Editor's note: Gertrude Stein may have been an incredible writer in her time, but these days no one really knows much about her at all except that she knew a bunch of famous people like Hemingway and Picasso. This, in my opinion, is due to the fact that she wrote a book that listed all the famous people she knew like Hemingway and Picasso. The book—this book—is a tedious read and I do not recommend it unless you like reading about how she came to know Hemingway and Picasso. In any case, I have edited the book to remove the redundancy and left you here with a more enjoyable, condensed version.

Hi, I'm Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein's lover. Actually, though, I'm Gertrude Stein just pretending to be Alice Toklas so I don't feel so weird just talking about myself all the time. Gertrude Stein is a really incredible writer. Gertrude Stein was the first person to write real literature in the 20th century.

People really love Gertrude Stein, which is why they all went to Gertrude Stein's house at 27 Rue de Fleurus every Saturday night to eat, listen to Gertrude Stein critique their work, and finally listen to Gertrude Stein read selections from Gertrude Stein's books, like The Making of Americans and Tender Buttons.

First, though, here is a list of the 341 famous people Gertrude Stein knew (most likely before they were famous):

Pablo Picasso
Debussy
Diderot
Marcel Duchamp
Marcelle Braque
Cézanne
Virgil Thomson
Jean Cocteau
Mabel Dodge
André Masson
Muriel Draper
James Joyce
Manet
Henri Matisse
Derain
Juan Gris
Man Ray
Edith Sitwell
Toulouse-Lautrec
Sherwood Anderson
Constance Fletcher
Ethel Sands
Marcel Brion
Edwin Dodge
Uhde
James Alvin Langdon Coburn
Etta Cone
Blaise Cendrars
Cummings
Charlie Chaplin
Henry James
Bertrand Russell
Scott Fitzgerald
Georges Hugnet
Germaine Pichot
Isadora Duncan
Carl Van Vechten
Henry McBride
Lipschitz
Druet
Renoir
Paul Robeson
Bernard Faÿ
Duret
Guillaume Apollinaire
Marie Laurencin
Mildred Aldrich
Max Jacob
Charles Henri Ford
T.S. Eliot
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Van Dongen
Myra Edgerly
Ernest Hemingway
André Gide
Fernande Van Dongen
Erik Satie
Paul Gauguin
Francis Rose
Thomas Whittemore
Ford Madox Ford
Alfred Stieglitz
Ezra Pound
Jolases
Roche
Purrmann
Roger Fry
Jessie Whitehead
Doctor Fabre
Paris-Perpignan
Louis Bromfield
Hutchins Hapgood
Susie Asado Preciosilla
William Cook
Sabartes
Djuna Barnes
Elmer Harden
Carlos Williams
Agero
Kahnweiler
de Tuille
Lord Roberts
Clermont-Tonnerre
Lady Otoline Morrell
Charles Grandison
Manolo
Marjory Gibb
Wyndham Lewis Wyndham
Emily Chadbourne
Andre Salmon
Sagot
Mary Stuart
Lincoln Steffens
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jane Heap
Manguin
Lucy Church
Madame Pernollet
Mirlees Hope
Florence Haweis
Susie Asado
Fernande Guillaume
Ford Madox Hueffer
Broom Kreymborg
Stchoukine
Evelyn Thaw
Georgia Cayvan
Paulot Picasso
Henry Bruce
Melanctha Herbert
Jane Harrison
the Infanta Eulalia
Harry Gibb
The Sitwells
Alice Princet
Fénéon
Gladys Deacon
Natalie Barney
Vallotons
Demuth
Georgia Cayvan
Maurice Denis
General Frotier
Bonnard
Donald Evans
Joaquin Miller
Allan Norton
Surrey Rogers
La Fontaine
Emma Nevada
Janet Scudder
Frederic of the Lapin Agile
Arthur Frost
Nellie Jacot
Adrienne Monnier
Robert Coates
Ralph Church
Alphonse Kann
Haviland
Baronne Seillière
Bravig Immbs
Lord Grey
Siegfried Sassoon
Mademoiselle Bellevallee
Moréas
Pernollet
Blaise Cedrars
Brenner
Pauline Hemingway
the Bromfields
Madame Matisse
Madame Groult
Leonard Woolf
Sayen
Marinetti
Raymond Duncan
Paul Frederick
Eugene Jolas
Elliot Paul
Mina Loy
Robert McAlmon
Marne
Marsden Hartley
Kate Buss
Kreymborg
von Heiroth
George Antheil
Mrs Sherwood Anderson
Alice Derain
George Lynes
Monsieur Bouteleau
Czobel
William James
Joffre Perpignan
Vaillant
Georgiana King
William Bird
Vollard
Mina Haweis
Infanta Eulalia
Fabry
Marcel Schwob
Halstead Osler
Miss Ethel Sands
John Lane
Harold Loeb
Hope Mirlees
Llewelys Barker
Clarissa Harlowe Fielding
Genia Berman
Oscar Wilde
Bébé Bérard
Roussel
Jo Davidson
Forain
Kathleen Bruce
Jeanne Poule
Sir Francis Rose
Andrew Green
Nijinsky
Florence Bradley
Monsieur Marchand
Madame Seillière
Maria Jolas
Félix Potin
Jacques-Emile Blanche
Romeike
Mass Kate Buss
Lady Astley
Violet Hunt
Pat Bruce
Bridget Gibb
Clara Schumann
Florence Loeser
Smith Premier
Robert Jones
Mary Foote
Méraude Guevara
Dawson Johnston
Augustus John
Eve Picasso
Anthony Trollope
Miss Skeene
Delaunay
Lytton Strachey
Glenway Wescott
Louise Norton
Masson
David Edstrom
Raventos
Tarn McGrew
Sylvia Beach
Miss Mars
Wyndham Lewis
Miss Furr
Bernard Berenson
James Alvin Langdon
Mademoiselle Weill
Ellery Sedgwick
Aaron Copland
Epstein
Whistler
Charles Loeser
Miss Todd
René Crevel
Pat Bruce
Clive Bell
Mary Borden
Moulai Hafid
Christian Bérard
Margaret Anderson
Paul Draper
Myra Edgerly
Paul Frederick Bowles
Mary Borden-Turner
Potomak
John Reed
Marion Walker
Maddalena
Lady Rothermere
Gertrude Atherton
Madame Récamier
Lady Rothermera
Alfy Maurer
Cuenca
Ellen La Motte
Fernande Marcoussis
Gordon Caine
Harry Phelan
Vechten
Prichard
Tristan Tzara
Victor Hugo
Patrick Henry Bruce
Mary Pickford
Ernest Walsh
William Carlos
Madame Dubois
Avila
Georges Poupet
Mark Gilbert
George Moore
Yvonne Davidson
Josiah Flynt
Lamartine
Kristians Tonny
Defoe
the Katzenjammer kids
Francisco Argonaut
Hunter Stagg
Fielding Smollett
David Starr Jordan
Lady Cunard
Dos Passos
Lord Lovelace
Kitty Buss
Menalkas
Josette Gris
Durand-Ruel
Alfred Whitehead
Empress Josephine
Maeterlinck
Alphonse Kann
Maurice Darantière
Louvain
Tchelitchev
Kaiser Francis Joseph
Valéry Larbaud
Grace Lounsbery
Marie-Rose
Papa Joffre
Fouquet
Avery Hopwood
Olga Picasso
Verdun
Vuillard
Elzevir
Ightham Mote
Fernande
Whitney Lee
Coates
George Maratier
Rönnebeck
Pascin
Yvonne Davidson Florence
Georges Hugnet
Turner

Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson are very funny on the subject of Hemingway. The last time that Sherwood was in Paris they often talked about him. Hemingway had been formed by the two of them and they were both a little proud and a little ashamed of the work of their minds. Hemingway had at one moment, when he had repudiated Sherwood Anderson and all his works, written him a letter in the name of american literature which he, Hemingway, in company with his contemporaries was about to save, telling Sherwood just what he, Hemingway thought about Sherwood's work, and, that thinking, was in no sense complimentary. When Sherwood came to Paris Hemingway naturally was afraid. Sherwood as naturally was not.

As I say he and Gertrude Stein were endlessly amusing on the subject. They admitted that Hemingway was yellow, he is, Gertrude Stein insisted, just like the flat-boat men on the Mississippi river as described by Mark Twain. But what a book, they both agreed, would be the real story of Hemingway, not those he writes but the confessions of the real Ernest Hemingway. It would be for another audience than the audience Hemingway now has but it would be very wonderful. And then they both agreed that they have a weakness for Hemingway because he is such a good pupil. He is a rotten pupil, I protested. You don't understand, they both said, it is so flattering to have a pupil who does it without understanding it, in other words he takes training and anybody who takes training is a favourite pupil. They both admit it to be a weakness. Gertrude Stein added further, you see he is like Derain. You remember Monsieur de Tuille said, when I did not understand why Derain was having the success he was having that it was because he looks like a modern and he smells of the museums. And that is Hemingway, he looks like a modern and he smells of the museums. But what a story that of the real Hem, and one he should tell himself but alas he never will. After all, as he himself once murmured, there is the career, the career.

When I first met Gertrude Stein I did not know what to think. After attending my first art exhibition with her I still did not know what to think. What did you think of what you saw, asked Miss Stein. Well I did see something. Sure you did, she said, but did you see what it had to do with those two pictures you sat in front of so long at the vernissage. Only that Picassos were rather awful and the others were not. Sure, she said, as Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

Picasso's girlfriend Fernande was as always, very large, very beautiful and very gracious. She offered to read La Fontaine's stories aloud to amuse Gertrude Stein while Gertrude Stein posed. She took her pose, Picasso sat very tight on his chair and very close to his canvas and on a very small palette which was of a uniform brown grey colour, mixed some more brown grey and the painting began. This was the first of some eighty or ninety sittings.

