Opportunity Review of Born to Be
When published in 1929, Taylor Gordon’s autobiography Born to Be was widely reviewed by both the white and the black press. In addition to the highly critical Crisis review (discussed in an earlier post), Born to Be was also reviewed in the New York Times Book Review as well as in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. Few reviews failed to take a shot at Carl Van Vechten (who provided a forward to the book), and some reviews spent more time on Van Vechten’s foreward than on the book itself.
Opportunity, published by the National Urban League, was an important journal during the 1920s and 1930s, publishing (as did Crisis) poetry and fiction as well as news, articles on social issues, and reports on African American accomplishments in a variety of fields. For a time, Opportunity sponsored a literary contest (winners included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Helene Johnson), and it also sponsored several fund-raising events for the National Urban League, including a series of concerts at which Taylor Gordon and Rosamond Johnson performed (among a long list of others, including Paul Robeson, Nora Holt, etc.).
The Opportunity review of Born to Be, written by Eugene Gordon, was far more positive than the Crisis review (while still taking its shots at Van Vechten), and finds particularly praiseworthy some of the earthier elements of the book that the Crisis found most objectionable. The review, however, makes a couple of somewhat puzzling arguments, questioning why someone as young as Taylor Gordon would have written an autobiography, especially as his life had been fairly typical for a young black men (and the review barely mentions Gordon’s singing career and the surprising rise to fame that made him anything but typical). The review also praises Gordon for being articulate and sophisticated and a good storyteller, but, despite acknowledging these skills, suggests that the humor in Gordon’s book is unconscious and that his humor is most apparent when Taylor is being pompous. Whatever Taylor’s character flaws, it’s hard for me to see pomposity as one of them, and the reviewer doesn’t offer an example.
On the whole, though, the Opportunity review is a positive one. The review also reveals that the reaction to Born to Be in the black press was by no means monolithic, as has sometimes been suggested by historians who refer only to the Crisis review in their references to the book.
From the Opportunity review:
[. . . .] Muriel Draper, in the introduction adds: “Taylor Gordon is a human being.”
I am in complete agreement with the lady. As a matter of fact, I am somewhat abashed that she would think that what appeared to the reader to be so obvious would need to be thus emblazoned. One cannot get through the first chapter without being aware of the fact that he is a human being with considerable of the animal dominant in him. Which, I hasten to append, is nothing to his discredit. We are all too prone at times to forget our close affiliation with the animal kingdom, and it is refreshing to find someone like Taylor Gordon reminding us constantly that whatever else we may pretend to be we are animals, first and last. As to Carl Van Vechten’s groping to determine precisely what has happened in the book—well, I think I appreciate how he feels. Something has happened, without a doubt; but I am far less concerned with what has happened as to how it happened.
For why Taylor Gordon at 36 should have thought his life involved enough with richly varied experiences to justify his writing a book about it I do not know. Perhaps some of Mr. Gordon’s friends, having heard from time to time snatches of his inimitable stories, urged him to write them out. [. . .] Thus we have first rate publishers [Covici-Friede] of a book containing matter that might easily be excelled by any of a score of Negro youths, working their way through such colleges as Howard, Fisk, and Lincoln, if they took the trouble to write out their experiences. The book would be more literary than Mr. Gordon’s and far richer, in some instances; but I doubt it would be quite so readable.
Born to Be is a funny book. It is funny because the author takes himself very seriously. It is funny in the sense that a pompous person is often funny; that is, without being aware of it. On the other hand, there are times when Mr. Gordon obviously tries to show humor, and the obviousness is always most obvious. He is funny when he does not sense it. It is not an important book. It does not add anything of value to our store of knowledge. It is true that we learn a great deal of the youth and manhood of an American Negro who was born and reared in a Montana village among whites, and therefore did not encounter race prejudice until he had grown up. It is true also that we learn how an intelligent young black man, with little schooling, reacts to the stimuli of a prejudiced world, of a curious world, of a world of passionate, animal women, of a world that loves the songs he sings, of the world of Harlem, of the world that is Europe; but I doubt that Gordon’s experiences were different from those of any other young Negro in similar situations would have had. It only happens that Gordon became articulate where others would have remained silent.
The most interesting feature of the book, aside from the drawings by Covarrubias, is the language in which it is written. It is the language of the untutored, and as such retains all the vigor of the original. The book would have been flatly commonplace if the editors had polished its grammar and bolstered up its rhetoric. It would have then had nothing remaining to recommend it except its vulgarities. Even these would have appeared rather slack rewritten in literary English.
Mr. Gordon is best when he tells a straight story. His sense of narration is excellent. He knows all the tricks of the professional story teller. His tale about Old Billy Leapopa, “a rich Scotch farmer and stock-man” who visited the sporting house, where the youthful Taylor worked, every Saturday night; his account of the episode in Dan Smith’s Saloon, with its significantly vulgar closing words; his stories of narrow escapes from particularly hazardous situations involving white women, and of his reception in Europe by the parasitical nobility,–all these are told with the skill of the born raconteur. “Ho! Ho! . . . I wonder what I was born to be?” he chuckles, as the last word of his biography. Perhaps he was born to be a writer of such tales as Cassanova told in his day or as Frank Harris told at a later period. At any rate, Born to Be, taken all in all, is a fair beginning. It is not all like that, to be sure, and I do not wish to give the impression that it is. (Although I do not suppose the publishers would greatly mind, since it is their wish chiefly to sell the book.)
