Passing Fancies (A Julia Kydd Novel)

by Marlowe Benn

  “Pablo took it for research,” Julia said. “He’s writing his own Negro novel. He jabbers about it constantly, so I suppose Arthur Goldsmith will publish it and Pablo will scamper off to the bank yet again. He’s become quite famous lately—Vanity Fair teases him about his heavy tan. If anything he’s whiter than ever. I doubt he leaves his apartment before sundown.”

  Julia picked at the knotted string. The package was light and soft. She couldn’t imagine what was inside. She didn’t want to open it, but she knew her reluctance was childish. Thoughts of Eva were still raw, but she needed to remember her friend more, not less, in all the ways she’d been rare and wonderful.

  The knot yielded, and the paper fell away. Roughly folded into a thick square was the shawl Eva had borrowed the night she’d dined at the Plaza. Julia fingered the fine wool. As she lifted it to shake out the creases, a smaller envelope dropped to the floor.

  Philip retrieved it. Julia took it but hesitated, tapping one corner lightly with a fingertip.

  “Go on,” he said. “If he could write it, you can read it.”

  Julia eased open the seal.

  Her Waterman pen was wedged diagonally inside the envelope. She closed her eyes against the memory of his need of it in that wretched hour, then laid it on the composing stone and pulled out a folded rectangle of paper. Wrapped around it was a sheet of stationery. She had to puzzle out Jerome’s handwriting, small and angular as sparrow tracks.

  She read the message aloud:

  Miss Kydd, I have learned to say least when I feel most. Haste cheapens honesty. So I simply send you this poem, which you saw naked at its birth, the squall before the song. Eva and I would be honored by whatever typographic raiment you might choose to bestow upon it. With sincere gratitude, Jerome Crockett.

  Julia unfolded a sheet of newsprint, already velvet along the creases, striped with the crabbed palimpsest poem she’d seen in his hiding place at the Half-Shell. With it was the typescript. He’d given it the title of his ill-fated first novel, taken from the concluding line to Eliot’s “Prufrock”: “Till Human Voices Wake Us.”

  Beneath the title, Jerome had added a dedication: For my wife—my lost, best life.

  Julia’s fingers curled around the sheet. It was too much. Before he’d left town, she’d been shy to ask if she might print one of his poems, but now that he’d obliged, she couldn’t bring herself to read it. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t lift her gaze.

  Philip took the papers and laid them aside. He unbent her fingers, one by one, as if each was a just-born poem, still ink smudged and uncertain, but later—soon, tonight—a song.

  “Will you teach me?” he said, after some time, looking about her half-assembled studio. “To set type? To squawk in double-pica Baskerville?”

  She eased her hand free and considered. More than a sentence or two of twenty-four-point lead type would test his wrist strength and deplete her font.

  “If you teach me to blow smoke rings.”

  AFTERWORD

  The 1920s was a watershed era in American literary history. This novel explores the tangled intersection of two of the decade’s most dynamic developments: the coming-of-age of the modern American publishing industry and the important cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance.

  While Europe’s storied traditions lay broken or exhausted after the Great War, American writers and artists represented youth and vitality: fresh voices, subjects, and styles. As a new generation of editors and publishers sought to champion this bold energy and declare the nation’s literary preeminence, a new generation of African American writers and intellectuals asserted their place on that stage.

  This novel is my attempt to shine some light on the interplay between those two great ambitions: how each served the other’s ends, embracing their kindred aspirations, and also how their interests often worked to cross-purposes. Like any story about such aspirations, it is ultimately about power. I hope readers, with Julia, may gain some insight into the power dynamics among the players—what was achieved, and at what costs.

  Several real people inspired characters in this novel, though I’ve privileged fictional freedom over strict biographical accuracy. Notable among them is Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white novelist, literary scout, and self-described tour guide and promoter of all things Harlem. In 1924 he became “addicted to Negroes,” as he put it, and quickly grew famous for lavish parties featuring leading black intellectuals, musicians, writers, and artists, including Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and others. In 1926 Knopf published Van Vechten’s controversial novel Nigger Heaven, whose title alone ignited a polarized reaction in Harlem and beyond.

