, printed
privately and by a perfectly unknown person"(ATT 105-6).
Moreover, not only did the words of Stein's acquaintances serve as a
means for her indirect self-congratulation, but so did their works of art:
all the Stein portraits created by her artist-friends seem to stand in the
narrative as proofs of her prominence and personal charm. Gertrude
Stein devotes numerous paragraphs to the description of Picasso's
legendary portrait of her, and through Toklas she mentions several
other painted and sculpted portraits of herself. At one time Toklas
recounts how Stein served as a model for Jacques Lipschitz: "Gertrude
Stein had known Lipschitz very slightly at one time but this incident
made them friends and soon he asked her to pose. He had just finished
a bust of Jean Cocteau and he wanted to do her"(A7T 191). Another
time we see Stein posing in Brenner's atelier: "She once posed to him
for weeks and he did a fragmentary portrait of her that is very fine" (ATT
108). F?lix Valloton's portrait of Stein also gets mentioned: "He asked
Gertrude Stein to pose for him. She did the following year"(A7T47).
And finally Toklas points out that "Jo Davidson too sculptured Gertrude
Stein at this time" (ATT 192).
Interestingly, in many of these cases Stein, as if trying to guarantee the
prestige of her portrait, refers to some other famous models of the same
artist next to her own name. In the above quoted episode, for instance,
she lists Jean Cocteau's name as Lipschitz's previous model. In a similar
fashion, talking about Man Ray's photographic portrait of Stein, Toklas
recalls that "He showed us pictures of Marcel Duchamp and a lot of
other people and he asked if he might come and take photographs of
the studio and of Gertrude Stein "(ATT 186). This telling motive of self
promotion is particularly well articulated in the following passage
describing the antecedents of another portrait session: "Alvin Langdon
Coburn . . . had published a book of photographs of prominent men

and he wished now to do a companion volume of prominent women. I
imagine it was Roger Fry who had told him about Gertrude Stein. At any
rate he was the first photographer to come and photograph her as a
celebrity and she was nicely gratified" (ATT 131).
Thus, on the pages of her autobiography, close and distant acquain
tances, honored artists, public figures, newspapers, magazines, personal
letters, statues, and books all bear witness to Stein's unique talent for
writing; and?insofar as the choice of model reflects the uniqueness of
the model?these posings for portraits could, of course, be interpreted
as symbolic for Stein's public posing.
Rule #4. A Good Advertisement Has to Be Repeated Over and Over.
"Loving repeating is one way of being," Stein once wrote27?and

reading her works we can infer that loving repeating was her way of
being. As Stein explains it in her lecture Portraits and Repetition and on
the pages of The Making of Americans, repetition in her writing functions
the same way as character development functions in other writers'
novels, because in Stein's writing characters are supposed to emerge
through successive repetitions. With her own words,
Sometime every one becomes a whole one to me. Sometime every one has a
completed history for me. . . . There is then a history of the things they say and
do and feel, and happen to them. . . . Repeating is always in all of them.
Repeating in them comes out of them, slowly making clear to any one that looks
closely at them the nature and the natures mixed up in them. . . . Repeating is
a wonderful thing in living being. Sometime then the nature of every one comes to
be clear to some one listening to the repeating coming out of each one. (MA 265)
However, such philosophical explanation of her technique of repeti

