Word: bernard
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Turner, speaking to about 300 employees at a retirement party for CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, reportedly noticed ashes on an employee's forehead in honor of Ash Wednesday...
...introduction to the chronologically-arranged letters, Bernard sets forth a number of tacit lines of argument for which the letters serve as narrative evidence. One such argument consists of a demand for a reevaluation of Van Vechten's place within American literary history. Van Vechten, whose literary reputation came under fire during his own time (it has since suffered an even worse fate--oblivion), was a white writer, literary gate-keeper and a "dedicated and serious patron of black art and letters." He spent much of his time frequenting Harlem's famous cabarets and hosting legendary parties where struggling black...
...complex relationship between these two men that emerges from the letters raises more questions that it answers. It does not, however, permit a thoughtless dismissal of Van Vechten into the historical periphery. Instead we see a man dedicated to and intensely interested in the promotion of black art and, Bernard argues, devoted to using art as a way of challenging racial barriers. Bernard would thus place Van Vechten within the literary vanguard of Larsen, Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, all of whom defended Van Vechten from his harshest critics. These letters reveal that Van Vechten was the first line...
...restoration of Van Vechten within the world of American letters, although a helpful contribution to our conception of the ways in which literary history unfolds, is by no means the only theme of this book. This collection is first and foremost a biography of a friendship spanning four decades. Bernard's introductions to each section and helpful explanatory paragraphs help keep her story moving in a brisk and nearly suspenseful manner. Her careful annotations (which are thoughtfully formatted at the end of each letter instead of at the end of the book or at the end of each chapter) breathe...
...Bernard's main short-comings, it seems, stem from her most impressive achievements. Indeed, having so thoroughly placed this relationship within the context of the New York literary scene of the 1920s in the introduction, she then leaves the reader wondering where this correspondence fits within the context of each writer as correspondent in general: Was this a unique relationship to either writer? Are the themes and concerns discussed in these letters echoed in other correspondences? It would be interesting to consider how these issues played out in the larger story of the Harlem Renaissance. The questions raised...