  Chief among other players in the era’s lively literary community who inspired characters is Bennett Cerf, a high-spirited twenty-seven-year-old vice president at Boni & Liveright who a few years later would launch his own publishing company: Random House, initially specializing in fine and limited editions. Others include Alfred and Blanche Knopf, American publishing’s first power couple, and Countee Cullen, an award-winning twenty-one-year-old Harlem poet who refused Van Vechten’s help in finding a publisher.

  While this is a novel, not a historical study, I hope it might provoke readers’ interest in the era and issues portrayed here. The following books offer a good range of further information and insight, and each leads to deeper questions and other excellent resources:

  Bernard, Emily. Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.

  Claridge, Laura. The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker Extraordinaire. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016.

  Douglas, Ann. Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.

  Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York: Penguin, 2019.

  Kaplan, Carla. Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance. New York: HarperCollins, 2013.

  Larsen, Nella. Passing. New York: Knopf, 1929.

  Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin, 1997.

  Loughery, John. Alias S. S. Van Dine. New York: Scribner’s, 1992.

  Molesworth, Charles. And Bid Him Sing: A Biography of Countée Cullen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

  Stewart, Jeffrey C. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

  Van Vechten, Carl. Nigger Heaven. New York: Knopf, 1926.

  Van Vechten, Carl. The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922–1930. Edited by Bruce Kellner. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

  Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920–1930. New York: Pantheon, 1995.

  White, Edward. The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I declared this book finished more than a decade ago. Then, like so many first novels, it languished as other writing projects intervened, including the prequel companion novel that became Relative Fortunes. Its publication brought Julia Kydd into the world, and now this book plunges her into the lively cultural vortex that was New York in the 1920s.

  I’m grateful to encouraging early readers, especially Emily Chamberlain, Kathleen Thorne, and my sister, Laura Bjornson. More recently, I’m deeply grateful to Joyce Simons, who helped me breathe new life into this story, and to Susie Rennels, for her always-perceptive comments.

  Many thanks also to my agent, Amanda Jain, and the terrific team at Lake Union—particularly my editor, Chris Werner; Tiffany Yates Martin; Riam Griswold; and Stephanie Chou—whose insights and expertise helped make this a much better book. And I’m grateful to my husband, Paul, as always, as ever.

  DISCUSSION GUIDE

  I hope this novel stirs many questions in readers’ minds. Here ar
e a few to start the discussion:

  Julia cares deeply about Christophine, yet they are neither family nor friends in the conventional sense. Why is their relationship complicated, and how does it evolve?

  Pablo Duveen proclaims himself a champion of black people, eagerly promoting Harlem’s lively nightclub culture and emerging writers. How do Eva, Logan, and Jerome feel about his patronage, and why? How does it help them, and how does it hinder them?

  Scholars talk about “the gaze” and the power relationship between those who are looked at and those who look. What undercurrents—psychological and historical—did you sense on the several occasions when black characters perform for white audiences?

  What does Julia mean when she remarks that everyone passes in some way? Do you agree? Why does racial passing in particular often provoke volatile reactions?

  Julia observes that American society renders black people largely invisible to whites. What made this possible in the 1920s? In what ways have things changed, or not?

  What motivates Julia to find the truth of Timson’s murder? How does race complicate her decision as well as her undertaking?

  Logan Lanier resents being labeled a black poet. Similarly, Julia chafes at the term lady printer. What are the merits—and hazards—of highlighting race, gender, and other aspects of identity?

  Consider the various kinds of power and will exercised in the final confrontation involving Eva, Jerome, and Wallace. How does race affect their respective options and choices?

  Julia declares confidence in her ability to judge men’s characters. In her dealings with Philip, Wallace, Jerome, and Logan, how accurate does her assertion prove to be?

  Throughout the novel Julia becomes aware, sometimes painfully, of her cultural blind spots. What does she come to learn about herself?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2019 Keith Brofsky

  Born near Boston, Marlowe Benn grew up in an Illinois college town along the Mississippi River. She holds a master’s degree in the book arts from the University of Alabama and a doctorate in the history of books from the University of California, Berkeley. A former editor, college teacher, and letterpress printer, Benn lives with her husband on an island near Seattle. Passing Fancies is the second novel in the Julia Kydd series.