What do you think?
Rate this book
Letters of Carl Van Vechten
During a long life in American arts & letters, Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) was a music-dance-literary critic, novelist, photographer, jazz enthusiast, popularizer of black writers and promoter of the avant garde. Now another facet of his remarkable talent is available through this selection of letters to 150 people -- culled from among the thousands he wrote. The 20th Century comes alive in his letters to Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lillian Gish, Firbank, Blanche Knopf, Langston Hughes, the Stettheimer sisters, Gertrude Stein and A'Lelia Walker. "Bursting with vitality," says Donald Windham, "the letters covering 50 years are a delight, delight."
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Carl van Vechten
162 books29 followersCarl van Vechten (B.A., University of Chicago, 1903) was a photographer, music-dance critic, novelist, and patron of the Harlem Renaissance who served as literary executor for Gertrude Stein.
Van Vechten was among the most influential literary figures of the 1910s and 1920s. He began his career in journalism as a reporter, then in 1906 joined The New York Times as assistant music critic and later worked as its Paris correspondent. His early reviews are collected in Interpreters and Interpretations (1917 and 1920) and Excavations: A Book of Advocacies (1926). His first novel, Peter Whiffle (1922), a first-person account of the salon and bohemian culture of New York and Paris and clearly drawn from Van Vechten's own experiences, and was immensely popular. His most controversial work of fiction is Nigger Heaven (1926), notable for its depiction of black life in Harlem in the 1920s and its sympathetic treatment of the newly emerging black culture.
In the 1930s, Van Vechten turned from fiction to photography. His photographs are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere. An important literary patron, he established the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale.
Van Vechten was among the most influential literary figures of the 1910s and 1920s. He began his career in journalism as a reporter, then in 1906 joined The New York Times as assistant music critic and later worked as its Paris correspondent. His early reviews are collected in Interpreters and Interpretations (1917 and 1920) and Excavations: A Book of Advocacies (1926). His first novel, Peter Whiffle (1922), a first-person account of the salon and bohemian culture of New York and Paris and clearly drawn from Van Vechten's own experiences, and was immensely popular. His most controversial work of fiction is Nigger Heaven (1926), notable for its depiction of black life in Harlem in the 1920s and its sympathetic treatment of the newly emerging black culture.
In the 1930s, Van Vechten turned from fiction to photography. His photographs are in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere. An important literary patron, he established the James Weldon Johnson Collection of Negro Arts and Letters at Yale.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 10, 2014
A sensational Ralph Barton cover caricature of CVV preps 50 years of a "cultural index" to the 20thC. Email now kills the keeping of historic Letters. CVV loved to send and receive letters and herein are missives to Gert Stein, Mabel Dodge, Lillian Gish, H L Mencken, Alfred & Blanche Knopf, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, Virgil Thomson, Alec Woollcott about the new music, art, dance, theatre, lit that once made America GGGGreat--. There's plenty of the personal too as CVV and actress wife Fania Marinoff went their separate ways - he to Hollywood or she to Europe via luxury travel of the 20s-30s.
A music-dance critic who wrote seven novels and then turned to
photography, the independently wealthy CVV (1880-1964) marched to his own tune - and championed the best in the avant-garde. He saluted Gershwin, Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson before anyone else and called attention to the music of Stravinsky, Satie and the operas of Richard Strauss. Among writers, he promoted Gert Stein, Langston Hughes, Firbank, Wallace Stevens, and he made the US conscious of the Harlem Renaissance.
New York was "home." He detested going to the country, full of
insects and cottages w bad plumbing. Hollywood, which gave him a subject for "Spider Boy," was fantastic, "but it wasn't Hollywood at all: it was Culver City, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Ambassador Hotel." There was more sunlight there and more money, more furs, more oil wells, more cars and more dissatisfaction than anywhere else in the world, he wrote, 1927, for the original Vanity Fair. "The only thing there isn't more of is weather. There is absolutely no weather at all."
His Letters over the years. On Callas : "I do not think Maria
is as good as Elvis Presley."
Florence Foster Jenkins : "She totters on and off but is
good for another ten years. Everybody was screaming, the house
was packed and about a hundred were standing."
Thomas Wolfe : "He wrote like a creative genius and might
have become one under some circumstance."
TS Eliot : "I was not exactly bored by Eliot's play, The Confidential Clerk, nor was I much interested either."
Colette : "She knew more about the human heart than any author who ever lived."
On journalism : "I am beginning to get over the bad effects.
The hurry produced by the demand for copy makes one fall into
routine expressions which eventually spoil a style."
Religion: "I hope it will not have a dampening effect on your
character." Education : "My education is due to curiosity
and energy." Morality : "When one awakens to the fact that
one knows nothing, that morality is governed by chic and fashion, that people are undependable and unreliable, that Life itself is incomplete and insecure, he may be said to be comparatively mature."
A music-dance critic who wrote seven novels and then turned to
photography, the independently wealthy CVV (1880-1964) marched to his own tune - and championed the best in the avant-garde. He saluted Gershwin, Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson before anyone else and called attention to the music of Stravinsky, Satie and the operas of Richard Strauss. Among writers, he promoted Gert Stein, Langston Hughes, Firbank, Wallace Stevens, and he made the US conscious of the Harlem Renaissance.
New York was "home." He detested going to the country, full of
insects and cottages w bad plumbing. Hollywood, which gave him a subject for "Spider Boy," was fantastic, "but it wasn't Hollywood at all: it was Culver City, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Ambassador Hotel." There was more sunlight there and more money, more furs, more oil wells, more cars and more dissatisfaction than anywhere else in the world, he wrote, 1927, for the original Vanity Fair. "The only thing there isn't more of is weather. There is absolutely no weather at all."
His Letters over the years. On Callas : "I do not think Maria
is as good as Elvis Presley."
Florence Foster Jenkins : "She totters on and off but is
good for another ten years. Everybody was screaming, the house
was packed and about a hundred were standing."
Thomas Wolfe : "He wrote like a creative genius and might
have become one under some circumstance."
TS Eliot : "I was not exactly bored by Eliot's play, The Confidential Clerk, nor was I much interested either."
Colette : "She knew more about the human heart than any author who ever lived."
On journalism : "I am beginning to get over the bad effects.
The hurry produced by the demand for copy makes one fall into
routine expressions which eventually spoil a style."
Religion: "I hope it will not have a dampening effect on your
character." Education : "My education is due to curiosity
and energy." Morality : "When one awakens to the fact that
one knows nothing, that morality is governed by chic and fashion, that people are undependable and unreliable, that Life itself is incomplete and insecure, he may be said to be comparatively mature."
Displaying 1 of 1 review