Van Vechten, Carl
Van Vechten, Carl( 1880–1964),born in Iowa, graduated from the University of Chicago (1903), and became assistant music critic for The New York Times and dramatic critic for the New York Press. His critical articles are collected in several books, and the leading contents of these are preserved in two later selections, Red (1925) and Excavations (1926). At the age of 40 he declared that his intellectual arteries had hardened for criticism, and, turning to fiction, he wrote Peter Whiffle (1922), a witty, pseudo-biographical novel revealing the author's refined dilettante temperament. With continued urbanity, Gallic sophistication, watered aesthetics, and an agile pen, Van Vechten described the manners and mannerisms of his era's decadent elegance in several other novels: The Blind Bow-Boy (1923) and Firecrackers (1925), dealing with the sophisticated artistic set of New York; Spider Boy...
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