|
Carl
Van Vechten
NIGGER HEAVEN Paperback Urbana. University of Illinois Press. 2000. 336 pages ISBN-10: 0252068602 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (WORK IN PROGRESS 11/09/2010 (1) biblio.com 11/09/2010 Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. review: Carl Van Vechten was a white novelist and literary critic who was fascinated by American Negroes and by Manhattan's Harlem, "the Mecca of the New Negro." NIGGER HEAVEN (1926) is the story of a young Harlem librarian, Mary Love, and a recently arrival in Harlem, college graduate and wannabe writer, Byron Kasson. Negroes of Harlem in the 1920s are portrayed as obsessed with shades of "blackness." Both Mary and Byron are the same shade of light brown. Each could pass for Spanish -- or "better" -- if he or she cared to. Both neither does. On the other hand, there are 8,000 Negroes in New York City who have successfully chosen to pass, to become white. Is this the solution to enmity between the Caucasian and Negro races: intermarriage till all the world is white? Mary, hitherto prim and reserved, is instantly smitten when she meets the young man newly come from Philadelphia with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Within two more meetings, Mary is mad for Byron and shows it. He, on the other hand, has a weakness for women and had had to leave Philadelphia when an irate husband caught him in an affair with his wife. Mary is wooed by a respectable, self-made, wealthy dark man but turns him down as uneducated. Meanwhile Byron, the stereotypical angry young man, refuses to use letters of introduction from his father and others to land a good job. He writes a short story that is rejected repeatedly. At the same time he becomes the kept man, till she tires of him, of rich, exotic Lasca Sartoris. She is easily bored but at the zenith of their affair, Lasca shouts to Byron, "I want you to possess me, to own me. I want to be your slave." Throughout the novel the Negro characters, along with a handful of whites fascinated by Harlem night life, agonize about injustices meted out from one race to another. Whites push people of color down from above. Uneducated negroes pull "the talented tenth" down from below. If only their skins were paler, all would be well! NIGGER HEAVEN is full of Harlem atmospherics, Negro Spirituals, jive talk, hot, primitive music and dark-skinned people who are thought to enjoy life more than priggish white folk ("pinks") living farther south in Manhattan. The book ends with a helpful "Glossary of Negro Words and Phrases." Examples: "arnchy: a person who puts on airs";
"bardacious: marvellous"; "C.P.T.: "coloured people's time, i.e., late"; "kinkout: hair-straightener"; "scronch: a dance"; and "unsheik: divorce." When it first appeared, NIGGER HEAVEN was widely reviled, mainly for its horrible title. But from the beginning until today, important people and critics have loved the book. It counts today as a "classic" of the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1935. A good read. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/225423249.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 11/10/2010 name of review: Van Vechten considered calling his novel THE GREAT BLACK WALLED CITY, WHITE TAR or REST YO COAT rating: * * * * review: In 1926 white novelist, literary critic and future photographer Carl Van Vechten considered calling his new book THE GREAT BLACK WALLED CITY, WHITE TAR or REST YO COAT. Instead, he cited the fresh off the press (1926) FOLK BELIEFS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO and called his blockbuster novel NIGGER HEAVEN. Not everyone liked the book. Everyone, it seemed, wished Van Vechten had used another title. The scholarly passage he used to justify his choice reads: "Nigger
Heaven is an American slang expression for the topmost gallery of a
theatre, so called because in certain of the United States, Negroes are
arbitrarily forced to sit in these cheap seats. ... The
geographical position of Harlem, the Negro quarter of New York,
corresponds to the location of the gallery in a theatre" (Introduction
by Professor Kathleen Pfeiffer, University of Illinois Press edition,
2000).
