Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein

Prologue: And They Were Not Wrong     1Disorder and Early SorrowBes Almon     6Tempers We Are Born With     30Too Darn Anxious to Be Safe     47Both Ones That Quite Enough Are KnowingTo Know Thyself     64The Feminine Half     84Evolution     100Respectability     116New Americans     134Speech Is the Twin of My VisionGilded Cages     156Brother Singular     170Quod Erat Demonstrandum     188Toward a More Quintessential Method, 1903-1905     208In the Thick of It     227An Alarm Has No ButtonQuarreling     248Banquets     266I Could Be So Happy     286A Fine Frenzy     304Myself and Strangers, or The Inevitable Character of My Art     323Ripeness Is AllTwo     338The Disaggregation     356Of Having a Great Many Times Not Continued to Be Friends: A Finale     376Epilogue: A Family Romance     393Appendix     409Acknowledgments     415Notes     421Bibliography     487Index     501

\ New York Times Book Review“Ms. Wineapple does an impressive job of setting down the facts of the Steins' eventful lives. . . . [An] ambitious biography.”—New York Times Book Review\ \ \ \ \ Washington Post Book World“Wineapple tells a dramatically compelling story; her analysis is insightful, her meticulous documentation unobtrusive. She has written an absorbing account of two extraordinary siblings.”—Washington Post Book World\ \ \ San Francisco Chronicle“Brenda Wineapple brilliantly disentwines the record of Stein's life from the image of it that Stein and her allies created. . . . Wineapple's narrative is fluent and clear . . . fascinating.”—San Francisco Chronicle\ \ \ \ \ Booklist“Wineapple illuminates the distinct and tremendously influential personalities of Gertrude and Leo Stein as well as the intricate nature of their intense but doomed relationship.”—Booklist\ \ \ \ \ Boston Globe“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”—Linda Simon, Boston Globe\ — Linda Simon\ \ \ \ \ \ Toronto Globe and Mail“Sister Brother is a beautifully even-handed and penetrating treatment. This biography is indispensable for students of Gertrude Stein and of modernism, and will be a delight to lovers of art and to all those interested in what Wineapple calls ‘the romance of families.’”—Toronto Globe and Mail\ \ \ \ \ Elle“A riveting joint profile of Gertrude and Leo Stein. . . . A wild, Fauve-like canvas of a time before emotional color was muted by Prozac.”—M. G. Lord, Elle\ \ \ \ \ Daily Telegraph“Wineapple’s book explores their partnership with humour and panache. Not the least of its virtues is that, while paying ample homage to Gertrude, it does justice perhaps for the first time at length and in detail, to Leo. . . . Scrupulous, sensitive, marvellous.”—Daily Telegraph\ \ \ \ \ Forward“Eloquent”—Forward\ \ \ \ \ The Guardian“A rewarding read.”—Guardian\ \ \ \ \ Chicago Tribune“Brenda Wineapple could have called this book ‘Scenes from a Marriage’. . . . An absorbing picture.”—Chicago Tribune\ \ \ \ \ Richard Howard“A luminous, harrowing achievement for which all students of literature and art, as well as of families, are in Brenda Wineapple's debt.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Patricia Bosworth“Brenda Wineapple’s meticulous, scholarly, and affectionate double biography of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo gives us the fascinating story of two glorious animals.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Boston Globe“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”—Linda Simon, Boston Globe\ \ \ \ \ Richard Howard“A luminous, harrowing achievement for which all students of literature and art, as well as of families, are in Brenda Wineapple's debt.”—Richard Howard\ \ \ \ \ Patricia Bosworth“Brenda Wineapple’s meticulous, scholarly, and affectionate double biography of Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo gives us the fascinating story of two glorious animals.”—Patricia Bosworth\ \ \ \ \ Forward“Eloquent”\ \ \ \ \ \ Chicago Tribune“Brenda Wineapple could have called this book ‘Scenes from a Marriage’. . . . An absorbing picture.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Toronto Globe and Mail“Sister Brother is a beautifully even-handed and penetrating treatment. This biography is indispensable for students of Gertrude Stein and of modernism, and will be a delight to lovers of art and to all those interested in what Wineapple calls ‘the romance of families.’”