Rereading Henry Van Dyke (3 October 1928--22 December 2011): The
Pleasure of the Text
Often you can derive pleasure from rereading a novel by an
author whose contribution to African American literary tradition is not a hot
critical topic. For example, Henry Van Dyke’s Ladies of the Rachmaninoff
Eyes (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1965) provokes laughter, the robust folk
laughter of recognizing how rich and educational African American idioms can
be. On the surface, Van Dyke’s novel is
a relatively slight Bildungsroman, the narrative of a young man’s learning that
“when a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.” But the matter under the
surface demands a reckoning.
Van Dkye is a fine storyteller. Through the voice of Oliver Eugene, a naïve but
reliable narrator, you hear about the melodramatic antics of Mrs. Harriet
Giles, the Negro housekeeper, who is the narrator’s Aunt Harry and Mrs. Etta
Klein, a wealthy Jewish widow who is overly fond of rum and who is as self-deceptive
as the mother in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly,
Last Summer. Forty-seven years ago
when the novel was published, you might not have noticed the gendered imbalance
of the name “Aunt Harry.” In 2012, you
notice the name is metonymic, a shorthand for all the structural imbalances in
the tragicomedy of Van Dyke’s first novel.
Etta Klein and Aunt Harry are one of the more remarkable odd couples in
twentieth-century American literature, and the moral lessons implicit in their
dealings and dalliance with the con-artist Maurice LeFleur are precious. Precious is a sufficient description of the
novel’s sexual identity. Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes promotes
a humor unto life rather than a sickness unto death.
As a novelist writing in the homophobic spaces provided by
the integrationist discourses of the early 1960s, Van Dyke digested the
practicality of Langston Hughes’ remark that if a Negro writer stepped outside
of himself, he would see “how human, yet how beautiful and black [he is]. How very black –even when you’re integrated.”
The narrator deconstructs the hyper-pretense of American
English by stepping outside just enough to expose the prohibitions and
dispensations in the psychology of Black American English. Van Dyke was a master chef in using racial
flavors. He was signifying twelve years
before Geneva Smitherman dealt seriously with the linguistic dimensions of
black modes of speech and twenty-three years before Gates discovered the
signifying monkey was a literary critic. Only Zora Neale Hurston could beat Van
Dyke to the punch. His technical mastery
of storytelling and language is matched only by the mastery of Al Young, Eudora
Welty and Toni Cade Bambara.
Bright laughter is dominant during and after rereading Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, and Van
Dyke’s artistry of complex simplicity is a reason to praise the power of
blackness. He took revenge on the
post-racial prior to the nativity of the post-racial. That achievement is cause for deep and satisfying
laughter.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
December 22, 2012
Rereading Henry Van Dyke (3 October 1928--22 December 2011): The
Pleasure of the Text
Often you can derive pleasure from rereading a novel by an
author whose contribution to African American literary tradition is not a hot
critical topic. For example, Henry Van Dyke’s Ladies of the Rachmaninoff
Eyes (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1965) provokes laughter, the robust folk
laughter of recognizing how rich and educational African American idioms can
be. On the surface, Van Dyke’s novel is
a relatively slight Bildungsroman, the narrative of a young man’s learning that
“when a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.” But the matter under the
surface demands a reckoning.
Van Dkye is a fine storyteller. Through the voice of Oliver Eugene, a naïve but
reliable narrator, you hear about the melodramatic antics of Mrs. Harriet
Giles, the Negro housekeeper, who is the narrator’s Aunt Harry and Mrs. Etta
Klein, a wealthy Jewish widow who is overly fond of rum and who is as self-deceptive
as the mother in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly,
Last Summer. Forty-seven years ago
when the novel was published, you might not have noticed the gendered imbalance
of the name “Aunt Harry.” In 2012, you
notice the name is metonymic, a shorthand for all the structural imbalances in
the tragicomedy of Van Dyke’s first novel.
Etta Klein and Aunt Harry are one of the more remarkable odd couples in
twentieth-century American literature, and the moral lessons implicit in their
dealings and dalliance with the con-artist Maurice LeFleur are precious. Precious is a sufficient description of the
novel’s sexual identity. Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes promotes
a humor unto life rather than a sickness unto death.
As a novelist writing in the homophobic spaces provided by
the integrationist discourses of the early 1960s, Van Dyke digested the
practicality of Langston Hughes’ remark that if a Negro writer stepped outside
of himself, he would see “how human, yet how beautiful and black [he is]. How very black –even when you’re integrated.”
The narrator deconstructs the hyper-pretense of American
English by stepping outside just enough to expose the prohibitions and
dispensations in the psychology of Black American English. Van Dyke was a master chef in using racial
flavors. He was signifying twelve years
before Geneva Smitherman dealt seriously with the linguistic dimensions of
black modes of speech and twenty-three years before Gates discovered the
signifying monkey was a literary critic. Only Zora Neale Hurston could beat Van
Dyke to the punch. His technical mastery
of storytelling and language is matched only by the mastery of Al Young, Eudora
Welty and Toni Cade Bambara.
