Parties

by Carl van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten's famed satirical portrait of upper-bohem New Yorkers and Harlem jazz clubs. David Westlake has killed someone, and his wife, so she herself reports, has committed suicide! Hyperbole, the reader quickly perceives, is the common language of these sozzled socialites who spend their nights in Harlem speakeasies and their days in drunken gossip. But people actually do die in this comic novel, and beneath their forgetfulness is an emptiness and longing as deep as that of Hemingway's "lost generation."

Genres: Fiction, New York

Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Carl 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.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

The star of this book the leading actor and actress is:
THE SIDECAR
Ingredients:
¾ ounce cointreau
¾ ounce lemon juice
1 ½ ounces of cognac
Instructions:
Shake well with cracked ice, then strain into a chilled cocktail glass and add orange wedge.


You can almost taste it.

The supporting actor and actress of this grand farce are David and Rilda. If the name Rilda puts you in mind of Zelda I’m sure that was the intention. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda have become synonymous with the Jazz age. Their drinking and partying reached legendary levels. Their antics at time childish, but certainly memorable, makes me wonder if they didn’t somehow know their time on this planet was going to be short. Neither of them made it to their 50s.


Photograph of F. Scott Fitzgerald taken in 1937 by Carl Van Vecthten.

If you were a character in this novel you might start the day at David and Rilda’s in the bar they’ve had installed in their apartment. Now some people who have been out all night might be finishing the day at the D&R bar to mix briefly with those that are just rising for the day to start or end the day with Sidecars. Now the three ingredients: The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost can be mixed in equal parts, but as you can see in the recipe above most people request a larger share of The Holy Ghost.

Now after downing a few too many Sidecars you will need to sleep. You will hopefully wake up just in time to go to Rosalie’s for horrible food, but plenty of booze. Did I mention this is prohibition? There you will find yourself watching David and Rilda who show up separately. In fact the friction is palatable between the two, and you will wonder as a servant brings you yet another Sidecar whether you are more in love with David or with Rilda.

”It doesn’t seem as if I’d seen you alone in years. We meet at parties and speakeasies. We love and eat and live at parties. Probably we’ll die at a party too...She spoke bitterly.”

You weren’t suppose to hear that, but you find it very interesting. Are they doomed for divorce? And if so which one will you stay friends with? Or will you satellite between the two watching each one crash that much faster without the other?


Harlem Jazz Clubs were the place to be and the place to be seen.

After the party at Rosalies the people that are still ambulatory head down to Harlem to hang out in the speakeasies and clubs and listen to Jazz. You end up next to Simone Fly which makes you nervous.

”There was Simone Fly, a slim creature in silver sequins from which protruded, at one end, turquoise blue legs and, from the other, extremely slender arms and chalk-white (almost green) face, with a depraved and formless mouth, intelligent eyes, and a rage of cropped red hair. Simone Fly resembled a gay Death.”

You learn over and share what in your cognac soaked mind is a witty observation. She turns unfocused eyes on you and after a few wobbles of her head she finally replies.

”Stop Kissing Parrots.”

Which is what she always says when she doesn’t understand what you said or simply doesn’t know what to say. You scoot your chair a little further away and find yourself close to King Swan, chauffeur to the bootlegger Donald. You try the same witticism on Swan.

”King Swan, disdaining to reply, knocked his cigarette ashes into the cuff of his trousers and blew his nose violently into a purple handkerchief with the head of Gloria Swanson printed in the white centre.”


Gloria Swanson

It isn’t long before Swan is missing his cuffs and piling ash on your shoes. You decide to go see what David is doing. He is talking to the actress Midnight Blue and barely acknowledges your existence, but you image that he at least gave you a tilt of his chin. Another round of Sidecars arrive, and so you studiously work on finishing this one before the next round arrives.

”Now my dear...she turned her attention to David...I never allow anything but silk and flesh to touch my body. Do we or don’t we?
I guess we do, all right, David replied, not without enthusiasm.
Then you follow me at once, she suggested.”

You fumble for your notebook of observations because you want to write down that line, but you look across the room at Rilda dancing with a German prince. Her eyes are riveted to David and Midnight Blue’s exit. She pulls herself more fervently to the prince and closes her eyes. Maybe you are more in love with Rilda or is that just because David left the room?

You see Noma and Hamish sitting together so you work your way over to that table and arrive in tandem with the waiter and grab another Sidecar. You must have snagged Noma’s because she gives you a look, but her mind is luckily on other things.