Born to Be is the naïve but interesting story of a sophisticated but interesting young man’s life, but the only reason I can see for its having been written, when there are thousands of lives more interesting in rich variety, is that Taylor Gordon happened to be articulate. And happened also to have the moral support of man who stands in well with certain publishers.
Citation: Eugene Gordon. Rev. of Born to Be. Opportunity (January 1930): 22-23.
The Crisis Review of Born to Be
When published in 1929, Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be was widely reviewed, and, for the most part, the recipient of good reviews. Of note, however, is one particularly scathing review, published in The Crisis, the periodical published by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited by W. E. B. Du Bois. Although Du Bois has been cited as the author, the review itself is uncredited. Du Bois’s reviews are often noted by his initials W. E. B. D. However, whether written by Du Bois or not, the review hews closely to the general editorial preferences of The Crisis as to what does and does not make good literature. Also, we might note that Taylor Gordon’s well-known association with Carl Van Vechten had drawbacks as well as benefits. Because of Van Vechten’s controversial Harlem novel Nigger Heaven (with its very title being offensive to many African Americans), Van Vechten’s patronage could carry with it the suggestion of being accommodationist, or, as the review of Born to Be puts it: “I get the impression that Taylor is ‘cutting up’ for the white folk” (129).
Given the scathing review that Van Vechten’s book received in The Crisis, it was interesting to come across this advertisement for it, in a 1926 issue of the magazine (before it published its review). It is also odd to see it paired with J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson’s sequel to their Book of American Negro Spirituals. The Johnson and Gordon concert performances were originally conceived as a means of promoting the book.
Van Vechten was friend and patron to a number of African American writers, artists, and performers, including Paul Robeson and James Weldon Johnson (who, as Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was just as concerned with the advancement and well-being of black people as Du Bois), and it doesn’t take much looking into Van Vechten’s daybooks (published as The Splendid Drunken Twenties) to see that Robeson and Johnson were as frequent (and, in the case of Johnson, perhaps more frequent) attendees as Taylor Gordon at Van Vechten’s parties and at other social gatherings attended by Van Vechten, but neither of those individuals have been condemned for their association with Van Vechten in the way that Taylor has, and, The Crisis review, whether written by Du Bois or not, draws a picture of Taylor that later historians of the Harlem Renaissance have repeated.
From The Crisis, April 1930:
Taylor Gordon’s autobiography is another product of the Van Vechten school of Negro literature. It was written by a white woman, Muriel Draper, who translates as near as may be Mr. Taylor’s [sic] actual words. The result is, as Mr. Van Vechten assures us, “something new,” and “a human document of the first order.” The book is frank, rambling, full of anecdotes, loosely constructed, and often entertaining. But it does not strike us as literature. It, of course, deals largely with the dregs. This boy begins his career as page in a house of prostitution; graduates to gambling and opium-smoking, and then, after a time, emerges and submerges into more legitimate industry and less. He came into prominence when Rosamond Johnson taught him to sing, and no one who has heard Johnson and Gordon sing “Stand Still Jordan!” can ever forget its spell.
Yet, from that singing, comes quite a different soul than is revealed in “Born to Be,” and on the whole, a soul that I like much better.
I may be wrong, but in this book I get the impression that Taylor is ‘cutting up’ for the white folk. I can see Carl and Muriel splitting their sides with laughter while he jiggs and “yah-yahs!” But of life, of real life, in that drab western town, there must have been poignant tragedy as well as screaming farce. I would like to hear a little more of the inner life of that dark mother and of the other wandering children. But here there is scarce a serious word. The book is entertaining, but by its incompleteness, it is not life. It is not literature.
I am distinctly pained when Taylor Gordon tries musical criticism and slurs the magnificent work of Nathaniel Dett’s epoch-making choir. I suppose this was a sop to his literary gods.
Covarrubias has illustrated the book; and not being an art critic, my judgment on the success of his work is worth little. I am frank to say, however, that I think I could exist quite happily if Covarrubias had never been born. (129)
The Crisis reviews often condemn novels, whether written by black or white writers, for focusing on “the dregs” of society rather than on stories more illustrative of the advancement and racial uplift that the NAACP promoted. Du Bois’s June 1928 review of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand praises the book for having a protagonist who “is typical of the new, honest, young fighting Negro woman—the one on whom ‘race’ sits negligibly and Life is but darkened, not obliterated by the shadow of the Veil. White folk will not like this book” (202). In the same review, he writes of Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem, that the book “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath” (202). “It looks as though,” Du Bois continues, “McKay has set out to cater for that prurient demand on the part of white folk for a portrayal in Negroes of that utter licentiousness which conventional civilization holds white folk back from enjoying—if enjoyment it can be called” (202). Du Bois’s desire to combat negative images of African American life that were culturally pervasive by deploying positive images that countered those stereotypes (which were accepted by many white Americans as truths) is certainly understandable. From a contemporary perspective, both Quicksand and Home to Harlem are well-regarded novels, and if The Crisis review is unhappy with Taylor Gordon’s Born to Be, at least Taylor is in good company in being grouped with Claude McKay (and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom were at various times criticized for catering to the prurient rather than the uplifting).