I was born white in Mississippi in 1935, grew up in Louisiana and Texas during the hey-day of racial segregation. Our two sons were never conscious of segregation. Our eight grandchildren can barely believe that it ever happened. For the life of me, however, I do not recall hearing the expression "Nigger Heaven," though I do recall black people having to sit in the back of buses, drink from segregated water fountains and being forced way, way back in theater balconies. Our Catholic Church in Shreveport was considered very brave for marking one pew in the back "Reserved For Colored." At the time it was illegal in Louisiana for blacks and whites to worship in one church, or so I was told. In the 1920s, American Negroes made up important pockets in Chicago, Detroit and, notably, in Manhattan's Harlem. Many white Americans like Carl Van Vechten and H. L. Mencken became mesmerized by all things black: jazz, temperamental gaiety, cabarets, Spirituals, voodoo and on and on. And Harlem is where they went. Van Vechten was introduced to elites there by NAACP leader and novelist Walter White. He got drunk in Harlem cabarets. Experts say that Carl Van Vechten accurately presents much of the then Harlem scene. NIGGER HEAVEN is about two light-brown young adult Negroes: Mary Love and Byron Kasson. Neither looks African. Each could "pass" for aryan or possibly Hispanic. Neither chooses to, though 8,000 New York Negroes are already living white lives. In the process, the "passers" or "new pinks" acquire better jobs, their children go to better schools, they become the envy of darker-skinned Americans. Byron has just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and is a wannabe writer. He had to leave Philadelphia in a hurry, after an irate white husband found him having an affair with his wife. Mary is a prim librarian, detached, afraid to be touched by a man. Early on she turns down a marriage proposal from Randolph Pettijohn. Ran had made his money selling hotdogs, then moved into numbers and ownership of a jumping Harlem nightclub. He is rich, counts as a good man in Harlem society and loves Mary. But she wants someone more educated. That image is fulfilled perfectly by Byron. By their third meeting, Mary loves Byron with an undying love. He finds her okay but falls for an older, passionate light brown rich woman just back for Paris, Lasca Sartoris. The novel does not end well for either Mary or Byron, especially Byron. But before it does, the reader moves deep inside the dialect and values of 1920s Harlem, a part of Manhattan described as both "Nigger Heaven" by its residents and "Mecca of the New Negro" by rising black intellectuals. Not at all a bad read. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/Reviews/d/Carl_Van_Vechten_ NIGGER_HEAVEN-1663937.html?cid=64&rid=193497#rid_193497 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 11/11/2010 NOTE: BARNES AND NOBLE lists this title as
NIGGER HEAVEN, the offensive title carefully chosen by its author in
1926. But I had to replace "nigger" with a euphemism (I chose n*gger)
before the review was acceptable. TPK.
title of review: Why did Carl Van Vechten choose such an offensive, provocative title? rating: * * * * review: Posted 11/11/2010: In 1926 white American author Carl Van Vechten issued a novel about Harlem. Its heroine was young light-brown Mary Love. Its hero was young light-brown Byron Kasson. Mary was a librarian, Byron an aspiring writer from Philadelphia, freshly arrived in Harlem with a University of Pennsylvania degree. They loved each other, she him, alas, vastly more than he her. Each was also loved by others. She turned down a marriage proposal from a rich, uneducated self-made rich Negro man. He became, briefly, the kept man of an exotic, wealthy, bohemian, light-brown Negro woman. The doomed romance of Miss Love and Mr Kasson played out against a backdrop of Negro slang, cabarets, numbers games, job searches by Byron and interactions among Harlem Negroes who were conscious of various skin tones and held related attitudes. 1920s Harlem was a world where white people still called the shots from farther south in Manhattan but were increasingly fascinated by what made the neighboring Negroes different. Van Vechten's love story of Mary and Byron was widely read from the beginning, with opinions hotly divided as to the novel's literary and social merits. It seems safe to say, however, that everyone wished that author Carl Van Vechten had chosen a different title. For he named his Harlem novel N*GGER HEAVEN. And he had his reasons. That Harlem was both "mecca of the New Negro" artists and intellectuals and "n*gger heaven" for ordinary black people is a recurring image and thesis of Van Vechten's novel. He seems to have taken its title from a 1926 book, FOLK BELIEFS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO. There Van Vechten learned that "n*gger heaven" was a sneering phrase used in some Southern States to designate those highest and most undesirable seats in a public movie theater, those "reserved for colored." Van Vechten said that Harlem, sitting as it did, just north of the favored white part of Manhattan, was Manhattan's "n*gger heaven." And in the novel, black characters do indeed use that phrase for Harlem. That awful phrase appears in one of the novel's most bitter passages. Byron and Mary have just walked one evening north from a Manhattan park (where they had been insulted by a white woman on horseback) up Seventh Avenue. After 125th Street they were suddenly in Harlem, meeting only Negroes. Byron moaned: "N*gger Heaven! ... N*gger Heaven! That's
what Harlem is. We sit in our places in the gallery of this New York
theatre and watch the white world sitting down below in the good seats
in the orchestra. ... they turn their faces up towards us, their hard,
cruel faces, to laugh or sneer, but they never beckon. ... It doesn't
seem to occur to them either, he went on fiercely, that we sit above
them, than we can drop things down on them and crush them, that we can
swoop down from this N*gger Heaven and take their seats. No, they have
no fear of that! Harlem! The Mecca of the New Negro! My God!
