by Claude McKay
3 the Pan-African movement: See Ch. 2, note 1.
CHAPTER 11
1 Levantine: i.e., an individual originally of European origin residing in the region bordering the eastern Mediterranean.
2 sybarite: A self-indulgent hedonist.
CHAPTER 12
1 “a sort of Canaan . . . a Zionist streak . . . Back-to-Africa movement . . . Land of Beulah”: Canaan: i.e., the biblical “Promised Land,” specifically the territory promised to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 17:8. Zionism is the Jewish nationalist and political movement that supports the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory of Canaan. On Marcus Garvey and the Back-to-Africa movement, see Ch. 1, note 5. Beulah is the metaphor used for the Promised Land or Judea in Isaiah 62:4.
2 “And Pablo Peixota was a policy king”: See Ch. 7, note 5.
3 “What’s the difference between a policy game . . . ”: See previous note.
4 Father Georgy Gapon (1870–1906): A Russian Orthodox priest who led a worker’s revolt in St. Petersburg on 22 January 1905.
5 Father Divine: See Ch. 8, note 5.
6 Monk Rasputin: Father Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916), the infamous Russian mystic known as the “Mad Monk” who was an adviser to the Romanov family during the reign of Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia.
CHAPTER 13
1 he might have been a Ras: See Ch. 7, note 3.
2 Central American: In the original typescript, McKay had written “Caribbean,” later revising it with a handwritten emendation to “Central American.”
3 known as Honest Peixota in Harlem: The character Pablo Peixota seems to be based in part on Casper Holstein, the famous black “numbers” king in the 1920s. In his book on Harlem, McKay describes Holstein in a manner that is strikingly reminiscent of this passage about Peixota. Holstein “was liked, he was respected, he was trusted. Sometimes faced with the payment of unusually large sums to winners, some numbers bankers defaulted and fled Harlem. But Holstein was renowned for his reliability. He paid fully the heaviest winnings.” Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1940), 102–3.
4 “you abominable bashibazouk”: An irregular soldier of the Ottoman army; by connotation an adventurer, a mercenary, or an undisciplined and brutal fighter (from the Turkish basibozuk, literally “damaged head”).
5 imbibing many rounds of double “shorties” (a Harlem special) of rye: In the slang of the period, “shorties” were quarter-pint portions of liquor.
6 Titian-haired: i.e., with golden-reddish or brownish-orange hair, so named after the hair color of some women in the paintings of the Italian artist Tiziano Vecelli, known as Titian (c. 1488–1576).
CHAPTER 14
1 “. . . lieutenants in the policy game”: See Ch. 7, note 5.
2 a Fusion mayor: The term “electoral fusion” means that a candidate is allowed to appear on a ballot under multiple party lines.
CHAPTER 15
1 Mr. Secretary Hughes: Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948), American politician and statesman. He served as secretary of state from 1921 to 1925.
2 the Nuremberg decrees: Anti-Semitic laws the ruling German Nazi Party put into effect in 1935.
3 “CCC and NLRB . . . and FBI”: CCC: Civilian Conservation Corps, an American work relief program initiated through the New Deal that ran from 1933 to 1943; NLRB: National Labor Relations Board, formed in 1935; FHA: Federal Housing Administration; AAA: Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, a New Deal law designed to reduce surplus and increase the value of crops by paying farmers not to plant on part of their land; TVA: Tennessee Valley Authority, founded in 1933; NYA: National Youth Administration, a New Deal agency that operated from 1935 to 1939; FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, the law-enforcement agency founded in 1908.
4 “when it withdrew its naval and military forces from Haiti . . . to withdraw from the Philippines”: In July 1915, after years of political instability and violence in Haiti (culminating in the murder of Haitian president Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam by a mob), the US president Woodrow Wilson ordered 330 Marines to Port-au-Prince to safeguard American corporate interests there. The US occupation of Haiti lasted until August 1934. Spain ceded the Philippine islands to the United States in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. A US military government ruled the islands until 1901, when the United States withdrew its armed forces and set up the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands, which operated under US supervision until 1935. The Philippines finally gained full sovereignty in 1946.
5 “the ideal of Collective Security”: A political arrangement that attempts to ensure the security of all states through an agreement that a threat to any individual state is a concern to the entire group. This ideal was a key motivation in the formation of intergovernmental initiatives such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union in 1889, the League of Nations in 1919, and the United Nations in 1945.
CHAPTER 16
1 the classic grandeur of Duse . . . Josephine Baker: Eleonora Duse (1858–1924), Italian actress; Josephine Baker (1906–75), American actress, singer, and dancer who became an international star in Paris in the 1920s.
2 A Song of Lenin: A tribute made ten years after the death of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, Dziga Vertov’s silent documentary film is more commonly known under the title Three Songs About Lenin (1934).
3 Jean Jaurès (1859–1914): French Socialist Party leader who was attempting to use diplomatic means to prevent the outbreak of war when he was assassinated in July 1914.
4 “the week when the Camelots du Roy spread havoc”: The Fédération Nationale des Camelots du Roi (National Federation of the King’s Camelots) was the youth organization of the far-right Action Française movement in France; the group played a major role in the violent anti-parliamentary riots that broke out in Paris on 6 February 1934.
CHAPTER 17
1 Gethsemane: The garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem where Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion.
2 “since Lenin died”: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924), Communist revolutionary and political theorist who led the Russian Republic and later the Soviet Union from the Bolshevik Revolution’s overthrow of the czarist regime in 1917 until his death in 1924.
3 “a mad Englishman named Chamberlain and Frenchman called Gobineau”: Arthur Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940), British conservative politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940; Arthur de Gobineau (1816–82), French aristocrat and man of letters who devised the theory of Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races (1853–55).
