Nigger Heaven
by Carl Van Vechten
- Used
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Very Good Condition/No Dust Jacket
- Seller
-
Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Knopf, 1926. Third Edition. Hardcover (Original Cloth). Very Good Condition/No Dust Jacket. Size: Octavo (standard book size). 286 pages. Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact, bar chips to top and/or bottom section of spine. Moderately foxed throughout. Previous owner's signature in ink. Edges foxed and browned. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Fiction; United States; All our pictures shown here are of the actual item, not stock photos. Inventory No: 33898. .
Synopsis
Nigger Heaven is a novel written by Carl Van Vechten and published originally in 1926. The controversially-titled book is set during the Harlem Renaissance in the United States in the 1920s, and serves as a portrayal of life in the "great black walled city" of Harlem. It describes the interactions of intellectuals, political activists, bacchanalian workers, and other Harlem characters.
Reviews
On Nov 9 2010, Feeney said:
Carl Van Vechten was a white novelist and literary critic who was fascinated by American Negroes and by Manhattan's Harlem, "the Mecca of the New Negro." NIGGER HEAVEN (1926) is the story of a young Harlem librarian, Mary Love, and a recently arrival in Harlem, college graduate and wannabe writer, Byron Kasson. *** Negroes of Harlem in the 1920s are portrayed as obsessed with shades of "blackness." Both Mary and Byron are the same shade of light brown. Each could pass for Spanish --or "better" -- if he or she cared to. Both neither does. On the other hand, there are 8,000 Negroes in New York City who have chosen to pass, to become white. Is this the solution to enmity between the Caucasian and Negro races: intermarriage till all the world is white? *** Mary, hitherto prim and reserved, is instantly smitten when she meets the young man newly come from Philadelphia with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Within two more meetings, Mary is mad for Byron and shows it. He, on the other hand, has a weakness for women and had had to leave Philadelphia when an irate husband caught him in an affair with his wife. *** Mary is wooed by a respectable, self-made, wealthy dark man but turns him down as uneducated. Meanwhile Byron, the stereotypical angry young man, refuses to use letters of introduction from his father and others to land a good job. He writes a short story that is rejected repeatedly. At the same time he becomes the kept man, till she tires of him, of rich, exotic Lasca Sartoris. She is easily bored but at the zenith of their affair, Lasca shouts to Byron, "I want you to possess me, to own me. I want to be your slave." *** Throughout the novel the Negro characters, along with a handful of whites fascinated by Harlem night life, agonize about injustices meted out from one race to another. Whites push people of color down from above. Uneducated negroes pull "the talented tenth" down from below. If only their skins were paler, all would be well!NIGGER HEAVEN is full of Harlem atmospherics, Negro Spirituals, jive talk, hot, primitive music and dark-skinned people who are thought to enjoy life more than priggish white folk ("pinks") living farther south in Manhattan. The book ends with a helpful "Glossary of Negro Words and Phrases. Examples: -- "arnchy: a person who puts on airs"; "bardacious: marvellous";"C.P.T.: "coloured people's time, i.e., late"; "kinkout: hair-straightener"; "scronch: a dance"; and "unsheik: divorce." *** When it first appeared, NIGGER HEAVEN was widely reviled, mainly for its horrible title. But from the beginning until today, important people and critics have loved the book. It counts today as a "classic" of the Harlem Renaissance (1919 - 1935. A good read. -OOO-
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Details
- Bookseller
- Mr Pickwick's Fine Old Books (AU)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 33898
- Title
- Nigger Heaven
- Author
- Carl Van Vechten
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover (Original Cloth)
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good Condition
- Jacket Condition
- No Dust Jacket
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Third Edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Date Published
- 1926
- Keywords
- BZDB1 Fiction; United States; Unbranded Carl Van Vechten Nigger Heaven
Terms of Sale
Mr Pickwick's Fine Old Books
Mastercard, Visa, Amex, Diners Cards and PayPal accepted and preferred. Direct deposits, cheques by arrangement. All transactions in $AU. Returns accepted within 30 days of receipt if goods supplied are clearly not as advertised or described. Return shipping/freight refunded to customer if supplied products are flawed or have been clearly mis-described, otherwise at purchaser's expense. Returns to be in condition as originally shipped. Trade discounts and shipments under invoice available to regular customers, email for details.
About the Seller
Mr Pickwick's Fine Old Books
Biblio member since 2004
Katoomba, New South Wales
About Mr Pickwick's Fine Old Books
Mr Pickwick's occupies a large, 3-storey former Bank building in the heart of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. We carry over 60,000 books in store, and cater to both the specialist collector trade as well as the general book trade in this region. Mr Pickwick's is one of the most comprehensive bookshops in Australia, and also operates an extensive Bookfinder service for its several thousand database clients.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- Tight
- Used to mean that the binding of a book has not been overly loosened by frequent use.
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Foxed
- Foxing is the age related browning, or brown-yellowish spots, that can occur to book paper over time. When this aging process...