(Book One, Ch. 8) ***
This book grows on you with re-reading. It may also conceivably help today's readers understand lingering tensions in race relationships in America long after end of legal segregation, prejudice and discrimination. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Jeffrey Ogbar, editor - THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE REVISITED, -- Newbell Niles Puckett - FOLK BELIEFS OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO, -- Wallace Thurman - THE BLACKER THE BERRY. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Nigger-Heaven/ Carl-Van-Vechten/e/9780252068607/?itm=2&USRI =van+vechten+-+nigger+heaven =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 11/11/2010 title of review: "Shines love to fool ofays." (Harlem slang) rating: * * * * review: This is a review of a 1926 novel of a doomed Harlem romance, horribly but deliberately titled by its Caucasian author Carl Van Vechten, NIGGER HEAVEN. The text before me is the year 2000 paperback edition by the University of Illinois Press. It begins with a hugely detailed 31 page (ix-xxxix) Introduction by Oakland University Professor Kathleen Pfeiffer. Also the year 2000 edition has two black and white illustrations by famed Harlem artist Aaron Douglas. I strongly commend this edition, British spellings and all. The novel itself appends a useful two-page "Glossary of Negro Words and Phrases" (examples: Bolito, creeper, dicty, fagingy-fagade, high yellow, kinkout, Miss Annie, Mr. Eddie, ofay, passing, pink-chaser, shine, snow and spagingy-spagade). Religion is rarely mentioned by the Negro and Caucasian characters in NIGGER HEAVEN except to admire Negro Spirituals. Black music, religious or secular, is shown as energizing even the most sophisticated and well educated Negro characters instantly, tapping, allegedly, into an inherited pagan African wildness. The title "Nigger Heaven" refers to the very highest regions of movie theater balconies (galleries), "reserved for colored" in Southern States of the 1920s and later. Black Harlem is said by Caucasian Van Vechten to be situated "above" (both geographically and symbolically) white lower Manhattan, as undesirable balcony (gallery) seats are built above orchestra seats. The novel's hero, light-brown Byron Kasson, a recent university of Pennsylvania graduate, increasingly hates both the whites of Manhattan and the lighter-skinned colored men and women of Harlem who look down upon their darker skinned fellow Americans. Many characters in NIGGER HEAVEN debate constantly the pros and cons of "passing for white." The narrator demonstrates that the 8,000 colored New Yorkers who have already managed to pass have won the lottery: unquestioned access to professional jobs, far better pay, social acceptance and even a white spouse. Passers may need to fib: "My mother was Indian or Mexican." But passing for white is a ticket to seats in the desirable orchestra not the discriminated against balcony. Tragic hero Byron Kasson and his lady friend, light-brown Mary Love are proud to be African Americans. Byron's father back in Philadephia, is cutting off his stubborn, lazy son's allowance, recognizing that Byron is "to an unfortunate extent ... a slave to
your appetites. ... (But) no one more than I do appreciates your good
qualities, the foremost of which in my opinion is your race pride"
(Part Two, Ch. 1).
