Carl Van Vechten

Carl Van Vechten , 1880-1964, American music critic, novelist, and photographer, b. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1903. While he was a leading music critic in New York City, he wrote The Music of Spain (1918) and other critical works. At 40 he began writing novels, the best known of which, written in the sophisticated style of the 1920s, are Peter Whiffle (1922), The Tattooed Countess (1924), Nigger Heaven (1926), and Spider Boy (1928). After completing his autobiographical Sacred and Profane Memories (1932), he turned to photography and distinguished himself in that field. Van Vechten was well known for his interest in African-American culture and his efforts to promote better interracial relations.

Bibliography: See Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten (2001), ed. by E. Bernard.

Van Vechten, Carl (1880–1964), born in Iowa, graduated from the University of Chicago (1903), and became assistant music critic for The New York Times and dramatic critic for the New York Press. His critical articles are collected in several books, and the leading contents of these are preserved in two later selections, Red (1925) and Excavations (1926). At the age of 40 he declared that his intellectual arteries had hardened for criticism, and, turning to fiction, he wrote Peter Whiffle (1922), a witty, pseudo‐biographical novel revealing the author's refined dilettante temperament. With continued urbanity, Gallic sophistication, watered aesthetics, and an agile pen, Van Vechten described the manners and mannerisms of his era's decadent elegance in several other novels: The Blind Bow‐Boy (1923) and Firecrackers (1925), dealing with the sophisticated artistic set of New York; Spider Boy (1928), a satirical extravaganza on Hollywood; and Parties (1930), dealing with a group of sophisticated New York idlers. The Tattooed Countess (1924) is a novel set in the Iowa of the author's youth, and Nigger Heaven (1926) is a sympathetic, realistic treatment of Harlem life, which did much to stimulate the interest of sophisticates in black culture. The Tiger in the House (1920) deals with cats. After Sacred and Profane Memories (1932) he forsook writing for photography. He was editor of Gertrude Stein's posthumously published books.