Carl Van VechtenCritiques

I really wanted to like it. But. It was too glorious and the sumptuous baroque prose was too much for me. So were all the long excerpts and quotes in French that I couldn't understand. Every page was not an inexhaustible pleasure, it was simply exhausting. I found my eyes were moving but I wasn't getting anywhere although I did arrive at page 53 before I finally gave up.

Van Vechten’s seventh and last novel. The fourth I have read, and the one I found most successful. Title perhaps inspired by the famous passage from Waugh’s Vile Bodies often taken as a summing-up of the era of the Bright Young Things. Characters, some surely recognisable to Van Vechten's circle (I have seen comments identifying two main characters with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald) are all running away from something, and he depicts them with great poignancy. A gem.

A series of vivid vignettes, some highly artificial, others seemingly drawn from personal experience. Don’t really add up to a novel.

A story of mutual need: a wealthy but lonely woman on the brink of middle age and a young man desperate to escape the stifling limitations of his midwest hometown. This could have been a rather formulaic story but van Vechten adds many idiosyncratic touches: lists of artists and performers, detailed descriptions of women’s clothing and every dish on the Maple River dinner table, a framing chorus from the other side of the tracks. And of course the “Happy Ending” does not take us in. The young man, presumably an autobiographical creation, is entirely self-seeking. The thinly-disguised portrait of Cedar Rapids society is brutally unsympathetic, although there is unexpected appreciation of local natural beauty. Difficult to classify but a rewarding read.

An engaging collection of letters, between Langston Hughes, poet and author, and Carl Van Vechten, who was a writer, publisher, photographer, and devotee to Negro, as his term of the time was, arts and letters. Van Vechten was about 20 years older than Hughes and their correspondence extends from the 20s through to Van Vechten's death in 1964. Of the two, Hughes is the more interesting, having had a life of writing, travel and engagement with "his people," that is the colored people of the world. Both men were involved with the Harlem Renaissance and knew most of those connected with that period.

Hughes has a remarkable presence on the page--he is frank, funny, warm and expressive. It seems unsurprising how many pictures show him with a great smile. In spite of a largely unsupportive family and the persistence of prejudice and Jim Crow, Hughes was so talented, so smart, and so clear about his aims that his success (not financially--he seems to have been hard up most of his life) and his reach culturally have been and remain great.

Since the collection of letters continues through Van Vechten's life and close to the end of Hughes' (he died in 1967, I believe), it was interesting to watch them age: especially in light of the darker times arriving toward the end of their lives. (It is an odd thing to say, and I cannot really explain it, that the 60's, Civil Rights, Black Power should constitute something darker than Jim Crow, the heyday of lynchings, and segregation, but in much of the art put forth there was a lightness, a hope, a faith in the future. And works of this era do not seem to me to deserve the dismissal (although they did receive it sometimes) of purveying stereotypes. Hughes well knew the injury and injustice of racism, but attitudes about the appropriate artistic and cultural expression did change. It's a progression I wish I understood better.)

Toward the end of the book, the exchanges became less interesting to me. For one thing, both men were busy with deadlines, details of publishing and presenting theater works. Van Vechten was consumed with the archiving of his collections of art, writings, etc. that were being assembled for the James Weldon Johnson Archive at Yale. Van Vechten's tone became ever more hectoring to Hughes, and at one point he chides Hughes for signing his letters "Sincerely", which Van Vechten seemed to perceive as cold. It didn't strike me that way, but did make me wonder about currents of disappointment, insecurity, jealousy that may have affected Van Vechten.

The editor of the volume, Emily Bernard, says in her introduction: " This book is a story about two people, one famous, one formerly famous but now mostly unknown, who lived during an extraordinary period in American history. Between the two of them, they knew everyone, and nearly all of those people come to life in the pages that follow. Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten helped make the movement we know as the Harlem Renaissance, and for that reason their story is meaningful. But the most important story in this book is about a friendship--one complicated by race, power, and money. Like most friendships, it endured its share of ups and downs. But unlike most friendships, this one thrived because of difference, not in spite of it." That is a more than adequate summary and reason to read the book.

One last thing, the notes and appendices are well thought out and thorough. The notes are placed after each letter and so are accessible. The appendices include Van Vechten's introduction to The Weary Blues, entitled "Introducting Langston Hughes to The Reader," and Hughes' address memorializing Van Vechten's life. Both are touching.

A wonderful compilation of all things relating to cats. In particular their history- how they have been treated by mankind throughout the ages in different cultures. The author is obviously very fond of cats and points out all their endearing traits throughout the book. Then mentions all the references he can think of from literature, art, poetry and even music that include cats. It is quite a jumble of observations and quotes, but very intriguing to read through. The chapter about ailurophobes, which describes how certain people loathed cats so much it was like a disease- they would physically suffer if one was in the room even unseen- made me wonder if this was simply a case of severe allergic reactions. The portion titled "Cats and the Occult" was rather horrific in describing all the ways cats have been tortured to death, thrown off towers, sacrificed for various reasons, their body parts ground up and skins used as cures, and one which I had never hear of and now wish I never had- the cat organ. Gah. Who ever thought such a thing was amusing? Then there are mentions of cats that lived in theaters and inspired (or hindered) the performers, cats that inspired musical compositions (some written to mimic the sound a cat makes walking across piano keys!) cats featured in poetry, and cats beloved by famed authors. There are a number of plates showing artwork and photographs of cats, but so many paintings were referenced in the book I wished to see more. And my only disappointment is that so very many quotes regarding cats were shared in French, with no translation provided. I could look up a few sayings and short poems, but entire passages nearly filling a page defeat me.

from the Dogear Diary

Several years ago I read a book of essays about reading, called Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman. She mentioned this book because of its incredible vocabulary. I was intrigued from that point forward and when I happened upon it at Powell's, I had to have it.

Wow, what a lot of fun to read. It's like hearing a very opinionated great-uncle who is incredibly well-educated and well-read, and who loves cats entirely too much. Van Vechten goes through various topics in culture and literature and documents attitudes to the cat, along with a lot of judgement of his own as to how those attitudes were more or less right or wrong. He is not just an ailurophile but a Europhile as well, concentrating on French and English litterati and their attitudes about cats. Anne F. was definitely right about the vocabulary. His erudition was staggering. It didn't exactly send me running to the dictionary, as you could figure out 99% of the words from context, but it was a real joy to read something that was obviously written without any regard for readers less educated than himself. So often I think books are deliberately dumbed down. When language is complex, it is often inscrutable as well, and I get the idea the author's trying to hide the fact that he (or she) has nothing to say. Not Van Vechten! He has a lot to say. He has very firm opinions. And they are always on the side of all things feline. Cats can truly do no wrong.

This 1926 novel of the Harlem Renaissance, written by a white, gay man, drew fire from the black community for its scandalous title. It's good, but a bit too polemical for my taste. His point is that there are rich blacks, intellectual blacks, jazz-players, poor blacks and gigolos all living side by side in Harlem. They are various and interesting people and not of one mind on any subject and we should really get to know them. His main characters are not fully realized to me. The bitter young college-educated Byron Kasson, who can't get a job any better than elevator operator, seems somewhat stilted and one dimensional. His priggish, long-suffering, librarian girlfriend is not much better. What I loved were the descriptions of Harlem life, the cabarets in all their tawdriness and the lavish parlours of the wealthy. The tragic ending seemed cheap and unnecessary. I think it could have been much more complex, but still very enjoyable.