Blood of Strawberries

by Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke’s second comic novel will be no surprise to anyone who reads his first, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, of which Warren French wrote that he would “use as his book to show classes in modern literature that the novel is thriving anew.”

Oliver, the narrator of Blood of Strawberries, who is eighteen at the end of Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, is now in his twenties. He tells the story of a strange summer just as he saw it happen, on the streets of Manhattan, in the Chelsea Hotel, at the St. Mark’s Playhouse on Second Avenue. Though he seems self-assured and detached, it is gradually clear that his detachment and wit are a defense against realities he is not prepared to meet and scarcely understands.

At the center of Blood of Strawberries are Max Rhode, octogenarian littérateur, and his lifelong enemy-friend, Orson Valentine; they carry on a fervent rivalry about almost everything, especially after friendships, real or imagined, with Gertrude Stein. But it is Oliver’s white girl friend, Desdemona Schwartz, who sets him straight. She is at her startling best in a confrontation with some Harlem rowdies and it is this crisis, which finds Oliver at a loss, that begins to show him how to come through. When he asks Desdemona, “How do I become a Negro?” the question, colored with several shades of irony, places him at the brink of self-discovery.

Blood of Strawberries’s two themes—the need for self-identification and the need for compassion—are enhanced by the elegant, individual comedy that readers of Henry Van Dyke’s first book will recognize with pleasure. His now novel is, in Mark Schorer’s words, “very funny, far out in its whacky inventiveness, and under all the outré clowning, sad and serious at its core.”

277 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

Henry Van Dyke (1928 - 2011) was born in Allegan, Michigan, and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where his parents were professors at Alabama State College. He served in the Army in occupied Germany, playing flute in the 427th Marching Band. There he abandoned his early ambition to become a concert pianist and began to write. In 1958, after attending the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill and living in Ann Arbor, he moved to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Henry taught creative writing part-time at Kent State University from 1969 until his retirement in 1993, and was the author of four novels, including Blood of Strawberries, a sequel to Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes.

(Source: https://www.mcnallyeditions.com/henry...)

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

After being completely taken with the recently reissued Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes I had to immediately track this down. It continues the story of Oliver & once again showcases Van Dyke's coruscating, high camp style, albeit in a rather different key. This is an extremely different type of novel: nearly three times the length, set among the New York City haute bohème, & eventually, we discover, a mystery story. I enjoyed it nearly as much as its predecessor, & it would be well deserving of a similar type of republication.

It did take a few chapters, I admit, for me to gets on its wavelength, but once I did I was hooked. Van Dyke has a wonderful way of slowly winding up his plots & then letting the various narrative threads spiral about like so many spinning tops, dizzily careening down unexpected pathways. I truly had no idea where this was heading one chapter to the next. I was also a bit delighted that the figure of Gertrude Stein, who Oliver has become enamored by & is undertaking a pretentiously-titled thesis about, plays a major part in the proceedings (fascinatingly, Van Dyke is not the only gay author of his generation to use Stein as inspiration for comedic mystery yarns).

Van Dyke broaches race & sexuality more directly here than in its predecessor, though they are still handled with a certain airy archness. Until they aren't. The plot get progressively odd & the comedy darker & more strange, but as the stakes get higher the tone turns rueful & melancholy as well. Once again I was surprised to discover that I was quite moved in the end.

As far as I can tell, Van Dyke published only two other works than these two connected texts concerning the adventures of the book smart but street dumb Oliver, & nothing after the late 1980s. I wonder why. While I'm not sure if I'd say we were deprived of a major American writer, it is clear Van Dyke was incredibly talented, & I wish there was much more of his writing to discover. But as is, these are two absolutely terrific novels that I will without a doubt revisit at some point with great pleasure.

"Snooping is not normally one of my character deficiencies, but my need to get into the middle of the Stein project—no matter how belatedly—impelled me to go along with a bit of insidious detective work. And too, one thing led so logically to another that it did not seem, our criminal activity, unethical or shoddy."

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed Van Dyke's debut novel, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, so moved on to read this sequel. Oddly, the protagonist/narrator of the first book, Oliver, who is surely a stand-in for the author (with which his nephew concurs in his foreword to the first book), is presented as a somewhat fey teenager; it never actually comes out and STATES he is gay (as the author himself was), but it is heavily implied. Here, the now 20-year-old Cornell student, is suddenly hetero as can be, and romancing an aspiring Jewish actress, Desdemona (nee Rita) Schwartz.

Oliver is now residing with the sister of Etta Klein, his guardian in the first book - one Tanja Rhodes and her octogenarian writer husband Max. Max and his frenemy from across the hall (in the infamous Chelsea Hotel, no less!), Orson Valentine, have an ongoing rivalry over who knew Gertrude Stein best back in the day.

Desdemona is vying to be cast in Orson's upcoming Off-Bway production of Stein's In Savoy or Yes Is for a Very Young Man. which gets the ball rolling on a bizarre, convoluted plotline that finds both old men committing various larcenies, and one of them (spoiler alert!) even dressing as a transvetite Gertrude!!

The book is nearly twice as long as the first installment, and I felt THAT one ran out of steam before it was over - this also suffers from a few longueurs, but the final few chapters make up for it with some hilarious and precarious undertakings. There is a third installment, Dead Piano, which is more of a novella, and I intend to read that one also.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Van Dyke takes Rachmaninoff into even greater heights of absurdity, all to the enormous benefit of you, the reader. Picking up just a few years and paces down the road from the first of the duo, hero Oliver—now Cornell-laundered and finally down-to-fuck—has one very clear descendent in literature: Monk, Percival Everett’s equally effete and precious Erasure protagonist. Call it Proto-Monk, Thelonius B.C., whatever; Van Dyke got there first and, goddamn, did he know how to manipulate them ebony and ivories.

All my praise fails.

Whoopsie: one of THE greatest riffs on anything to do with Shakespeare. Ever. Goddamn it; just started laughing thinking about it weeks later.

[Marcus Todd]

I feel like this one may not get a reissue anytime soon, but here’s hoping!