I must say that you can not tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you can not tell what a book is until you type or proof read it. It then does something to you that only reading can never do.

Besides dusting the art, Alice spent quite a bit of time transposing art onto ordinary household objects. Dishes for artists were a frequent necessity at 27 rue de Fleurus, and a key element of the "Alice B. Toklas Cookbook," Alice's collection of recipes and the stories behind them, published after Gertrude's death.

A culinary work called bass for Picasso was poached in wine and butter, following the advice of Alice's aunt, who contended that a "fish, having lived its life in water, once caught, should have no further contact with the element in which it had been born and raised." The fish, once poached, was covered in "ordinary mayonnaise," then decorated with a red mayonnaise, "not colored with catsup -- horror of horrors -- but tomato paste" and topped with sieved hard-boiled eggs, truffles and finely chopped fines herbs.

Picasso, though impressed by the beauty of the fish, said that it should have been made for Matisse, not for him. Nevertheless, he rewarded Alice's artistry with a needlepoint pattern, which she used to make tapestries for two Louis XVI chairs.

And of course Alice, in the classic role of an artist's lover, served as Gertrude's muse. But given that Gertrude's art was not of the classic genre, this could take the form of not-so-classic endeavors. One guest remembers watching Gertrude instruct Alice to bat a -- what else? -- cow from one side of a field to the other, while Gertrude sat writing on a campstool.

At some point, Gertrude suggested that Alice write an autobiography. Her suggested titles illustrate her ideas about Alice's status in their relationship: "My Life with the Great," "Wives of Geniuses I Have Sat With," "My Twenty-Five Years with Gertrude Stein." Finally, it was decided that Gertrude, not Alice, was to wear the sole pair of writing pants in the family and that Gertrude would write Alice's autobiography for her. Here she is, writing as "Alice":

I am a pretty good housekeeper and a pretty good gardener and a pretty good needlewoman and a pretty good secretary and a pretty good vet for dogs and I have to do them all at once and I found it difficult to add being a pretty good author.

About six weeks ago Gertrude Stein said, it does not look to me as if you were ever going to write that autobiography. You know what I am going to do. I am going to write it for you. I'm going to write it as simply as Dafoe did the autobiography of Robinson Crusoe. And she has and this is it.

For Gertrude to write the autobiography of Alice in Alice's "voice" could be construed as sheer hubris. And the novel, which begins with their first meeting and ends with Gertrude's decision to write the autobiography, certainly implies that Alice's life begins and ends with Gertrude. But it is also a love poem of the deepest kind -- an attempt to literally become her lover. (For what it's worth, friends who knew them both say that Gertrude faithfully reproduced Alice's verbal tics and quirks.)

Besides, there is evidence that Alice had quite a bit of power herself, albeit power of the sneakier, passive-aggressive variety. She served as Gertrude's amanuensis and editor. She typed all of Gertrude's manuscripts, making editorial suggestions, and -- since she made the astonishing claim that she read Gertrude's writing better than Gertrude -- perhaps rewrote entire passages.

In the published version of the autobiography, "Alice" says (about Gertrude's "The Making of Americans"): "She wrote it and I typed it. It was over a thousand pages long." Whereas in Gertrude's handwritten manuscript it reads: "She wrote it and I typed it. It was over a thousand pages long and I loved every minute of it."

Hemingway, for one, argued that Alice was the one in control, and that her means of coercion were less than pleasant. He writes in "A Moveable Feast" about a conversation he overheard between the two women which took place shortly before he severed contact with the Stein-Toklas household. First, Alice was heard talking in menacing tones:

Then Ms. Stein's voice came pleading and begging saying, "Don't pussy. Don't. Don't, please don't. I'll do anything pussy but please don't do it. Please don't. Please don't pussy."

But then again, Hemingway had something of a rivalry with Alice. He says of Gertrude: "I always wanted to fuck her and she knew it and it was a good healthy feeling and made more sense than some of the talk."

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