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Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem Edward Norman Tabor Lehigh University

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Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem Edward Norman Tabor Lehigh University View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Lehigh University: Lehigh Preserve Lehigh University Lehigh Preserve Theses and Dissertations 2014 Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem Edward Norman Tabor Lehigh University Follow this and additional works at: http://preserve.lehigh.edu/etd Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Tabor, Edward Norman, "Carl Van Vechten's Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1647. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem by Edward N. Tabor A Thesis Presented to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Lehigh University November 30, 2013 Copyright Edward N. Tabor 2013 ii Thesis is accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in English. Carl Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven: Envisioning and Reinventing American Transatlantic Bohemia in Harlem Edward N. Tabor ____________________________ Date Approved ___________________________ Amardeep Singh Advisor ____________________________ Scott Gordon Department Chairperson iii Acknowledgments This core of this project found its beginning with a course paper written for Professor Amardeep Singh’s Spring 2012 seminar, Transatlantic Modernism. The paper exists as a product of both the inspirational ideas of Deep’s teaching and my long- standing love of a modernism that cannot be fettered by national identity. I owe much to Deep for his willingness to take on this project and for his constructive suggestions in the process of research and revision. I also sincerely thank my wife, Jennifer Tabor, for her patience in this time-consuming process. Moreover, this thesis would not have come to fruition without her observant eye and keen advice in her many readings of the drafts. Finally, I would like to thank my daughters, Cecelia and Genevieve for their willingness to sacrifice many weekends and holidays to allow me to research and write. iv Table of Contents Abstract 1 I. Introduction 2 II. Transatlantic Modernism and Harlem 8 III.Van Vechten and Urban Modernism 13 IV.Carl Van Vechten in Black and White 20 V. Transatlantic Experimentation in Peter Whiffle 29 VI. Harlem, the Global Capital 33 VII. Harlem: High and Low 41 Works Cited 50 Vita 54 v Abstract This study of Carl Van Vechten’s controversial novel, Nigger Heaven, creates a transatlantic model as a new platform to judge Van Vechten’s work. This paper sets forth the argument that Van Vechten’s importance in the modernist movement, as well as his significant contribution to the Harlem Renaissance, is a worthwhile addition to studies in the field. An analysis of transatlantic modernism is developed in context with Van Vechten’s earlier works, and the study culminates with a close reading of the multiple elements of transatlantic/transnational/cosmopolitan elements of Harlem presented in Nigger Heaven. 1 I. Introduction In her study of Carl Van Vechten, Emily Bernard succinctly questions: “Does a white person, any white person, have the authority to tell a black story? In particular as story called ‘nigger’?” (108) Although Bernard doesn’t want her readers to rush to a conclusion, uncovering Van Vechten’s intentions prove to be a complicated task. Perhaps too easily and too often white writers like Van Vechten have assumed the authority of relating the narrative of black experience, and their involvement in African American literature as story tellers and patrons is well documented. White involvement in black literature may be problematic at times, but considering it as part of the story of the Harlem Renaissance enriches the account of that period. Particularly important in this dynamic is the transatlantic framing from white writers like Carl Van Vechten, which black writers, like Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes, built upon and expanded in subsequent fictional accounts of Harlem life. Surprisingly hidden behind the ironic and racist title of Nigger Heaven, Van Vechten’s intentions of portraying the artistic and cultural capital of Harlem were sincere, if not entirely unproblematic. Van Vechten, whose transatlantic career attuned him to understanding the workings of avante garde thought, began to notice the burgeoning of modernism in Paris during the first decade of the twentieth century. Later, he witnessed the rise of an arts community in the Greenwich Village of the teens, and ultimately he found a culmination of such modernist movements in Harlem of the 1920s. Van Vechten’s physical travel through the modernist world, allowed him to see Harlem as an artistic locale similar to those he witnessed in Europe. In fact, Nigger Heaven focuses on Van Vechten’s observations of