The Covarrubias drawings that illustrate Born to Be have also been used for the covers of the various editions.
The original edition:
The University of Nebraska Press edition (currently in print), which uses an illustration that includes Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper as well as Taylor Gordon.
TG Encounters a Bidet
While performing in Paris and London with J. Rosamond Johnson, Taylor wrote a series of amusing letters back to Carl Van Vechten, and it was on the basis of those letters that Van Vechten suggested to Taylor that he should write a book, which eventually became his autobiography Born to Be (with a preface from Van Vechten). In his first letter from Paris, Taylor describes an incident (his puzzling first encounter with a bidet) that appears in revised form in Born to Be. In the letter, Taylor’s narrative is amusing, but perhaps a bit too off-color for publication in 1929.
May 30, 1927, from Paris, France
To the one and only Carl
Oh boy I must tell you this place is the place of the world so far. So much beautiful scenery to see and the city and people. I was sure things of interest was going to happen to me the next morning on the boat after the night you and Eddie gave me such a fine send off.
Well first of all I thought when I got to the station here from the noise outside it was French new years. And I was anxious to get outside of the gate to see what should have been a mob of half-lit-up joy makers. And to my surprise, they were only a gang of taxis, hustling for passengers. Well, that set me straight, that is I said to my self I am not going to know too much here from my imagination. I must look and listen. So after struggling with our French we landed at a nice little hotel, bags and clothes hung up. I felt that I must release my self of some of the ship’s food […] I started to sit down on a funny looking kind of a stool [but] I never did care for cold enamel. So I looked for the wood to cover it but none to be found.
I said to my self. My, France sure likes their beautiful trees, for they won’t cut enough to cover this hard cold stuff. Then I noticed two little faucets on the side. I said, hmmm, funny kind of a flush, and by chance I saw a strainer in the bottom of the bowl, then only did it strike me it was not for what I wanted to use it for.
Being rushed I looked elsewhere when I saw “W. C” in white letters. I went there. That was what I wanted. While spending my time there, my mind ran fast. I was trying to think just what the thing was for. After coming out, I investigated. It’s in such a odd place. I couldn’t see why a foot [wash?] tub should be so up in the corner. I saw no clothes rack, and, too, what a funny hotel that would expect people to wash out small bits of their underwear.
So the landlady came in the room to tell me about the keys. I would of ask her what it was for but she looked so innocent, if I with all my travels didn’t know, especially from America, the home of bath tubs, why be so silly and ask her.
So I thought of Chief [Rosamond Johnson], who was in a room just below me. I went down there to find him. He was a long time letting me in and when I did get in, he seemed to be confused, and at some difficult task, trying to take some dreadful smelling stuff out of one of those same kind of little tubs, he seemed so worried I did not bother him about the question, and by the expression on his face I knew he had not used the thing for just the right thing.
So I returned to my room after seeing Josephine Baker’s show and so many pretty nude women. I feel kinda funny, it’s hard to get to sleep somehow, but the sight of the beautiful women is not what’s go my mind all upset. It’s—I wonder just what that little tub is for.
I sure will find out before I leave Paris.
Oh, maybe it’s to wash your teeth with. They have something that looks like that on the Pullman’s, but why do Frenchmen like to stoop so low?
JWJ Van Vechten Correspondence
Box G, Folder Gordon, Taylor
Taylor Gordon and Gertrude Stein
Given how little attention has been paid recently to Taylor Gordon’s autobiography, Born to Be, it surprises me sometimes to see how much attention was paid to it at the time of its publication. The book was widely reviewed, and no less a literary figure than Gertrude Stein praised the book in her letters to Carl Van Vechten:
Oct 5, 1929
Thanks a thousand times for the Born to be of Taylor Gordon, I have enjoyed it immensely and the illustrations of [Miguel] Covarrubias, I am enormously taken with Gordon, already I have been impressed with [Paul] Robeson who made me realize middle class America as no one else had made me see it, the middle class America of to-day and now Gordon makes clear the kind of America I knew as a kid as it is to-day, I don’t know they have a way of seeing it from the inside and outside that makes it clear, the way a white can’t do it, it is not realism it is reality and that’s what interests me most in the world, do give Gordon my love and tell him if he should ever come to Paris to come to me sure with a letter from you. [. . .]
quoted from The Letters of Gertrude Stein and Carl Van Vechten, 1913-1946. Ed. Edward Burns. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
