Peter Whiffle

by Carl van Vechten

Peter Whiffle (1922) is a novel by Carl Van Vechten. Framing himself as his character's literary executor, Van Vechten provides a satirical self portrait of his unusual life in the arts through the lens of a man whose sole gift is to identify and move with the avant-garde. Peter Whiffle is a writer who never writes. Throughout his travels, he claims to be researching for an important work of literature but mostly provides humorous portraits of some of the greatest artists, dancers, and writers of his time. In this way, he proves himself much more of a mirror than a window--like Van Vechten likely sensed of his own writing, Whiffle is a man who reflects the success and genius of others much more than he offers his own. Travelling between New York City and Europe, Whiffle becomes a figure who defines his generation through keen wit and tongue-in-cheek wisdom, a tour guide to a vast land of cultural creation and bohemian excess. Peter Whiffle, Van Vechten's debut novel, is a fascinating work of fiction from a man who was always one step ahead of the rest. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Carl Van Vechten's Peter Whiffle is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

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

[Sketchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Culture maven CVV writes the 'let's pretend' bio of a madly
idiosyncratic chap named Peter Whiffle. He never finished anything he began, yet was able to satisfy his own cravings for oddball adventures. His one purpose in life was to have no purpose, for moments, he says, are too difficult to recapture. One amused friend asked CVV, "How is this book going to help Young Americans become better car salesmen?" Hugh Walpole said it was so personal and individual that "you will either love it or detest it." The plotless, gossipy chronicle that defies classification is filled with wit & erudition. A fine chapter is devoted to Mabel Dodge (Edith Dale here) and her aftermath Armory Show salons. CVV puts you There. "Sometimes she left her guests and went to bed. Sometimes she remained in the room without being present. But always her electric energy presided."

How you react depends on your own sensibility. "Style is the passport to posterity," says Whiffle, who, by the way, has "a desire to miss nothing in life." For the ragingly curious, Whiffle once lived on a diet of cookies soaked in hot milk.

I prefer not to review more than one book by any author, but I waive this rule for CVV because so few are aware of his key role in New York's Upper Bohemia. Financially comfy, he was able to do exactly as he wanted -- and did. From new music-art-lit & theatre to new social and sexual attitudes -- he embraced all. His best novel is "Parties," but close by are "Firecrackers" and
"The Blind Bow-Boy." CVV said, "I worship vitality." His novels are lighthearted but not lightweight. This promoter of the avant-garde pleased Alice B. Toklas with his recipe for garlic ice-cream. See what I mean?

[Lisa of Troy]

A Book Owned by F. Scott Fitzgerald: https://static-prod.lib.princeton.edu...

[Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taking a heavy cue from Against Nature , this book rambles along without much of a plot, loosely documenting the author's random encounters with Peter Whiffle, the ultimate free-spirit, a man forever changing and moving with the zeitgeist, and a man unable to make decisions. Peter Whiffle is a cypher, but his changes are amazingly inventive and capture the obsessions of the time. Even though Whiffle is a flighty dilettante, he's an interesting guy, and his "causes" are interesting as well.

We first meet Peter Whiffle in Paris and he is only interested in form. He has stacks of every type of non-literary writing, science books, catalogs, encyclopedias, etc. He wants to write a book that is pure form; merely a list of things neither connected nor unconnected. To do that, he is going to turn the written "junk" (like catalogs and dry academic writing) into a new form literature.

Later, the author, Carl van Vechten, meets Peter Whiffle in NYC. Whiffle is now a realist writer obsessed with class consciousness. He brazenly romanticizes the poor and unfortunate, and lives in a shithole in the worst part of NYC. His new novel stars a real life Jewish hunchback girl whose life is abject misery.

On and on it goes, with Whiffle pre-figuring a novel of the self, ala Woolf/Joyce/Proust, and later a horror/mystical novel ala Poe, Lovecraft's progenitors, or early Aleister Crowley.

All and all, it's worth a read. I loved it and was bored by it in equal measures. It works as fictional biography, yet it works as a memoir of Carl Van Vechten, and a close sketch of the fin de siecle time period and the concurrent obsessions of the "artistic class."

[Jon Macy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's most interesting for the insider view into the lost generation.

[Side Real Press · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is hard what to make of this book which is the ‘biography’ of an author who never wrote a book but was constantly researching for it.

The biographer of the tale, Van Vechten, meets Whiffle (who is, of course, independently wealthy) in three varying circumstances/locations, but the milieu is usually some sort of mix of affluent, sophisticated, and bohemian. In the first Whiffle’s novel will consist largely of lists of possibly unrelated objects, in the second Whiffle has abandoned that idea and is now a social(ist) realist with penchant for the poor working class, while in the third part he has become a mystic celebrating ecstasy as a means to inspiration. In every circumstance Whiffle is happy and ‘hard at work’ but with nothing to show for it.

This is quite amusing and well done as far as it goes (which is not too far) and one gets the sense that the Whiffle and Van Vechten characters are largely aspects of the same person, ie Van Vechten the author and he is using the book to air his own tastes. Another reviewer has pointed out that some characters are portraits of real life personages, so I may not be too far off the mark here.

While I was reading this book I took a break and watched Ray Russells (excellent) Youtube series on collected Arthur Machen. In it he mentioned that Machen is referred to in ‘Peter Whiffle’ and the next day I got to that part of the book. As Machenites might have guessed, it is the final ‘mystical’ section. Whiffle waxes lyrical about Machen for a number of pages (the only author to get such treatment) extolling his mystical viewpoint and referring to a number of his works. As a Machen fan myself, this was a little treat (the Machen ‘revival’ was riding high in the twenties) although Van Vechten takes the idea in a rather surprising direction later on which I wont ruin for you.

However, I think the main author looming large in this novel (and I dont think he is mentioned by name) is Huysmans. ‘Against Nature’ has a lot of lists in it, his early works such as ‘Marthe’ and ‘En Menage’ are realist novels featuring the working (and under) classes and of course ‘La Bas’ is a novel of mystical satanism. Hmm, coincidence? You decide!

Sadly though Van Vechten the author is no Machen or Huysmans having neither the mystic sensibility of Machen or the heavy duty researches of Huysmans and thus Whiffle feels a little flat at times; a little like ‘form over substance’ at times. Van Vechten strays too far into lecture mode for my liking (my major criticism of Huysmans) and this doesn’t help the flow of the book although it’s tempting to believe that this is partly deliberate. Van Vechten was after all a champion of modernism, and thus an author writing a book featuring himself writing a book about an author who never wrote a book (I hope you followed that!) is very ‘modern’. Though the moral of the tale might be seen as ‘have fun and don’t worry tooooo much’, it is not quite bright and light enough for my liking. Perhaps Van Vechten is staking out a territory in this, his first novel. It is certainly a somewhat different kettle of fish compared to ‘The Tattooed Countess’ and ‘The Blind Bow Boy’ which are more frivolous and less overtly philosophical. I like the frivolity better.

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent