In this essay about Gertrude Stein two years ago, Rebecca Brown wrote, "I follow along when people talk and do my job and do not wander into traffic or get lost. But even when I'm paying attention to what's going on outside of me, part of me is somewhere else."
What part of Brown's mind is occupied with fantasies and daydreams about Gertrude Stein and Stein's longtime steady, Alice B. Toklas? Unknown. I bet not even Brown knows, so fully integrated into her literary imagination is the spark and agility of Stein's literary imagination. In any case, if there is a single human being I'd trust to conjure Alice B. Toklas with her mind, it's Rebecca Brown.
The ghost of Alice B Toklas is rumored to haunt the Sorrento hotel in Seattle.
What!? This I did not know. I have spent a lot of time in the Sorrento without knowing this. What does Alice's ghost do? What's she into? Who are her favorite people to spy on? Does she spy on women only or is she more of an equal-opportunity ghost? Has she ever been to the reading party? (That's next week, in case you'd like to join us.) So what do we know?
Toklas lived in Seattle a couple years in the 1890s, where her father ran a branch of the family business, and studied piano at what is now the University of Washington. Toklas had once dreamt of being a concert pianist, but realized, about that time, she didnât have the chops for that. But she still dreamt of a life in the arts and hung around with other artsy students and creative types. She started wearing blowsy, âgypsyâ-influenced clothes. She was moving away from the well-behaved, demure way she was raised. I donât know if she knew that she was waiting. About a decade later she met Stein.
More on the Toklas backstory here.
I hope Toklas's ghost plays the piano tomorrow night. God that would be great. Also expected to be in attendance: poets Joshua Beckman and Jan Wallace. Not to be missed.