tion diverts our attention with its abstractedness from another impor
tant, basic function of repetition. Returning to the field of advertising,
let us remember what a crucial role successive repetition plays in the
success of an advertisement campaign. Because the repetitive fixing of a
certain impression favors its subsequent recall, "[g]reat stress is rightly
laid upon the desirability of an advertisement's appearing frequently,"
as was already observed in The Advertising Review of The Manchester
Guardian in 1924.28 Although Stein never analyzed her technique of
repetition from this more pragmatic point of view, she certainly recog
nized and exploited its potential for self-promotion.
In her autobiography, Stein repeats certain remarks, descriptions, and
episodes over and over again, giving the reader the impression that the
narrator, Toklas, is telling her story orally and that this is why she keeps
losing her thread. She regularly suspends the chronological order to tell
of an event that happened only later, which gives her later on a chance
to repeat the same incident a second time. Curiously enough, Stein uses
almost all these narrative detours to reflect on a positive moment in her
own writing career.
Commenting on the first publication of Stein's works, for instance,
Toklas declares: "The only little magazine that preceded it was one
called Rogue, printed by Allan Norton and which printed her descrip
tion of the Galerie Lafayette "(ATT 108). A few pages later she repeats
her comment: "He interested Allan and Louise Norton in her work and
induced them to print in the little magazine they founded, The Rogue,
the first thing of Gertrude Stein's ever printed in a little magazine, The
Galerie Lafayette"(A7T129).
On another occasion Alice mentions four times the same scene
describing Stein at work. "Gertrude Stein was just seeing through the
press Three Lives which she was having privately printed, and she was
deep in The Making of Americans, her thousand page book"(A7T6),
she remarks first. Two chapters later she repeats the same statement:
"Gertrude Stein was writing The Making of Americans and she had just
commenced correcting the proofs of Three Lives. I helped her correct
them"(A7T 65). Later, the same episode gets another mentioning: "I
helped Gertrude Stein with the proofs of Three Lives and then I began
to typewrite The Making of Americans" (ATT 81). Finally, as an ultimate
proof of her absent-mindedness, Toklas describes the same scene for a
fourth time: "When I first came to the rue de Fleurus Gertrude Stein was
correcting the proofs of Three Lives. I was soon helping her with this
and before very long the book was published"(ATT 105).
Why all these repetitions? According to Stein's theoretical argument,
this technique of repetition serves the purpose of character develop
ment. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas just like in her other writings,
a character?in this case Stein herself?is accompanied by a set of
constant attributes, and it is through the repetition of this set of
attributes that the "whole" of the character is supposed to emerge at the
end. Evidently, this set of attributes should not be understood as short
epithets that are repeated each time word by word, but rather as a
collection of a few typical activities, behaviors, and poses that constitute
the character.
Seen from a more down-to-earth perspective, however, this peculiar,
Steinese method of character development serves in Stein's hands as a
powerful means to influence the audience's opinion about herself. In
her autobiography, Stein attaches a constant set of positive attributes to
her own name that, on the pretext of character-development, she can
repeat endlessly: Gertrude Stein is a genius; Gertrude Stein is a talented

artist; Gertrude Stein's works are published everywhere; Gertrude Stein
is a genius; Gertrude Stein is a talented artist; Gertrude Stein's works are
published everywhere; and so on. The scenes depicting Stein absorbed
in her artistic creation are so abundant, and the concrete titles of her
writings are repeated with such frequency, that even the most superficial
reader cannot escape the influence of these reiterated images. And if
the advertising manuals are right in claiming that "an impression, when
often received, produces some change in the nervous system, causing that
impression to be received more easily a second time" (AR 18), then Stein
certainly managed to facilitate the subsequent reception of her writings.
Finally, the endless repetition of the name of Gertrude Stein deserves
a closer look. On average, Gertrude Stein's name is mentioned approxi
mately five times on each page, which means that by the time the reader
finishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, s/he has seen Gertrude
Stein's name more than a thousand times: Gertrude Stein, Gertrude
Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, . . . Are we not
right then to suppose that this kind of repetition has some kind of
hypnotic effect on the reader?
One might also wonder why Toklas talks about her closest friend and
life-mate as "Gertrude Stein," rather than just simply "Gertrude," especially
since she remarks that at the time, in Paris, everybody called her "Gertrude."
(An interesting contrast: in Alice B. Toklas's own autobiography entitled
What is Remembered, she consistently uses Stein's first name without the last
name.) However, logically, if Stein intended her autobiography to serve
as self advertisement, she had to use the more distinctive and public last
name, rather than a simple "I" or "Gertrude." One could argue that the
constant repetition of her full name is yet another attempt on Stein's
part to (pre) condition her name in the public memory.
Seeing that (thanks to her method of reiteration) her unique,
Steinese phrases became more and more well-known among readers,
she declared proudly: "My sentences do get under their skin"(A7T66).
Conscious of the powerful influence of repetition, Stein actually carried
out her own self-promoting advertising campaign under the guise of
character development. To her great satisfaction, her theory underlying
her technique of repetition was proved: people repeat what they love,
but they also love what they repeat. . .
Final Flash
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas the episodes praising the values

