I Am Not Who "I" Pretend to Be: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and its Photographic Frontispiece

Abstract

A photograph Man Ray (fig. 1) serves as the frontispiece for the first edition of The Autobiography of B. Toklas (1933). (1) In the image, a severely cropped version of Man Ray's original composition, a waifish B. Toklas, in a loose-fitting, floor-length dress, enters the study where Gertrude sits at her desk, enveloped in her work. Although dominates the foreground of the photograph, the caption fails to acknowledge her presence. simply reads, Alice B. Toklas at the door, photograph Man Ray. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] With the frontispiece, establishes a comparison between two purportedly direct modes of referentiality: autobiography and portrait photography. The medium of photography, in general, complements Stein's deconstruction of autobiography as a genre. The frontispiece, in particular, reads as The Autobiography en abyme. (2) The frontispiece, with its seemingly askew caption, highlights the discrepancy between the book's title and its content. According to Stein's own specifications, her name did not appear on the spine, front cover, or title page of the first edition. Since the first publication, publishers have exhibited a palpable anxiety about this absence. While not a household name, 1933 had achieved a literary reputation in the United States. Toklas, in contrast, was completely unknown. The title, therefore, failed to deliver autobiography's usual pledge; The Autobiography of B. Toklas did not promise to provide the details of an exemplary or otherwise extraordinary life. To this day, republications of The Autobiography almost always feature Stein's image (sans Toklas) on the cover and Stein's name on the spine, front cover, and title page. In other words, Stein's transgression of autobiographical convention still requires considerable explanation in publishers' eyes. In 1933, the Literary Guild of New York introduced the book to its members means of a brief, clarificatory letter. The revised title became The Autobiography of B. Toklas: The Life Story of Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein. As editor-in-chief Carl Van Doren states in the letter: It is important to know from the outset that while this book is called the autobiography of B. Toklas (a companion of Miss Stein), it is actually the of Gertrude Stein's life since 1903. (3) Van Doren does not want the reader to judge the book its cover. With a tone of urgency, he attempts to purge from the title the very ambiguities wanted to project. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Van Doren places Toklas within parentheses in more ways than one. For one thing, his introduction dismisses Toklas's importance both as a narrative persona and as Stein's lifelong partner. Perhaps more importantly, Van Doren's imposition hampers the reader's participation in the construction of the text's meaning. The by Gertrude Stein decreases the reader's active skepticism about the I. Van Doren's decided explanation of Stein's ruse of authorship undermines the latter's interrogation of (self-)representation. Readers expect autobiographies to tell all, and Van Doren assures potential readers that while The Autobiography does not occupy itself with the details of the lesser-known Toklas's life, it does tell the story of the more noteworthy Stein's life. Obviously, Van Doren was more interested in book sales than genre analysis, but his comments compromise one of Stein's main purposes for the project. With The Autobiography of B. Toklas, asserts that autobiographies reveal much more about the conventions of representation than they do about individual lives. Just as Stein's ruse of authorship challenges the auto- of the book's title, the frontispiece undermines the illusion of singularity suggested the photograph's caption (Alice B. Toklas at the door). In Man Ray's original photograph, Toklas's figure marks the center of the plane. …