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 tr

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to enjoy it, and this reserved quality makes her somehow unappealing to serious suitors. She envies the passion between Ollie and Howard, as they prepare for a wedding. They seem to have a primitive consecration that is absent from her own life, and she is not sure why. Mary advises Byron on his writing career, helping him to navigate the slippery waters of plot, characters, audience, and white editors. When Byron tests a story idea with her, a white boy with a black girlfriend who becomes irate when his own sister wants to date a black man, Mary is practical and cautious. She notes, "These propaganda subjects are very difficulta.It will read like a meretricious appeal to the emotions arising out of race prejudice." The novelist Gareth Johns, perhaps patterned after Van Vechten himself, encourages Byron to write about the low life, as it is exotic, splendid, and fantastic. He, and the white editor, Russet Durwood, make the same point, that the black life, especially the underworld, is rich and fresh, ripe for literary possibilities. Gareth Johns says, "I don't think the Negro has been touched in literature as yet." Byron struggles though, as he realizes that the black people are severely sequestered off to themselves.

Category: Literature - C