CARL VAN VECHTEN AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

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CARL VAN VECHTEN AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Name: CARL VAN VECHTEN AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Author: Emily Bernard
ISBN: 978-0-300-12199-5

A PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE

by Emily Bernard ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 2012

The development of literature by and about African-Americans owes its birth to Van Vechten, and Bernard ably brings him to...

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We tend to think of jazz as the center of the Harlem Renaissance, but music was only a small part.

In the great migration between the wars, when blacks fled poverty and racial violence in the South, a wealth of organizations sprang to life to foster social and political progress. The publishing industry took a lead role, and Carl Van Vechten (1880–1964) was the impetus that fostered the talents of so many, helping provide a voice to offset long-held stereotypes. Already a published author and close friend of the Knopfs, Van Vechten became a conduit for works of the men and women he met in Harlem, at his well-attended parties and through his work as a dance, theater and music critic. Indeed, Knopf came to rely almost exclusively on Van Vechten’s judgment of works submitted to them. Bernard (English and Ethnic Studies/Univ. of Vermont; Some of My Best Friends: Writings on Interracial Friendships, 2005, etc.), who has devoted years to the study of the Harlem Renaissance, delivers a semester’s worth of knowledge in a smooth, edifying narrative. The available documents and well-preserved correspondence in the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale University provided the author information for volumes of work on Van Vechten and the Renaissance he promoted. Bernard’s subject helped establish that collection and donated all his correspondence to it while he encouraged his friends to do the same. His own work, Nigger Heaven (1925), was a bestseller and drew both raves and rants. Some referred to it as a black book written by a white man, while others saw it as an illustration of the power of language in the relation between race and art.

The development of literature by and about African-Americans owes its birth to Van Vechten, and Bernard ably brings him to life.

Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-300-12199-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
BLACK IS THE BODY
by Emily Bernard

- BOOK REVIEW
REMEMBER ME TO HARLEM
edited by Emily Bernard

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)