Marseille

April 22, 1928

Dear Mr Van Vechten

Louise Bryant quoted part of your letter to me and it was a real pleasure to hear that you like "Home To Harlem". I have from time to time remarked in "Opportunity" your interest in the artistic work of Negroes.

I am sending a photograph of myself as you asked, but it's a pretty bum one.

2

COLLEGE, STA. N.
APR 25
2-PM
1934

Mr Carl Van Vechten
130 West 5-3rd St
New York City

4

Mr Carl Van Vechten

150 West 55th Street

New York City

May 9, 1934

168 West 135th St
New York City

Dear Mr Van Vechten

I wonder if you are aware of any new pub-
lisher who would be willing to take me over on a con-
tract with an advance for a new novel! I have been a-
way from America so long that I am quite out of things
and have great difficulty in getting orientated.

My last novel had no sale and Harper's did
not recover a thousand dollars advance they made on it.
As I was broke and could get no more money out of the
firm I asked them to let me try and place elsewhere a
short novel I had done about the quays of Marseille.
But I had bad luck: several firms turned down the script.
Some said it was too slight, the majority that it con-
tained too much sex stuff in an offensive way, a prom-
inent reader-critic saying that it was difficult to tell
whether I "intended this to be taken as a serious piece
of work or a Macauley sex stuff."

Of course I had no more serious nor worse inten-
tion than to render some characters of a special milieu
and I even had to subdue the telling of the tale to put
over certain effects. The script is now with Maxim Lieb-
er. He said he liked it but that it was so "full of
fornication." It may be you might be able to put me on
to a publisher I have not tried yet and who would be will-
ing to take a chance. I believe you will help
if you can.

I should like to get a chance to do a Morocco
novel I have planned--a different kind of sheik story

July 26

Apartment 9
147 West 142
N. Y. C.

Dear Mr Van Vechten

I left my old address at the end of May
and got your card just by a chance return there this
week. You may send the photograph, thanking you, to
256 West 135th St in care of Mr Lewin. That's a safer
address than the above where I am staying temporarily.

Thanks for your letter just before you left
for abroad. My agent tried the publishers you suggest-
ed but they didn't like that particular man's., although
Lieber liked it. Perhaps it isn't my best and I think
I will call it in. Knopf had seen it already and did
not know it was the same one I had written to you about
and that caused a little misunderstanding.

I am trying to start a magazine on a shoe-
string as it were, haven't even found a place to begin
yet, but when we do and get the propaganda going, I
hope you'll allow your name as one of the sponsors
and also give me the names of any interested persons.

I am enclosing one of the letters to be sent
out.

FOR A NEW NEGRO MAGAZINE

A. A. Schomburg, Curator
Negro Division, Harlem Library
Chairman

A GROUP of interested persons in Harlem
have decided to found a different kind of magazine--a mag-
azine of Negro life.

THE PURPOSE is to tap the sources of
Negro life, encourage the genius and develop the talent
of the race and cultivate a genuine appreciation of liter-
ature and art.

THE IDEA is to help make the Negro artist
creatively free by revolutionizing and stimulating his
thought processes so that the Word or any other means of
expression he may use will have its own special significance
for him as a Negro in its relation to and interpretation of
life.

THE PLAN is to make the magazine a real
forum of life and therefore non-partisan and so broad in
scope and outlook that all phases of Negro life may be treat-
ed therein. Contributions, whether they may be racially
conservative or radically advanced will be judged from an
esthetic standard and not merely by their special social
implications.

THE EDITORSHIP will be in the hands of

CLAUDE MCKAY, the poet and novelist, who has recently re-
turned to this country after many years residence abroad.
Mr. McKay was formerly one of the editors of the Liberator
Magazine and with his wide experience and interest in social
social and artistic movements here and abroad, he is eminent-
ly fitted to help in the revival of the Negro Renaissance.

WE ARE SEEKING a number of outstanding and
important persons to serve as members of an honorary Comm-
ittee of Publication. If you are in sympathy with our aims,
will you allow your name to be used, also send in the names
of friends and any suggestions or opinion you may have to
offer about the founding of the magazine?

FOR THE GROUP

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Mr Carl Van Vechten
150 West 5-5th Street
New York City

Sept. 1, 1934

313 West 137th St
New York City

Dear Carl Van Vechten

If you remember that
magazine idea I wrote to you
about, we started planning with
a good initial meeting at the
library up here last Friday.
And we're giving a cocktail
party on Sunday Evening, the
9th at Chauncey Northern's music
studio, 107 West 117th St.--the
first drive to get the funds. I
shall be very glad if you can
come, if you are free, and send
some of your friends, too.

For those who can't drink,
there will be lemonade and tea.

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You are Cordially invited

To Sip Cocktail

and listen to Verse and Music

PLACE; Northern Musical Art Center, 107 West 117th St.

TIME: SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 9th, 1934, 9 p.m.

PURPOSE: Benefit of New Negro Magazine

Guests: Max Eastman, Arthur Schomburg
Claude McKay and others.

Subscription

50c

19

Mr. Carl Van Vechten
101 Central Park West
New York City

S

STATION J