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Carl Ven Vechten's "Nigger Heaven"

Nigger Heaven by Carl Van Vechten: This 4-page paper is an analysis of the Harlem Renaissance novel by Carl Van Vechten.

In Nigger Heaven the author, Carl Van Vechten portrays life in Harlem through the characters of Byron Kasson, a young black man who wants to write but works as an elevator boy; Mary Love, a refined librarian, Lasca Sartoria, a rather decadent black heiress, two low characters, the Scarlet Creeper and the Bolito King; a novelist, Gareth Johns; and an editor, Russet Durwood. The time period is early 1900s, and the characters play out a counterpoint of the black high life and low life in Harlem. It is important to note that Van Vechten was a white writer who socialized freely with blacks and entertained them in his home with lavish parties, also attended by celebrities.

Van Vechten's work seems to have the thesis that a serious examination of the Negro life, as it is intertwined with the white life, is an important life, that neither race has any exclusive right to a separate cultural heritage. At the time that it was written, white people had little knowledge of the details of black living and sometimes short-circuited their understanding by dwelling on the dark underworld of cabaret or criminal life. Van Vechten wanted to correct that void by writing this novel. The scope of the novel covers the life of the writer, Byron Kasson, his involvements with Mary Love and Lasca Sartoria, and ends in disaster, as Kasson falls into the underworld that he tried so hard to avoid. Mary Love is the good woman, and Lasca Sartoria is the enticing, more-colorful woman of the lower-life, although she is an heiress. The black cultural elite of the time, the artists, writers, and intellectuals who together formed the New Negro movement or the Harlem Renaissance movement are the characters of the story. The scope of the work includes the issue of passing as white, the indifference of the white race, and the cliquish snobbis...

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Carl Ven Vechten's "Nigger Heaven". (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:45, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1693781.html