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Cook Book: Gertrude Stein, William Cook, and Le Corbusier

by Roy R. Behrens
Bobolink Books, Dysart, Iowa, 2005
96 pp., illus. 40 b/w. Paper, $17.95
ISBN: 0-9713244-1-7.

Reviewed by Dene Grigar
Texas Woman’s University

dgrigar@twu.edu

Picking up Roy Behrens’ Cook Book: Gertrude Stein, William Cook and Le Corbusier, one is immediately reminded of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. But unlike Toklas’ work, the Roy Behrens Cook Book does not offer recipes. Rather, his book, whose title is actually a pun on the name of little-known artist William Cook, provides a very well written "biographical sketch" (7) of Cook and an account of the relationship between Cook and Stein, as well as Cook and the architect Le Corbusier. As Stein scholars and fans would expect, Toklas does, however, figure in among its many pages––although sans culinary advice.

Those unfamiliar with William Cook and his art should know that Behrens describes him as a "minor participant in what Gertrude Stein called the ‘lost generation’" (7), an American from Iowa who moved to Europe and lived in France, Spain, and Italy. His work never achieved the level of greatness of that of his many colleagues (like Picasso), but he did much in his later life to promote modernism on the island of Majorca. He is best known for his long, unwavering friendship with Stein (he is credited with teaching her how to drive––wonderful trivia for Stein fans to know) and for having had the foresight (and insight) to hire a young Le Corbusier to design his Paris home––what has come to be known as "Villa Cook."

While any review of Behrens’ book should dwell at length on the well written prose and well-researched information he gives readers––and, indeed, this reviewer does further down in this essay––it would be a grave error not to talk first about the artifact of the book itself, for it is too wonderfully conceived and executed to ignore. That the author is himself an artist and professor of art comes as no surprise to anyone who looks at and inside the book: The frontispiece, a "digital collage" produced by Behrens, belongs to the series called "Visual Poems for Gertrude Stein." In fact, each of the seven chapters is introduced by one of the works in the series. Inside, each page offers images and photos extending the details provided by the text. The fragmented reading experience they provoke evokes the modernist experiment Stein and Le Corbusier both engaged in. And next to the main text on each page, readers will find marginalia comprised of anecdotes, sayings, and remarks by prominent or pertinent people related to the subject Behrens presents. Readers will be sorely disappointed that both Cook’s and Behrens’ works appear in black and white, though will understand the economic reasons why. A companion website that provides readers with a more optimal viewing of Behren’s work, however, would be most welcome. This reviewer, whose habit of marking up books for future reference unnerves most her family and friends, merely underlined a few passages and dog-eared the most important pages so as not to mar the book’s beauty. Even with its colorful jacket removed, the book exhibits style: A fragment of Cook’s signature––only his last name––runs across both the back and front covers, the white inscribed by black ink reminiscent of the white house Le Corbusier created for him.

The book, likewise, pleases with the quality of writing and content it offers. Highly readable, Behren’s style is more like storytelling than scholarship. But readers should not be fooled by this tact––the book establishes Cook’s reputation as loyal friend to Stein and a well-connected figure among the ex-pat community of artists living in Europe in the early twentieth century.

Each chapter plays with the notion of courses like one would see at a fine restaurant. Chapter one, for example, is entitled "Lentil Soup: When Good Americans Die They Go to Paris." Found here are comments by Wallace Stevens, Colette, and others about Paris, French culture, and those who lived there. Chapter two, "Mirrored Eggs: America Is My Country But Paris Is My Hometown," introduces Cook and his friendship with Stein, Picasso, and other ex-pats in Paris. Chapter three, "Cold Ham with Lettuce Salad: The Man Who Taught Gertrude Stein To Drive," establishes Cook’s close relationship to Stein and accords much attention to the writer and her longtime companion, Toklas. Chapter four is called "Purée of Spinach with Croutons: Returning Home But Not To Roost" and tells of Cook’s brief return to Iowa for the purpose of attending to his parent’s estate. Chapter five, "Cheese: The Proprietor of a True Cubist House," leads us to Le Corbusier and the Villa Cook. Chapter six, "Berries and Fruit: Almost Thou Persuadest Me To Be A Picassoite," reveals that Cook believed that it was due to Stein that Picasso found fame as an artist. Behrens cites a letter Cook wrote Stein in which he asserts, "’You have made Picassoism in the same sense that St. Paul made Christianity’" (77). Chapter seven, "Liqueurs: The Past Is Not Gone Nor Is Gertrude," ends the book as it had started––with anecdotes, sayings, and remarks by famous people––this time Stein, T.S. Eliot, and even Dan Rather. Art historians and literary scholars will be happy for the detailed notes found at the end of the book as well as Behrens’ list of works consulted and cited.

That Cook, Stein, and Le Corbusier are bound together in this book makes a lot of sense considering today’s complete disregard for Cook’s art, lack of attention paid to Stein’s literary output, and controversy surrounding Le Corbusier’s designs. All three come to us with reputations never soundly attained, or lost, or tarnished. What notoriety they still enjoy is derived from, ironically, not their own work but the collective consciousness of the heady time and place that was Modernist Europe.

 

 




Updated 1st February 2005


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