Yet both Byron and Mary offer shoulders to cry on by their friends agonizing whether to stay black or not. Thus light-skinned Dick Sill confides to Byron that he has finally decided to "pass." He had recently been persuaded to do so by formerly colored Buda Green who "has married a white man." Dick had argued with Buda: "Suppose somebody'd give me away, I
countered. She laughed at me. They won't do that, she said. Shines
love to fool ofays too much for that and when they see you fooling 'em
they'll leave you alone. ... You're a boob if you don't come over" (Book Two, Ch. 1).
This touches another motif of NIGGER HEAVEN: whites pushing all colored people down from above and envious and/or darker-skinned colored people pulling down from below lighter-skinned, more successful African Americans. There is much bleakness in the novel. But also humor, dancing ("scronching" in slang), cabarets, romance, normalcy and many Negroes following the advice of an earlier leader like Booker T. Washington simply to find work, do a good job and hope for better times. Despite its appalling title, NIGGER HEAVEN is a classic novel from the heyday of the New Negro and the Harlem Renaissance. -OOO- tags: carl van vechten, mary love, byron kasson, "nigger heaven," harlem renaissance, New Negro http://www.amazon.com/Nigger-Heaven-National-Poetry- Vechten/dp/0252068602/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid =1289043808&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com 11/11/10 Review Title: "The book and not the title is the thing" (James Weldon Johnson) by aohcapablanca, Nov 11 '10 PRELIMINARY NOTE: I quote from
epinions.com, "Review Writing Guide":
=-=-=-=-=-=-"Mention the product name." I typed the citation from epinions above before beginning to compose this review. I was, therefore, surprised that I was told when I tried to send up the completed review that I must bowdlerize the book's very title! Paradoxically, epinions itself keeps the same title. I myself dislike that title. But not call a book by its real name?? Oh well, as Chesterton said: "If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly!" END NOTE. The title of the book I am reviewing is not a name that I mention with pleasure. But, as directed by epinions.com guidelines, here goes: Caucasian Carl Van Vechten's 1926 novel of a doomed Harlem romance is titled N*GGER HEAVEN. Many people in the intervening four score and four years have loved the novel for its contents. I have, however, never heard of anyone who applauded its title. Thus, James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938) distinguished African American professor, writer and diplomat, said it best of N*GGER HEAVEN: "The book and not the title is the thing." That quotation from Johnson gives me the occasion to stress that the edition of N*GGER HEAVEN which I am reviewing is not that shown at the top of this page. Mine is the year 2000 paperback edition by the University of Illinois Press. It begins with a detailed 31 page (ix-xxxix) Introduction by Oakland University Professor Kathleen Pfeiffer. My edition's cover also features a famous black and white illustration by famed Harlem artist Aaron Douglas. The quotation above of James Weldon Johnson is from Professor Pfeiffer's pithy Introduction, p. xxxiv. Pfeiffer's treatment of Van Vechten's novel is so comprehensive that it is tempting to spend more time with Pfeiffer than with Van Vechten! Thus Pfeiffer tells us that it was none other than Van Vechten's great black friend James Weldon Johnson who tells us, accurately, who the real life models were for characters in N*GGER HEAVEN. For example: --
H. L. Mencken for fictional Russett Durward, the young white magazine
editor who kindly but frankly tells the novel's light-brown hero,
college graduate Byron Kasson why his short story's manuscript is so
terrible.
-- The wealthy, light-brown, promiscuous woman who briefly keeps an infatuated Byron, Lasca Sartoris, draws on former cabaret singer Nora Holt. And on and on. Read the University of Illinois edition if you can possibly lay hands on it. In many cities and towns of the American South in the 1920s (and later until legal segregation was abolished) the term "n*gger heaven" referred to the highest, most undesirable seats in a movie theater, those "reserved for colored." Author Van Vechten uses this image to identify Harlem, both geographically and symbolically, as the movie house "gallery" for Manhattan, with lower Manhattan's white elites occupying the choice orchestra seats down below (professions, power, fame, wealth). Byron Kasson's unfortunate light-brown girl friend, librarian Mary Love, hears Byron spew out his hatred of lower Manhattan whites one night as they stroll back into Harlem from an unnamed park that some people wish were restricted to "whites only." In part Byron's tirade reads: "N*gger Heaven!
