Word: harlem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Remember Me to Harlem:The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten...
...early letter to Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten comments that "there are so many things that one can't talk about in a letter." This passing remark stands as a challenge to the reader of Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964. For while the whole of a relationship may not be captured in its letters, many of its details and complications lay buried within and between the lines, waiting to be uncovered. Emily Bernard's extensive collection and study of the 39-year correspondence between two of the Harlem Renaissance...
...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 artists could establish contacts with New York's influential whites. Van Vechten is credited with directly assisting in the publication of many works by black authors, including Nella Larsen's Quicksand and Passing, the reissuing of James Weldon Johnson...
...work places Van Vechten in a pivotal role in the formation of many of the era's most important works of art. Without him, Hughes's career might have struggled greatly. Thus, Van Vechten was an instrumental player both in the formation and realization of the ideals of the Harlem Renaissance...
Like the former President, Harlem attracts, repels and attracts again. It is a sad and brazen place and yet, oddly, one in which it is possible to see something essentially American that one cannot see elsewhere. Here all the music and shadows of the country flow together. Here thrives the figure of the adorable con artist, like Harlem's Mr. Rinehart in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, whose "world was possibility." He was "Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the lover and Rine the Reverend." His multiple identities occupied "a world without borders...where Rine the rascal...