In this original and intriguing study, Anna Linzie examines three mid-twentieth-century texts never before treated as interrelated in a book-length work of literary criticism: Gertrude Stein鈥檚 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) and Alice B. Toklas鈥檚 The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book (1954) and What Is Remembered (1963). Taking these three texts as intertexts or as an assemblage of the true story of Alice B. Toklas, Linzie challenges assumptions about primary authorship and singular identity that have continued to limit lesbian and feminist rereadings of autobiography as a genre and of Stein and Toklas as writers and historical figures.
The True Story of Alice B. Toklas explores how the concept of autobiography as a primarily referential genre is challenged and transformed in relation to autobiographical texts written about the same person, the same life, but differently, by different writers, at different points in time. The concept of one true story is deconstructed in the process as Linzie modifies Homi K. Bhabha鈥檚 鈥渁lmost the same but not quite/not white鈥 for the purposes of this particular study as 鈥渁lmost the same but not quite/not straight.鈥 The investigation moves simultaneously on the planes of textuality and sexuality in order to provisionally articulate a 鈥渓esbian autobiographical subject鈥 in Linzie鈥檚 reading of these three texts.
Linzie鈥檚 study fills a gap in literary criticism where Stein鈥檚 companion and her work have been more or less neglected, conceptualizing the Stein-Toklas sexual/textual relationship as fundamentally reciprocal. The True Story of Alice B. Toklas provides a new critical perspective on Toklas as indispensable to Stein鈥檚 literary production, a cultural laborer in her own right, and a writer of her own books. Making a significant contribution to recent lesbian/feminist reconceptualizations of the genre of autobiography, this study will fascinate Stein and Toklas scholars as well as those interested in queer and autobiography studies.
鈥The True Story of Alice B. Toklas is a deconstructive excursus, theoretically astute and cannily playful, that juxtaposes three autobiographical texts by and about Toklas, including her famous cookbook and Stein鈥檚 鈥榓utobiography鈥 of her partner. In this study, Anna Linzie has addressed and finessed some tenets of literary scholarship, including generic hierarchies, singular versus collaborative authorship, assumptions of value, decorums between critic and her subject, and critical reception as a mode of invention. With this fascinating addition to the literature concerning Gertrude Stein and her circle, Linzie produces various challenges to the notions of 鈥榯rue story.鈥欌濃擱achel Blau DuPlessis, author, Drafts and Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work
鈥淛ust as Stein confounds traditional genre expectations of truth, authenticity, authorship, and origins in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, so Anna Linzie unsettles readings that invoke traditional genre expectations in their assessment of Toklas鈥檚 autobiographical works. In Linzie鈥檚 account, Toklas 鈥檚 form of textual agency includes absence and silence about her own life, while highlighting aspects of Stein鈥檚 life that Toklas helped to shape and promote. This work is of interest to anyone who studies Stein, autobiography, or feminist/gender theory.鈥濃擠eborah Barker, associate professor of English, University of Mississippi