”Love is like picnicking, Noma went on. It’s all right when one is very young to eat one’s lunch lying about on the damp grass, but later in life we are likely to be more comfortable at the Ritz. It’s more convenient in the long run to substitute affection or passion for the grand emotion. Nevertheless, against my will, I’ve fallen in love with David, and I want to explain why. Nobody else, after all, can be as interesting about herself as I can, don’t you think so Hamish?
Hamish shook his head without much conviction.
When you think of me you think of a charnel-house of dead lovers, don’t you?
I hadn’t said so. I don’t think of you often.
Now, Hamish, don’t be beastly. You can be so incredibly nasty when you want to be.”
You want to pay attention to this conversation because it is about David, and Hamish is David’s best friend, but suddenly you feel this stabbing pain that feels like your liver just exploded followed by Kaiser bomb level pain in your head.

You wake to the sound of David’s voice. You ascertain that someone must have carried you back to David and Rilda’s apartment.

”We are really too shy to be natural when we are alone together, he responded. We become self-conscious and talk the way they do in books--I mean in good books, of course! Running his fingers through his black curls, he inquired casually: Rilda, what do you see in that Siegfried person? I suspect it’s his name, he added.
What do you see in Rosalie? Why do you spend all your time in Harlem with dope-addicts and bootleggers? I’ll quit it you quit.
I don’t want to quit, David replied grimly.”

You move or groan or something and suddenly they are aware of your presence. They leave the room and through the wall you can hear the sound of a mixer being shaken. You manage to slide to the edge of the bed. The room whirls around your head. You fall back on the bed and squeeze your eyes shut and decide that if you have to choose you will choose David.


Carl Van Vechten self-portrait.

Carl Van Vechten wrote 19 books from 1915 until 1932. He was also a well respected photographer and took photographs of all the major figures of “the lost generation” and beyond. Among the many individuals he photographed were Judith Anderson, Marian Anderson, Pearl Bailey, Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Bel Geddes, Thomas Hart Benton, Jane Bowles, Marlon Brando, Paul Cadmus, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Bennett Cerf,Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Ruby Dee, Jacob Epstein, Ella Fitzgerald, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lynn Fontanne, John Hersey, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Horst P. Horst, Mahalia Jackson, Philip Johnson, Frida Kahlo, Gaston Lachaise, Sidney Lumet, Alfred Lunt, Norman Mailer, Alicia Markova, Henri Matisse, W. Somerset Maugham, Henry Miller, Joan Miró, Ramon Novarro, Georgia O'Keeffe, Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer, Leontyne Price, Diego Rivera, Jerome Robbins, Paul Robeson, Cesar Romero, George Schuyler,Beverly Sills, Gertrude Stein, James Stewart, Alfred Stieglitz, Ada "Bricktop" Smith, Bessie Smith, Alice B. Toklas, Prentiss Taylor, Gore Vidal, Evelyn Waugh, Orson Welles,Thornton Wilder, and Anna May Wong.


Photograph of Evelyn Waugh by Carl Van Vechten

This book is a satire of the upper class drinking to excess; and yet, despite having the world at their feet, after all they were ushering in the modern age, they were incredibly bored. It was fashionable to be bored. They drink. They get bored. They drink some more. I certainly felt like I was reading an Evelyn Waugh, but with a distinctive American New York flair. The characters that populate this novel were people that were known by the reading public or they knew someone like them or they might even have seen themselves in one or more of the characters. The book plunks the reader down in the middle of an ongoing story. There are no resolutions, no plot per say, no ending just a slice of the Jazz decade encapsulated in the pages of a book. Witty dialogue mixed with bootleggers and German royalty, a stabbing, rampant attempts at fornication, and epic drinking bouts that would make Russians cross-eyed keep the pages moving. I will certainly be reading more Carl Van Vechten if I think my liver can handle it.

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[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hilarious and poignant ride through the end of the
1920s in which the duo, David & Rilda, are stand-ins
for Scott & Zelda. David tells his wife that he has
to get away "from what it is that makes us hate and love
and drink." A black clairvoyant stuns their pal Hamish, a
sub for CVV: "You don't know where you are, or who you are or what you are."
Others in the alcoholic-cocaine sniffing circus, which foreshadows Warhol's "Factory" beauties, include movie star Midnight Blue who never "allows anything but silk and flesh" to touch her body and a homeless teen - a drug addicted bootlegger's apprentice - who'll do anything for David. Compulsive hostess Rosalie gives the worst parties but knows New Yorkers will keep coming, "particularly if they are uninvited."


The drinking and infidelities and parties and bumming
around NYC (Harlem) go on all night - amid witticisms, fluid sexual dalliances and death. The days are spent nursing hangovers and mixing sidecars. At the finale party, almost a wake, the players lift glasses high and agree, "to make the worst of it." CVVs best, published as the stock market crashed, met w hostile critics who did not perceive that it was his obit for the decade. A scope of human nature yesterday-today. His shimmering novel draws blood. A very modern black comedy.

[ExSketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago I wrote as Sketchbook that this was an elegant, droll and ultimately poignant coda to the roaring Twenties. Now that I am locked out of that account (temporarily, I hope; I dont recall the password), here's another look at Van Vechten's impressive fable of New York socialites, boulevardiers and jazz age enthusiasts who crowd Harlem and and midtown speakeasies. Amid drunken gossip, Rilda Westlake announces that she has killed herself and her husband David is dead. Both are suggested by Scott & Zelda. Of course, Rilda doesnt know what she's talking about, however, there is a tragic death after a vigorous performance the Lindy Hop.

Best friend Hamish Wilding, another key player, is told by a clairvoyant, at a party, that "you do not know yourself...you don't know who you are, or what you are. or what you want." Film star Midnight Blue only likes to feel satin and flesh against her skin and "takes off her drawers mentally when she talks." The author manipulates several fragmented plots that are surrealistic despite a familiar surface; the exaggeration always glitters, but the final effect, with the market crash, is that of a morality play. One critic found a strong flavor of bitters. Here's the finest of Carl Van Vechten.

[Side Real Press · Rating 2 out of 5]

Van Vechten and his wife were people who liked to party. Despite prohibition there was plenty of booze, and the despite racist attitudes of their time their parties were multicultural, Van Vechten being a champion of the Harlem Renaissanse and knowing a number of the group personally.

Given this, it would seem that this novel is grounded in personal experience and possibly (though I dont know Van Vechtens life that well) partly autobiographical. The action revolves around a cast of bright (but drunk) young things who flit from party to party, row, talk rubbish, make up, row again etc etc. The life and soul of the scene is David Westlake who is permanently in a sort of alcoholic daze and permanently at odds with his wife Rilda who is in a similar state. He decides he needs to break this cycle to find out if they really love each or not and the novel progresses from there.

As the book is something of a social satire of that 'set' most of the characters are vain, shallow and generally unlikable with the exception of a 70+year old German woman, recently arrived in the US who is anxious to enter the decadent set and does so with gusto. She provides much of the humour (and humanity) in the novel, for really much of it is quite bleak.

The reader has to struggle through quite a bit of this bleakness/tedium as the other characters bicker amongst themselves. I felt (and I am not a big drinker) a bit like the designated driver at a party where everyone else is trashed and you have to listen to them ramble on and on (and on), a bit like listening to people relating their dull dreams. Perhaps if I was more suitably ‘enhanced’ while reading it (it also snows quite a lot) it would be more fun. A bigger problem for me is that the plot separates into two strands and although I see why it was done, I felt that it was too drastic a move on the authors part and that he could have said what he wanted without doing so and thus hold the novel together better. It also seems as if he is trying a bit too hard to show his educated bohemian credentials as he uses this strand to reference music, operas, and plays, Van Vechten was also an arts critic.

But here are bits about the book I like a lot, the aimless drifting around from place to place is well done, some of the dialogue and (especially) a scene where they go to a Harlem nightclub to witness the latest dance craze, the Lindy Hop. The latter is one of the best evocations of what one might (romantically) imagine the roaring ’20’s to have been like that I have read and I’m surprised it doesn’t appear in those themed anthology books titled something like 'writings from the '20’s.

From the nightclub point on the book finds its (ahem!) feet again and really takes off, but by then it is too late for me as we are into the last third of the novel. It’s a real shame as this section is Van Vechten at his best and shows what the book could have been.

Another popular ‘forgotten’ author of the period, Vicki Baum, described herself as “a first-rate second-rate writer” and I think that applies to Van Vechten as well. Perhaps my problem is that I started (by accident) with the excellent ‘The Blind Bow Boy’ and was thus doomed to disappointment expecting the others to be as good as that. This book is fun at times but if you only intend to read one Van Vechten then begin with that instead.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apparently the characters at the center of this novel are based on Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, and the author. My interest in this author began because of his connection with Gertrude Stein, but he's probably best known now because of his association with the Harlem Renaissance, and his photos of the various African-Americans associated with that movement. I don't even remember how I came to own my copy of this book, but it's been sitting on the shelf for years, waiting for me to get around to reading it. Now that I have finally read it, I hardly know what to say. I gave it 4 stars because I am glad I read it, but honestly I can't recommend it to anyone who is not obsessed with that era and the Fitzgerald mystique.

Published in 1930, after the 1929 stock market crash that brought on the Great Depression, this book has been described as the author's eulogy for the roaring twenties. I like that conceit, and who knows, maybe the author did know that's what he was doing at the time? In any case, the story documents lives of constant heavy drinking, and I can only hope it was exaggerated for effect, because it reports a level of consumption that was hard to read about. I guess that's some testament to the writer's skill, that I believed these people were drinking that much, even though it hardly seems possible. I think the reason I put off reading it all these years is that I didn't think I would want to read about rich people who had nothing better to do than drink themselves to death. To some extent, I was right: It reminds me of Gatsby in the sense that someone dies because of the carelessness of people who face no consequences for their role in the tragedy, but at least the book seems to spare a thought for that poor soul. Also, the author has a sense of humor, and that helps to rescue the book somewhat from the spectacle of dedicated alcoholics wasting their aimless lives.