cosmopolitan black intellectuals who, travel to Europe, speak in 2 Francophone dialects, and discuss the merits of Harlem alongside the works of Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa. Van Vechten’s international travel attuned his vision to modernist circles, allowing him to see the Harlem of the early 1920s as an avante garde locale; Nigger Heaven, in fact, demonstrates Harlem as the new avante garde remapping of the Greenwich Village of the teens. Despite Van Vechten’s positive qualities which link him to the revivifying experiments of modernism, venturing into a study of a book that has stirred so much controversy may produce enough off-putting criticism to encourage most writers to steer clear of its dangers. The difficulty of addressing Van Vechten, who at first glance appears nothing more than an opportunist and white interloper simply may not be appealing to those who seek to understand the Harlem Renaissance as a pure movement of race and culture. Marcia Leisner describes this problem of Van Vechten most concisely: “it is difficult to be fair about such an individual today; a dilettante par example, chronicler of bohemia, ballet and blacks, he was full of good will but in retrospect most irritating.” (62) Without denying Van Vechten’s infiltration in the Harlem Renaissance, the current studies of Modernist African American literature, and Modernism in general, would benefit from a closer look at Van Vechten’s role in the movement. Specifically, a re- evaluation of his controversial book, Nigger Heaven, may provide some new information about the role of the Harlem Renaissance in modernist circles. My purpose throughout this essay is to demonstrate that Van Vechten reveals the dynamic transatlantic relationship of the Harlem Renaissance to the European movement of High Modernism, and secondly, to show that Van Vechten, despite his reputation as an interloper, should be 3 studied alongside the African American writers of the period.1 Furthermore, by discussing Van Vechten’s earlier work Peter Whiffle, which may be read as cataloging of modernist experiments, we may establish Van Vechten as a connoisseur of modernist circles. Reading Peter Whiffle as precursor to Nigger Heaven helps to sort out Van Vechten’s modernist agenda in his view of Harlem. Having established that Van Vechten’s role in modernism was entirely enthusiastic, we can rethink his role in Harlem not merely as an exploiter, though he is sometimes problematic, but as one who had a positive enriching influence on Harlem, which allowed the wider world to see it as a deeper more international movement, and may also have had a positive effect among African American writers. By including Van Vechten in a study of African American modernism, we may see what George Hutchinson describes as the dynamic of “intercultural matrix,” which allows “the greater freedom and variety of interracial and interethnic relationships [and] only intensified the experimental development on new forms of ‘racial’ expression.” (author’s italics 6) Van Vechten certainly saw himself as a contributor to the social and intellectual community of Harlem, and he may have opened the door for other writers to express Harlem as a place not bound by its borough limits. In current studies, Carl Van Vechten is most widely known for his photography of modernist writers and his portraits represent nearly the entire Harlem Renaissance as well as countless other modernists. In a sense, Van Vechten’s photography has become a visual memory of the diversity of the period. However, few realize that in the 1920s, 1 Thus far little has been written to discover or uncover the tri-fold connection of Paris, Greenwich Village and the Harlem Renaissance in Van Vechten’s work. In fact, critics either don’t see or completely overlook the link with Van Vechten’s transatlantic novels and his novel about Harlem. In African American literary studies, some significant work has been done to promote the connection of Paris and Harlem; for example, the Winter 2005 edition of Modern Fiction Studies “Paris and the Black Atlantic” represents a number of critical perspectives which investigate some of the forgotten connections of the Harlem Renaissance to Paris. 4 Van Vechten was a popular novelist who embodied modernist ideals, and the subject of his writing ran the gamut from American expatriates, Hollywood movie stars, to the Harlem Renaissance. He reached the peak of his career and fame during the 1920s, and thereafter, Van Vechten was nearly forgotten in literary circles. His biographer, Bruce Kellner, prefaces his book, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, with an account of his research process in which he describes Van Vechten’s obscurity in the early 1950s, and the difficulty of unearthing the then-living figure. Several times, Kellner repeats the phrase “Who the hell is Carl Van Vechten?” to emphasize his frustration in the project.
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