{"id":81154,"date":"2015-01-01T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81154"},"modified":"2016-04-08T14:48:07","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T18:48:07","slug":"the-making-of-an-american-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/the-making-of-an-american-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of an American"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Carl Van Vechten shaped and burnished the legend of Gertrude Stein.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"G<\/a>

Carl Van Vechten\u2019s iconic 1935 portrait of Gertrude Stein<\/p><\/div>\n

Tender Buttons<\/em>, Gertrude Stein\u2019s collection of experimental still-life word portraits split into the categories of objects, food, and rooms, and which\u2014excluding a vanity publication in 1909, which she paid for herself\u2014was the first of Stein\u2019s work to be published in the United States. Stein had hoped that this enigmatic little book would be her big break, the thing to convince the American people of her genius. That was not to be. Tender Buttons <\/em>left critics bemused and made barely a dent on the consciousness of the wider reading public. There was no great clamor for more of her writing; Stein would have to wait another twenty years to become a household name. Nevertheless, the publication of Tender Buttons <\/em>is now widely regarded as a landmark in American literary modernism, the moment when one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century first unfurled her avant-garde sensibilities before the American public.<\/p>\n

That moment would never have arrived had it not been for the work of Stein\u2019s most important champion, Carl Van Vechten, the man who arranged for the book\u2019s publication. Little remembered today, Van Vechten was a pioneering arts critic, a popular author of tart, brittle novels about Manhattan\u2019s Jazz-Age excesses, an acclaimed photographer, and a flamboyant socialite whose daring interracial cocktail parties were a defining part of Prohibition-era New York\u2019s social scene. But his greatest legacy is as a promoter of many underappreciated American writers, artists, and performers who went on to gain canonical status. Names as diverse as Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Herman Melville all felt the effects of Van Vechten\u2019s boost. His first great cause was Gertrude Stein. He did more than anyone else to carve her legend into the edifice of the American Century, arranging publishing deals for her, photographing her, and publicizing her work, a task he continued long after her death.<\/p>\n

Stein knew how crucial Van Vechten was to her career\u2014not merely in the practical aspects of getting her work into print, read, and discussed, but in helping create and disseminate the mythology that surrounds her name. \u201cI always wanted to be historical, almost from a baby on,\u201d Stein freely admitted toward the end of her life. \u201cCarl was one of the earliest ones that made me be certain that I was going to be.\u201d Van Vechten and Stein were strikingly different, led wildly different lives. Hers was rooted in the domestic stability she enjoyed with her partner Alice B. Toklas; his was an exhausting whirl of binges, parties, and pansexual escapades. But they had two crucial things in common: the conviction that Gertrude Stein was an irrefutable genius and a love of mythmaking, an obsession with re-scripting reality until they became the central actors in the fantastical scenes that unfolded in their heads. When Stein played fast and loose with the facts in her memoirs, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas<\/em>, many were furious over her distortions. But Van Vechten understood that telling the literal truth about her life\u2014or anybody else\u2019s\u2014was never Stein\u2019s concern. Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! * Carl Van Vechten shaped and burnished the legend of Gertrude Stein. Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein\u2019s collection of experimental still-life word portraits split into the categories of objects, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":695,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[12956,3292,13909,4524,124,270,13908],"class_list":["post-81154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-carl-van-vechten","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-literary-friendships","tag-modernism","tag-new-york","tag-paris","tag-tender-buttons"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Making of an American<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Edward White on how Carl Van Vechten shaped and burnished the legend of Gertrude Stein.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/the-making-of-an-american-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Making of an American by Edward White\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 1, 2015 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. 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