That's what Harlem is. We sit in our places in the gallery of this New
York theatre and watch the white world sitting down below in the good
seats in the orchestra. ... It doesn't seem to occur to them either, he
went on fiercely, that we sit above them, that we can drop things down
on them and crush them, that we can swoop down from this N*gger Heaven
and take their seats." (Book One, Ch. 8)
In Harlem, the social tone is set by light-skinned American Negroes. If they can and choose to, they consciously pass over into the white world. They then explain to whites the lingering darkness of their skins through their (fictional) Spanish mothers. In Manhattan alone there are 8,000 to 10,000 Negroes "passing for pink." They prosper. Their men do not settle for being elevator operators or shoe shine boys. They become lawyers, doctors, politicians. They marry white spouses. Their women do not clean floors or wash clothes. They are teachers in white schools, librarians, secretaries in white offices. If they are magnanimous, the "passers" reach back north into Harlem to persuade other light-skinned men and women to join them. They promise that their passing will not be betrayed by envious Negroes who choose not to pass. For
"Shines love to fool ofays too
much for that and when they see you fooling 'em they'll leave you
alone. ... You're a boob if you don't come over" (Book Two, Ch.
1).
When not noticing and commenting on shades of color in Harlem's Negro communities, inhabitants have more fun and a much better time after work than do lower Manhattan's whites. Negroes dance the Charleston or the Black Bottom all night long in cocaine-rich cabarets or night clubs. They go to "house rent parties" (where they pay the needy owners a 25-cent cover charge). There they meet leading young poets, musicians, painters, illustrators and editors -- both black and white. Harlem
is one jumping place. And Carl Van Vechten brings it all to life in
N*GGER HEAVEN. He was persuaded by black friends to add a helpful
two-page "Glossary of Negro Words and Phrases."
NOTE: Ageing Caucasian I was born and grew up in the segregated Deep South, later working for two years as an advisor to the first African American mayor of Detroit. Nonetheless, at least 1/3 of the entries were new to me. They include -- "arnchy: a
person who puts on airs;
-- Bolito: see Numbers; -- C.P.T.: coloured people's time, i.e. late; -- fagingy-fagade: a white person; -- hootchie-pap: see boody; -- scronch: a dance; and -- unsheik: divorce." N*GGER HEAVEN, after you recover from its distasteful title, is passionate, colorful, alive and worth reading. -OOO- p.s. Thanks, dramastef, for making N*GGER HEAVEN reviewable by epinionators. Pros: 1920s Harlem: its creative "New Negro" artists, writers, musicians. Colorful, memorable characters normal and abnormal. Cons: A needlessly ugly, provocative title. Hint that everything African is primitive wild, lustful, aggressive, pagan. The Bottom Line: N*GGER HEAVEN is a major novel of the brilliant "Harlem Renaissance" (1919 -1935). Hold your nose at its awful title; but read a novel as passionate as the opera CARMEN. Overall Product Rating: * * * * Above Average Recommended: Yes http://www.epinions.com/review/Nigger_Heaven_epi/content _530755915396 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= NOTES on http://www.amazon.com/Beliefs-Southern-Negro-Newbell- Puckett/dp/0766127788 Product
Description
1926. Practical and emotional backgrounds; Burial customs, ghosts and witches; Voodooism and conjuration; Positive control signs, minor charms and cures; Negative control signs, taboos; Prophetic signs or omens; Christianity and superstition. Product Details • Paperback: 680 pages • Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC (January 1, 2003) • Language: English • ISBN-10: 0766127788 http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/vanvechten_ heaven.html |