Infants of the Spring (Lost American Fiction) - Hardcover

Thurman, Wallace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809308649 ISBN 13: 9780809308644

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979

Synopsis

In this satire which shows the role of black writers and artists during the American Renaissance of the 1920s, Wallace Thurman proved himself to be a black writer who suffered no fools of any color, a modern satirist who, as re­publication here shows, was very much ahead of his time.

 

Thurman was a novelist, ghost writer, editor of two Harlem magazines, and a playwright. His satire, derived from close personal observation, was directed primarily at the Harlem or Negro Re­naissance, which began in 1925. As John A. Williams points out in his Afterword to this new edition, Thurman and nearly everyone with artistic as­pirations came to New York then, black and white; those were the merging days of the Harlem Renaissance, the Lost Generation, and the Jazz Age really one extended explosion of American lit­erature, and there were influences passed between the groups.” The Renaissance flourished through 1929, then faded.

 

Thurman’s satire came too late 1932, after its main target, the Harlem Renaissance, lay shrouded in the Great Depression woe that obscured or proclaimed frivolous all but proletarian art. Yet Infants of the Spring, stillborn then, lives today. By re-creating the bohemian lives of black artists of the 1920s, Thur­man corrects the assumption that one of America’s most creative decades owes its energy to whites alone.

About this title

Review:

This little-known classic of the Harlem Renaissance--by the mysterious, Utah-born bisexual Wallace Thurman, who died in obscurity in 1934--is both timeless and timely. It centers on the larger-than-life denizens of a Harlem mansion called "Niggeratti Manor": Stephen Jorgensen, the recently arrived Canadian; Paul, the ambivalent, uptown social critic; Pelham, the struggling poet; and Eustace Savoy, an entertainer disdainful of his Afro-American musical heritage. In this volatile gumbo of complex characters--which also pokes fun at a few famous writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and Langston Hughes--Thurman weaves a hilarious story that critiques the paternalistic Negro author/white patron relationship, uncovers the social-class antagonisms in the Afro-American community, and foreshadows the sexual and social themes of James Baldwin and E. Lynn Harris. Thurman's elegant and elastic prose adds more illumination to this bright period in African American literature. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From the Inside Flap:

Modern Library Harlem Renaissance

It's 1920s Harlem, and man, the joint is jumpin'. Folks are coming and going and everything's copacetic as long as the gin keeps flowing. This is the scene Stephen Jorgenson dives into when he arrives from Canada for the first time. He is taken to "The Niggerati Manor," an apartment building in Harlem inhabited by aspiring artists whose  true talents lie in living, and where everything's black and white--with a lot of grayness in between. Counterbalancing Stephen's embrace of these folks is Raymond Taylor, a writer who is the only truly talented artist in the manor. Raymond's cynical take on the "new Negro artist" is the tightrope he walks between the love and hatred of himself and his people. Characters representing Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alain Locke all appear, and part of the fun of this book is figuring out who's who.

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0809308649
• ISBN 13: 9780809308644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Bruccoli Professor Matthew J.