of Stein's art function like advertisements shown during a film. Let us
imagine Stein's autobiography as a film in which the charming moments

of the Bohemian life in turn-of-the-century Paris flash by the eyes of the
reader. Suddenly, the film is interrupted and Stein feeds in as advertise
ment an episode from her artistic career. One moment a positive review
of one of Stein's books from a literary magazine flashes up, another
moment we hear the convincing testimony of a fellow artist about the
genius of Gertrude Stein. It is not surprising if these short, seemingly
unimportant, but often repeated episodes?akin to a good film-adver
tisement?finally get "under the skin" of the reader. For is there a reader
who, after having read this autobiography and undergone Stein's
hypnosis, is not convinced that Gertrude Stein is a talented (or at least a
prominent) artist?!
Despite all this?just as film audiences do not often become conscious
of how their future decisions are modified under the influence ?f the
concealed, indirect, and repeated advertisements?we, readers of Stein's
autobiography, do not always realize what an important role these litt?e
details in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas play in the popularization of
Stein's public image, and ultimately in our own future decisions about
the values of Stein's work. Surely many of Stein's readers would swear
that the central motive of her autobiography revolves not around Stein's
own career, but rather around the artist community of Paris. According
to the reading public, Stein's autobiography is "a book for anyone
interested in the art of this century, and for those who like to meet
Bohemians in print. The writer of memoirs is apt to talk only about
himself, even when he is describing other people; with Gertrude Stein,
this is not the case . . . the bulk of it concerns the interesting men and
women who met at her house."29But is not this opinion precisely the best
proof that Stein's self-promoting advertising-campaign was in every
aspect successful?
Harvard University
NOTES
1 Gertrude Stein, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," in Selected Writings of Gertrude

