Description
Book SynopsisThe American book tour that catapulted Gertrude Stein from quirky artist to a household name. In 1933, experimental writer and longtime expatriate Gertrude Stein skyrocketed to overnight fame with the publication of an unlikely best seller, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Pantomiming the voice of her partner Alice, The Autobiography was actually Gertrude's work. But whoever the real author was, the uncharacteristically lucid and readable book won over the hearts of thousands of Americans, whose clamor to meet Gertrude and Alice in person convinced them to return to America for the first time in thirty years from their self-imposed exile in France. For more than six months, Gertrude and Alice crisscrossed America, from New England to California, from Minnesota to Texas, stopping at thirty-seven different cities along the way. They had tea with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, attended a star-studded dinner party at Charlie Chaplin's home in Beverly Hills, enjoyed fifty-yard-line se
Trade Review. . . Morris succeeds in describing a time when an experimental writer could become a celebrity. Accessible and engaging, this fresh look at Stein's life is especially recommended for those interested in modernist literature.
—
Library JournalAn entertaining and fast-paced chronicle of Gertrude Stein's seven-month American tour in the fall and winter of 1934–1935 . . . Drawing on contemporaneous newspaper stories and on firsthand accounts, Morris captures the excitement of the period when a cult avant-garde author found herself a national celebrity . . . Morris's lively account provides a window onto an enchanting chapter of modernist literary history.
—
Publishers Weekly[Morris'] writing is brisk and breezy . . . he magnifies and makes new.
—
Wall Street JournalIn the annals of American celebrity, Gertrude Stein's barn-burning 1934–35 lecture tour, accompanied by her lifelong partner, Alice Toklas, may be in a class of its own. Indeed, it almost cries out for attention, as the literary biographer Roy Morris Jr. reveals in his brisk new book,
Gertrude Stein Has Arrived.
—
Book PostWhile the story of becoming a literary celebrity at age sixty is familiar to anyone who knows the Stein saga, Morris has more to say about it than anyone before him.
—
Rain Taxi Review of BooksTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Author's Note
Introduction 3
1. A Bell within Me Rang
2. Many Saints Seen
3. You'd Better Come Over
4. Gertrude Stein Has Arrived
5. Yes Chicago Too
6. Naturally the Northern Girls Came South
7. No There There
Epilogue. I Am Already Homesick for America
Notes
Bibliography
Index