4 Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837): Russian poet, often considered to be the father of modern Russian literature.
CHAPTER 18
1 “Emperor flees Ethiopian Capital”: Facing the defeat of the Ethiopian army by the invading Italian forces, the Emperor Haile Selassie left Addis Ababa with his family and fled to Djibouti on 2 May 1936.
CHAPTER 19
1 “the Scottsboro case”: See Ch. 8, note 3.
CHAPTER 20
1 President Hoover: Herbert Clark Hoover (1874–1964) was the thirty-first president of the United States, serving in office from 1929 to 1933.
2 “we need Raphaels . . . Gauguins”: Raphael (1483–1520), Italian painter and architect; Jean-François Millet (1814–75), French painter; Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), French Postimpressionist and Symbolist painter, sculptor, ceramist, writer, and printmaker.
3 such masters as Goya . . . Grosz: Francisco Goya (1746–1828), Spanish painter and printmaker; Rembrandt (1606–69), Dutch painter and etcher; Frans Hals (1582–1666), Dutch painter; William Hogarth (1697–1764), British painter, engraver, political satirist, and cartoonist; John French Sloan (1871–1961), American painter and realist; and Georg Grosz (1893–1959), German painter and draughtsman.
CHAPTER 21
1 a W.P.A. teach
er: i.e., a teacher employed by the Works Progress Administration (1935–43), a New Deal initiative headed by Harry Hopkins that provided jobs to many during the Great Depression. See the Introduction.
2 a perpetual St. Vitus dance: An allusion to the disease called Sydenham’s chorea, a disorder in which the body exhibits rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements.
CHAPTER 22
1 “We have had the Queen of Romania”: A member of the British royal family, Princess Marie of Edinburgh (1875–1938), or Marie of Romania, was the last queen of Romania as the consort of King Ferdinand I; in the fall of 1926 she visited several cities in the United States, where she was received by enormous crowds.
2 “the Mosque of Omar”: After the siege of Jerusalem in 637 CE, the Caliph Omar (579–644 CE) came to Jerusalem to accept the surrender of Patriarch Sophronius. Omar visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and was invited to pray there, but declined, so as not to endanger its status as a Christian site. Instead he prayed outside, in the courtyard. The Mosque of Omar was constructed by the Ayyubid Sultan Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din in 1193 in memory of this event.
3 the Einstein Theory: i.e., the theory of relativity of physicist Albert Einstein (1879–1955).
4 “Like Aaron’s rod, eh?”: i.e., one of the staves carried by Moses’s brother, Aaron, in the Old Testament of the Bible; according to Numbers 17, Aaron’s rod was endowed with miraculous power during the Plagues of Egypt.
5 fellah: A peasant (Arabic).
6 Tammany Hall: See Ch. 6, note 1.
CHAPTER 23
1 the Spanish Civil War: This conflict began on 17 July 1936 and ended on 1 April 1939.
Editors’ Acknowledgments
The authentication, editing, and publication of Claude McKay’s long-lost novel has been an extremely complex undertaking that, in the nearly eight years since the typescript’s discovery, has required at least as much serendipity and sheer perseverance as archival detective work and literary acumen. If the novel offers unexpected revelations into McKay’s thinking and writing in his later years, bringing it to print has been an exhaustive lesson in the nuances of copyright and probate. We are extremely grateful to the many colleagues who have assisted us with various aspects of the project.
Hiie Saumaa and Rachel Collins provided research assistance at Columbia and Syracuse, respectively, while Genevieve Deleon transcribed the entire novel from McKay’s original typescript. The staff of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University has been instrumental throughout this process; we especially thank Michael Ryan, Sean Quimby, Karla Nielsen, and Alix Ross. In our research into the genesis of Amiable with Big Teeth we also drew on the expertise of a number of librarians and archivists at other institutions, including David Frasier at Indiana University; Louise Bernard at Yale University; Randall Burkett and Kevin Young at Emory University; Christopher Harter at Tulane University’s Amistad Research Center; and Khalil Muhammad and Diana Lachatanere at the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library. This project would simply not have been possible without Diana Lachatanere’s support and generosity in particular. Her commitment to McKay’s legacy and to the family heirs is extraordinary, and we thank her for everything she has done to help us bring Amiable with Big Teeth to readers.
For their invaluable legal advice, we are indebted to Kenneth Crews (the former director of the Copyright Advisory Office in the Columbia University Libraries), Robert Spoo, and especially Alex Chachkes, who was kind enough to represent us pro bono. Jacqueline Bausch of the general counsel’s office of the New York Public Library was also helpful during a particularly delicate phase of the legal negotiations. Our agent, Don Fehr of the Trident Media Group, as well as the Faith Childs Agency, which represents the McKay heirs, have been indefatigable in their efforts on behalf of the book. We also thank Elda Rotor of Penguin Classics for her extraordinary patience and steadfast support.
Over the years, a number of colleagues have taken the time to discuss the project with us in depth. Wayne Cooper, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and William Maxwell evaluated our extensive research demonstrating the authenticity of the typescript, and we thank them for their comments and sage counsel. Others who shared their expertise on various topics that have come up during the editorial work—ranging from the history of the Popular Front, to mid-century African American fiction, to the intricacies of copyright law—include Crystal Bartolovich, Mary Britton, Jay Gertzman, Laura Helton, Robert A. Hill, Edward Mendelson, Robert O’Meally, Max Rudin, Paul K. Saint-Amour, and Maura Spiegel. Finally, we thank our families for their patience and encouragement during this novel’s peculiar, lengthy, and at times tortuous path to publication.
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