Hélène, Gertrude Stein's housekeeper, had her opinions, she did not for instance like Matisse. She said a frenchman should not stay unexpectedly to a meal particularly if he asked the servant beforehand what there was for dinner. She said foreigners had a perfect right to do these things but not a frenchman and Matisse had once done it. So when Miss Stein said to her, Monsieur Matisse is staying for dinner this evening, she would say, in that case I will not make an omelette but fry the eggs. It takes the same number of eggs and the same amount of butter but it shows less respect, and he will understand.

Matisse made this painting called Le Bonheur de Vivre. He was making small and larger and very large studies for it. It was in this picture that Matisse first clearly realised his intention of deforming the drawing of the human body in order to harmonise and intensify the colour values of all the simple colours mixed only with white. He used his distorted drawing as a dissonance is used in music or as vinegar or lemons are used in cooking or egg shells in coffee to clarify. I do inevitably take my comparisons from the kitchen because I like food and cooking and know something about it. However this was the idea. Cézanne had come to his unfinishedness and distortion of necessity, Matisse did it by intention.

But wait, back to Gertrude Stein.

Gertrude Stein as I have mentioned is a really incredible writer. She thinks in sentences. The sentences of which Marcel Brion, the french critic has written, by exactitude, austerity, absence of variety in light and shade, by refusal of the use of the subconscious Gertrude Stein achieves a symmetry which has a close analogy to the symmetry of the musical fugue of Bach.

Gertrude Stein often described the strange sensation she had as a result of the way in which Valloton painted. He was not at that time a young man as painters go, he had already had considerable recognition as a painter in the Paris exposition of 1900. When he painted a portrait he made a crayon sketch and then began painting at the top of the canvas straight across. Gertrude Stein said it was like pulling down a curtain as slowly moving as one of his swiss glaciers. Slowly he pulled the curtain down and by the time he was at the bottom of the canvas, there you were. The whole operation took about two weeks and then he gave the canvas to you. First however he exhibited it in the autumn salon and it had considerable notice and everybody was pleased.

Gertrude Stein says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done. She is passionately addicted to what the french call métier and she contends that one can only have one métier as one can only have one language. Her métier is writing and her language is english. Observation and construction make imagination, that is granting the possession of imagination, is what she has taught many young writers. Once when Hemingway wrote in one of his stories that Gertrude Stein always knew what was good in a Cézanne, she looked at him and said, Hemingway, remarks are not literature. The young often when they have learnt all they can learn accuse her of an inordinate pride. She says yes of course. She realises that in english literature in her time she is the only one. She has always known it and now she says it.

Matisse had a great show of his pictures in Berlin. I remember so well one spring day, it was a lovely day and we were to lunch at Clamart with the Matisses. When we got there they were all standing around an enormous packing case with its top off. We went up and joined them and there in the packing case was the largest laurel wreath that had ever been made, tied with a beautiful red ribbon. Matisse showed Gertrude Stein a card that had been in it. It said on it, To Henri Matisse, Triumphant on the Battlefield of Berlin, and was signed Thomas Whittemore. Thomas Whittemore was a bostonian archeologist and professor at Tufts College, a great admirer of Matisse and this was his tribute. Said Matisse, still more rueful, but I am not dead yet. Madame Matisse, the shock once over said, but Henri look, and leaning down she plucked a leaf and tasted it, it is real laurel, think how good it will be in soup. And, said she still further brightening, the ribbon will do wonderfully for a long time as hair ribbon for Margot.

This guy named Manolo, he once was hard up and he proposed to his friends to take lottery tickets for one of his statues, everybody agreed, and then when everybody met they found they all had the same number. When they reproached him he explained that he did this because he knew his friends would be unhappy if they did not all have the same number.

I, Alice Toklas, proof-read a lot of Gertrude Stein's books to prepare them for publication. I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading never can do. A good many years later Jane Heap said that she had never appreciated the quality of Gertrude Stein's work until she proof-read it.

But wait, back to Gertrude Stein.

The Making of Americans is a book one thousand pages long, closely printed on large pages. Darantière has told me it has five hundred and sixty-five thousand words. It was written in nineteen hundred and six to nineteen hundred a eight, and except for the sections printed in Transatlantic it was all still in manuscript. The sentences as the book goes on get longer and longer they are sometimes pages long and the compositors wer french, and when they made mistakes and left out a line the effort of getting it back again was terrific. We used to leave the hotel in the morning with camp chairs, lunch and proof, and all day we struggled with the errors of French compositors. Proof had to be corrected most of it four times and finally I broke my glasses, my eyes gave out, and Gertrude Stein finished alone. We used to change the scene of our labours and we foun lovely spots but there were always to accompany us those endless pages of printers' errors. One of our favourite hillocks where we could see Mont Blanc in the distance we called Madame Mont Blanc. Another place we went to often was near a little pool made by a small stream near a country cross-road. This was quite like the middle ages, so many things used to happen, there, in a very simple middle age way. I remember once a country-man came up to us leading his oxen. Very politely he said, ladies is there anything the matter with me. Why yes, we replied, your face is covered with blood. Oh, he said, you see my oxen were slipping down the hill and I held them back and I too slipped and I wondered if anything had happened to me. We helped him wash the blood off and he went on.