Bright laughter is dominant during and after rereading Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, and Van
Dyke’s artistry of complex simplicity is a reason to praise the power of
blackness. He took revenge on the
post-racial prior to the nativity of the post-racial. That achievement is cause for deep and satisfying
laughter.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
December 22, 2012
Rereading Henry Van Dyke (3 October 1928--22 December 2011): The
Pleasure of the Text
Often you can derive pleasure from rereading a novel by an
author whose contribution to African American literary tradition is not a hot
critical topic. For example, Henry Van Dyke’s Ladies of the Rachmaninoff
Eyes (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1965) provokes laughter, the robust folk
laughter of recognizing how rich and educational African American idioms can
be. On the surface, Van Dyke’s novel is
a relatively slight Bildungsroman, the narrative of a young man’s learning that
“when a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.” But the matter under the
surface demands a reckoning.
Van Dkye is a fine storyteller. Through the voice of Oliver Eugene, a naïve but
reliable narrator, you hear about the melodramatic antics of Mrs. Harriet
Giles, the Negro housekeeper, who is the narrator’s Aunt Harry and Mrs. Etta
Klein, a wealthy Jewish widow who is overly fond of rum and who is as self-deceptive
as the mother in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly,
Last Summer. Forty-seven years ago
when the novel was published, you might not have noticed the gendered imbalance
of the name “Aunt Harry.” In 2012, you
notice the name is metonymic, a shorthand for all the structural imbalances in
the tragicomedy of Van Dyke’s first novel.
Etta Klein and Aunt Harry are one of the more remarkable odd couples in
twentieth-century American literature, and the moral lessons implicit in their
dealings and dalliance with the con-artist Maurice LeFleur are precious. Precious is a sufficient description of the
novel’s sexual identity. Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes promotes
a humor unto life rather than a sickness unto death.
As a novelist writing in the homophobic spaces provided by
the integrationist discourses of the early 1960s, Van Dyke digested the
practicality of Langston Hughes’ remark that if a Negro writer stepped outside
of himself, he would see “how human, yet how beautiful and black [he is]. How very black –even when you’re integrated.”
The narrator deconstructs the hyper-pretense of American
English by stepping outside just enough to expose the prohibitions and
dispensations in the psychology of Black American English. Van Dyke was a master chef in using racial
flavors. He was signifying twelve years
before Geneva Smitherman dealt seriously with the linguistic dimensions of
black modes of speech and twenty-three years before Gates discovered the
signifying monkey was a literary critic. Only Zora Neale Hurston could beat Van
Dyke to the punch. His technical mastery
of storytelling and language is matched only by the mastery of Al Young, Eudora
Welty and Toni Cade Bambara.
Bright laughter is dominant during and after rereading Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, and Van
Dyke’s artistry of complex simplicity is a reason to praise the power of
blackness. He took revenge on the
post-racial prior to the nativity of the post-racial. That achievement is cause for deep and satisfying
laughter.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
December 22, 2012
Rereading Henry Van Dyke (3 October 1928--22 December 2011): The
Pleasure of the Text
Often you can derive pleasure from rereading a novel by an
author whose contribution to African American literary tradition is not a hot
critical topic. For example, Henry Van Dyke’s Ladies of the Rachmaninoff
Eyes (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1965) provokes laughter, the robust folk
laughter of recognizing how rich and educational African American idioms can
be. On the surface, Van Dyke’s novel is
a relatively slight Bildungsroman, the narrative of a young man’s learning that
“when a peacock’s days are over, they’re over.” But the matter under the
surface demands a reckoning.
Van Dkye is a fine storyteller. Through the voice of Oliver Eugene, a naïve but
reliable narrator, you hear about the melodramatic antics of Mrs. Harriet
Giles, the Negro housekeeper, who is the narrator’s Aunt Harry and Mrs. Etta
Klein, a wealthy Jewish widow who is overly fond of rum and who is as self-deceptive
as the mother in Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly,
Last Summer. Forty-seven years ago
when the novel was published, you might not have noticed the gendered imbalance
of the name “Aunt Harry.” In 2012, you
notice the name is metonymic, a shorthand for all the structural imbalances in
the tragicomedy of Van Dyke’s first novel.
Etta Klein and Aunt Harry are one of the more remarkable odd couples in
twentieth-century American literature, and the moral lessons implicit in their
dealings and dalliance with the con-artist Maurice LeFleur are precious. Precious is a sufficient description of the
novel’s sexual identity. Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes promotes
a humor unto life rather than a sickness unto death.
As a novelist writing in the homophobic spaces provided by
the integrationist discourses of the early 1960s, Van Dyke digested the
practicality of Langston Hughes’ remark that if a Negro writer stepped outside
of himself, he would see “how human, yet how beautiful and black [he is]. How very black –even when you’re integrated.”
The narrator deconstructs the hyper-pretense of American
English by stepping outside just enough to expose the prohibitions and
dispensations in the psychology of Black American English. Van Dyke was a master chef in using racial
flavors. He was signifying twelve years
before Geneva Smitherman dealt seriously with the linguistic dimensions of
black modes of speech and twenty-three years before Gates discovered the
signifying monkey was a literary critic. Only Zora Neale Hurston could beat Van
Dyke to the punch. His technical mastery
of storytelling and language is matched only by the mastery of Al Young, Eudora
Welty and Toni Cade Bambara.
Bright laughter is dominant during and after rereading Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, and Van
Dyke’s artistry of complex simplicity is a reason to praise the power of
blackness. He took revenge on the
post-racial prior to the nativity of the post-racial. That achievement is cause for deep and satisfying
laughter.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
December 22, 2012
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