Stein, ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York, 1990), p. 185; hereafter cited in text as AAT. This
volume was in the press when she died in 1946, and was published later in the same year.
2 F. W. Dupee, general introduction to Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Carl Van
Vechten (New York, 1990), p. ix; hereafter cited in text as GI.
3 Gertrude Stein, "A Message from Gertrude Stein," in Selected Writings of Gertrude St?n,
ed. Carl Van Vechten (New York, 1990), p. vii.
4 For more information on the book's printing history see Monika Hoffmann, Gertrude
Steins Autobiographien: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas und Everybody 's Autobiography
(Frankfurt am Main, 1992), p. 121.
5 Theodore Hall, "Miss Stein Looks Homeward," The Washington Post, 8 October 1933.
Quoted in Ray Lewis White, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. A Reference Guide (Boston,
1984), p. 42. Further references to this book in the endnotes will be signaled by the
abbreviation RLW.
6 Ann Sprague MacDonald, "The Business Woman's Bookshelf," Independent Woman,
(November 1933). Quoted in RLW, p. 45.
7 Lindley Williams Hubbell, "The Plain Edition of Gertrude Stein," Contempo 3 (25
October 1933). Quoted in RLW, p. 43.
8 Ola M.Wyeth, "Gertrude Stein's Autobiography," Savannah News, 22 October 1933.
Quoted in RLW, p. 52.
9 See, for instance, her photographic portrait entitled "Gertrude Stein in front of the
atelier door" in the 1933 Harcourt Brace edition of her autobiography.
10 Carl Van Vechten, "A Stein Song," in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed. Carl Van
Vechten (New York, 1990), p. xviii.
11 Gertrude Stein, Everybody s Autobiography (New York, 1937), p. 84.
12 W. A. Martin, "Review of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Buffalo News, 9 September
1933. Quoted in RLW, p. 45.
13 "Review of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Covington /Ky.] Post, 19 September
14 Lawrence J. Wathen, "Gertrude Stein Reveals Herself in Autobiography," Dallas Times
Herald, 24 September 1933. Quoted in RLW, p. 51.
15 For an overview of this criticism, see Monika Hoffmann, note 4. Some critics even
question the authorship of this autobiography.
16 "Review of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," Durham /N.C.] Herald, 17 September
17 Clifton Fadiman, "Books," New Yorker, 2 September 1933, 46-47. Quoted in RLW, p. 40.
18 Linda Simon, Gertrude Stein Remembered (Lincoln, 1994), p. 168.
19 jjames Agee], "Stein's Way," Time 22 (11 September 1933): 57-60. Quoted in RLW,
pp. 35-36.
20 See "Introduction" to Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization, and Rereading,
ed. Kevin J. H. Dettmar and Stephen Watt (Ann Arbor, 1996), p. 3.
21 Articles by Karen Jackson Ford and Timothy Materer, respectively, published in
Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization, and Rereading, ed. Kevin J. H. Dettmar
and Stephen Watt (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 275-96, 17-36.
22 Among others see Robert M. Post, "'An Audience is an Audience': Gertrude Stein
Addresses The Five Hundred," The Kentucky Review, 13 (1996), 71-93; and Bryce Conrad,
"Gertrude Stein in the American Marketplace," fournal of Modern Literature, 19 (1995), 215
33.
23 For an excellent study on the relationship of art and advertising see Jackson Lears,
Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York, 1994).
24 For basic principles of advertising see, for example, Harry L. Hollingworth, Advertising
and Selling: Principles of Appeal and Response (New York, 1920): a manual formulating and
systematizing the "facts and laws which relate to the processes of appeal and response in
the selling and advertising of goods" (Preface).
25 Paul Jordan-Smith, "I'll Be Judge You be Jury," Los Angeles Times, 10 September 1933.
Quoted in RLW, p. 43.
26 Philippe Lejeune, "Autobiography in the Third Person," New Literary History, 9 (1977),
43.
27 Gertrude Stein, "The Making of Americans," in Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein, ed.
Carl Van Vechten (New York, 1990), p. 264; hereafter cited in text as MA.
28 The Manchester Guardian Advertising Review: A Brief Notice on Some of the Theories and
Prindples of Advertisement and of the Contributory Arts, arranged and produced by Charles W.
Hobson (16 July 1924), p. 18; hereafter cited in text as AR
29 "Brain Anatomy," Newsweek, 9 September 1933, 29. Quoted in RLW, p. 37.

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Autobiography as Advertisement: Why Do Gertrude Stein's Sentences Get under Our Skin?

Author(s): Helga Lénárt-Cheng

Because autobiographies are a convenient means for manipulat

New Literary History, 2003, 34: 117-131

We rarely pay attention to seemingly innocent marketing strategies

of them treated it as a work apart and emphasized the chasm between

amounts from contracts with publishers, or from self-promoting inter

Rule #1. A Good Advertisement Conceals its Strategy.

development of her artistic career. Even if the reader gets absorbed in

Rule #2. A Good Advertisement Is Easy to Understand.

Since an advertisement can only reach wide audiences if it is clear and

Rule #3. In a Good Advertisement the self-praise is indirect.

Let us ponder the everyday publishing practice, in which the back

Furthermore, Toklas's quotations from laudatory critical reviews pub

Coburn . . . had published a book of photographs of prominent men

Rule #4. A Good Advertisement Has to Be Repeated Over and Over.

"Loving repeating is one way of being," Stein once wrote27?and

However, such philosophical explanation of her technique of repeti

repeat endlessly: Gertrude Stein is a genius; Gertrude Stein is a talented

In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas the episodes praising the values

imagine Stein's autobiography as a film in which the charming moments

1 Gertrude Stein, "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," in Selected Writings of Gertrude

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