\ \ \ \ \ \ Booklist“Wineapple illuminates the distinct and tremendously influential personalities of Gertrude and Leo Stein as well as the intricate nature of their intense but doomed relationship.”\ \ \ \ \ \ San Francisco Chronicle“Brenda Wineapple brilliantly disentwines the record of Stein''s life from the image of it that Stein and her allies created. . . . Wineapple''s narrative is fluent and clear . . . fascinating.”\ \ \ \ \ \ The Guardian“A rewarding read.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Elle“A riveting joint profile of Gertrude and Leo Stein. . . . A wild, Fauve-like canvas of a time before emotional color was muted by Prozac.”\ —M. G. Lord, Elle\ \ \ \ \ \ Daily Telegraph“Wineapple’s book explores their partnership with humour and panache. Not the least of its virtues is that, while paying ample homage to Gertrude, it does justice perhaps for the first time at length and in detail, to Leo. . . . Scrupulous, sensitive, marvellous.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Boston Globe“Drawing on rich archival sources, and interpreting them judiciously and sensitively, Wineapple gives us a fresh picture of Stein, many of her relatives, and especially the sibling to whom she was closest: her brilliant, intense brother Leo.”\ —Linda Simon, Boston Globe\ \ \ \ \ \ New York Times Book Review“Ms. Wineapple does an impressive job of setting down the facts of the Steins'' eventful lives. . . . [An] ambitious biography.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Washington Post Book World“Wineapple tells a dramatically compelling story; her analysis is insightful, her meticulous documentation unobtrusive. She has written an absorbing account of two extraordinary siblings.”\ \ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyJust before WW I, the suffocating brother-sister relationship of the Steins ended in Paris. They never again spoke to each other. Gertrude Stein's gift for self-promotion has largely created her image. Now Wineapple (the biographer of Janet Flanner-Gent) looks behind it. "It was I who was the genius," Gertrude claimed, "there was no reason for it, but I was, and he was not." Siblings of German-Jewish ancestry with inherited incomes, Gertrude and Leo Stein showed little motivation to succeed at anything. Leo would drop out of law schol, Gertrude out of medical school. From their teens in Cambridge and Baltimore into their late 30s on the Continent, they remained close, often living together. In France, they collected bohemian friends and avant-garde art while trying to find themselves. Gertrude grew fat and sloppy while bullying her lesbian set; Leo became neurotic and anorexic, his sense of inadequacy growing in proportion to his sister's success. By 1913, her experimental prose built upon repetition and rhythm was already being parodied. Going nowhere when Alice Toklas moved in, Leo moved out of the already famous Paris flat hung with Picassos, Matisses and Renoirs to a cottage in Italy, taking half the pictures. Leo's loyal-but desperate-mistress would follow him. Finally, just before his death in 1947, Leo published the single book on aesthetics by which he would be remembered. The year before, he had heard about Gertrude's death only from a newspaper. Their years together are not inspiring reading, but Wineapple's account evokes their lives as never before. (Apr.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalDespite the interwoven lives of Gertrude and Leo Stein, this biography by Wineapple (literature, Union Coll., Schenectady) is the first to use the sister-brother relationship as the central focus. Wineapple chronicles the symbiotic lives, personalities, intellects, and temperaments of Gertrude and Leo from childhood through death. She explores the siblings' idiosyncrasies and speculations about their relationship while offering details of their educational pursuits and college lives. In the process, Wineapple reveals the era's prejudices against Jews and women and specifics about Leo's relationship with Nina Auzias. While Linda Wagner-Martin's recent biography, Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family (Rutgers Univ., 1995), offers a more generally appealing, anecdotal writing style and emphasizes the Stein family experience, Wineapple provides a more detailed, authoritative account of the personal and intellectual lives of Gertrude and Leo. Her work is a good scholarly companion to James Mellow's standard biography, Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein & Company (1974). For literature collections.-Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.\ \