Letters From the Renaissance

Remember Me to Harlem:The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964.

Edited by Emily Bernard

Knopf

356 pp. $30

In an 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's most compelling personalities indeed challenge the reader to reach for the many insights regarding the state of American letters during these years, and to reflect on the complex relations--relations characterized by the strains of money, fame, politics and race--between two colleagues of different generations. Most of all, however, these letters challenge the reader to consider the nature of an evolving friendship between two ambitious authors, one whose career was on the rise, and the other whose career was moving in the opposite direction. Bernard rises to the challenge of infusing this vast collection with the same energy with which it was originally composed, gracefully piecing together the stories of the characters behind the letters.

In her 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 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's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and many of Hughes's works (he indeed is solely responsible for launching Hughes's major publishing career). As the letters between him and Hughes attest, Van Vechten seemed genuinely enamored with the black culture thriving Uptown. Nevertheless, this same man outraged many in the black intellegentsia when wrote a work entitled Nigger Heaven, a provocatively named, mediocre book that contained depictions many critics found offensive. The consequence of this negative reception was the sealing of Van Vechten's reputation as a ruthless exploiter of Harlem's culture for his own benefit. It is this characterization that these letters complicate.

The 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 of editing for most of Hughes's career. His role as both editor and promoter of Hughes's 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.

The 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 new life into the authors' literary gossip and exchanges of wit. Bernard makes excellent use of photographs, interspersing small, unintrusive pictures into the margins at relevant moments. This type of attention to the details of story-telling--of organizing her scholarship in accordance with the demands of her narrative--helps create the sense of a remarkably unified and cohesive story. The literary cosmos that was New York during and after the 1920s comes alive in both Bernard's careful selections of and introductions to the letters, and it expands suggestively into the footnotes.

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 by the book, no doubt, relate to a larger project. It is a testament to Bernard's accomplishment that this collection of letters, spread out over nearly 40 years, possess distinct and coherent themes and can support a plausible and important argument for a reconsideration of literary history.