[Monica Lynne · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF, didn't find it readable or entertaining

[Distress Strauss · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the vein of early Waugh, though without the depth (but also without the hatred of pleasure). Van Vechten had a journalist's eye for detail and great ear for idiom, though his characters aren't really differentiated. That may have been the point. Odd that a novel that takes place in NY over 1929-30 only touches upon the stock market crash, but I suppose that for much of the rich, it didn't really matter. Likewise, though the characters all love Harlem, they listen almost exclusively to classical music. I'm not sure if this is more an honest reflection of the times or of Van Vechten, who was a classical music critic and afro-fetishist. How does one put that politely? I suppose one doesn't. Read Chester Himes' Pinktoes for some thinly-veiled mockery. Still, likeably screwball, often very funny, and a heart (usually) in the right place. Perhaps if Van Vechten didn't feel the need to churn out a book a year he would have had something more substantial to say. As it is, he burnt out -- this was his last novel, though he'd live another quarter-century.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up from an old theater sale when drunken conversational passages caught my eye. As someone who's never lived in NY, it does a spot on job of portraying a cut of restless NY society. The protagonists are stumble from party to party from Ny to Europe and back with lapses of introspection, but they're not to be wrapped and delivered in a tidy package. It's amusing, frothy, with darker under-currents and clever observations: a sauce for the main dish.

[Donna-Jo Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Assorted cast of well-to-do New Yorkers spend their days and nights together drinking a really insane amount of alcohol during Prohibition, gossiping, attending parties and drinking. Did I mention the drinking?! A roller coaster ride of a book!

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Van Vechten (both V's are capitalized) was a '20's NYC bohemian, and a hanger on (and expropriator) of the Harlem Renaissance. Early on he wrote music criticism, then novels, loads of letters (collections of which go from James Branch Cabell to Gertude Stein!), and later became a photographer. Tens of thousands of his photos are in differerent archives, and in museums.
This is a bohemian novel. The characters are all pretty much a mess, and continually drunk - nearly from the moment they awake. Pointless lives, with no direction - they are all rich enough to not have to work, travel (to Europe most often) when they want, and drink their days away after waking up after noon. It all gets a bit unintersting and tedious after awhile. I am sure the novel was shocking at the time (everyone sleeps with everyone else, straight men have a tinge of bi about them, "nympho" women, coke, uppers, and constant drinking), but less so today.
The two saving graces in the novel is his first few pages to what I think was Chapter 9 - Van Vechten's ode to the city of New York. Its varity and inclusiveness - and how it is constantly changing. Like a living being.
And his couple of pages on the Lindy Hop. How, like with most popular American dances, it began with a "Negro" innovation, and within 2 years it has been watered down enough to become a dance in a Broadway musical, where the dancer claims to have invented it, and then a popular dance in all white dancehalls.
Still, a readable, and at times enjoyable, piece on the NYC bohemian scene (rich variety) of the 1920's. It makes Fitzgerald's flappers look wholesome and suburban.
2.5 out of 5.
Read as an ebook - a very few transcription typos, but not too bad at all. I do plan to read some other books by him - "Ni**er Heaven" (which Amazon won't even include on its site because of its name - despite being reprinted by the U of IL Press some years ago) and his fictional memoir of being brought up in Cedar Rapids, IA.

[Nicole C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A time capsule of the 1920s via thinly veiled caricatures of Jazz Age denizens like Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. (Van Vechten was friends of theirs, and Hamish might be a stand-in for himself). Not much of a plot here - as the title implies, it's mostly parties and drinking. Impromptu house parties, speakeasy apartments, nightclubs in Harlem. Sidecars, absinthe, gin rickeys, and also, for some, cocaine.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very odd little book. While some of the characters are sort of humorous, I'm not sure that this book has much of a point.

[Mark Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zelda and Fitzgerald roman a clef. Satirical and exaggerated, or spot-on and snarky?

[Javier Dávila · Rating 4 out of 5]

So sad a story - and all at once, very funny. An existentialist portrait as hollow and senseless as its own models. They were going to crash their plane, which they knew well, just they missed how.

[Daniella Pozo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letting the words wash over me

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The impression Carl Van Vechten is trying to give of New Yorkers in the '20s is a bit heavy-handed - it's no "Vile Bodies" - but I'm reading it because of Van Vechten's renowned career as a critic and art collector.

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

...review to follow!

[Michael Malice · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable

[L.M. Elm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh...this was my first foray into Van Vechten. I found the characters to be blunt...boring. Drinking, drinking and more drinking. The small descriptions of New York City saved the book for me.