Infants of the Spring

I'm not an English major and I possess no talent for critically analyzing literature. However, I am a black man with a desire to know more about his heritage, and I gained insights from this book that I could never garner from a history class. From the conversations between the characters, to the pictures painted of Harlem in the 1920's, the author gives an intimate look into the thoughts, fashions, music, literature and themes of the day. Obviously based on facts, with names changed to protect the innocent, there is a truth to this novel that more than compensates for any writing flaws. This novel, more than Blacker the Berry, gives insight into the minds of the creative, genius, and often times tortured minds of those leading the renaisance. I would reccomend this novel to anyone wishing to learn more about the details of life in Harlem during the 20's.

I put off reading this for years because of its leadenly Shakespearian title, and was surprised and pleased to find when I did finally pick it up that it was a pacey, barbed and entertaining read. It's not 'hilarious' (as billed in the promotional blurb above) but it is sharp. In its astute but cynical take on its characters & their situation it made me think of Chester Himes, ( & Thurman has a similar 'banged off' style to Himes), & in its subject-matter - black & white bohemia, & the politics of race & sexuality - it's very much a precursor to James Baldwin's 'Another Country'. The debates around the role of the artist, particularly the black artist, in this book seem to me as resonant today as they were when it was written: does a black artist have a duty to represent the race, to engage politically with racial issues in an overt or didactic way, or is his or her duty to art as a force - or truth - in itself? Thurman provides no answers, but he shows how such tensions - combined with self-delusion, brittleness, lack of application and other human failings - lead people who are struggling to be creative to collapse in on themselves, with disastrous results. Thurman's style is jaunty and, although highly engaging, deters the reader from empathising greatly with the characters; yet I found the end of the book, which is on one level camp, strangely moving and upsetting.

Thurman was not the most polished of writers, but he makes up that shortcoming by having a lot to say. I was enraptured with the number of ideas present in this book, and many times I paused to consider the weight of his words.Yes, the text is often clumsy, but the dialogue is sterling. So this is really what the Harlem Renaissance was about? I wish I could have been there. There are so many memorable characters in this book, and they all are real and possess unique personalities. Even the minor characters are fleshed out.Buy this book and read it. You won't regret it. After reading it, I have only one question: Why isn't Thurman's third novel, INTERNE, available? I can't think of any author to whom to compare Thurman. His dialogue reminds me a bit of Hemingway, but not really. Reading Thurman is a unique experience!

Politically incorrect, pedantic, with laughingly awful flights of "serious writing", this novel nonetheless opens up a window to the past with an immediacy few novels match. Thurman was there and he lets you know how it was. Important both as a historical document and one of the earliest examples of black gay literature, it will fascinate despite the clumsy writing. A window into a lost world if you're willing to forgive the prose.

Wallace Thurman's "Infants of the Spring" illustrates the lives and ideals of the "New Negro" of 1920's Harlem. In a loosely biographical depiction of the young generation of artists, who defined themselves as the New Negro artists like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Thurman himself, Thurman interprets the role the relationship between the black artist and his art in a time of rapidly changing ideology. Like thier counterpart's of the white race, referred to as the "Lost Generation" by Gertrude Stein and company,Black intellectuals of the 1920's sought to find themselves in a reaction thier perceptions of the previous generation's failings. Rebelling against an older generation that gleefully supported WWI and retained the victorian ideology and rhetoric of the previous century, intellectuals both black and white looked to Art in order to recreate the world in terms modern and understandable to them. Thematically, the protagonist, Raymond, a talented writer who spends most of his time drinking and finding interuptions from his writing, attempts to break free from the boundaries of race on the art he produces. Raymond and his brethren in "Niggerati Manor" live in a world of white and black masks, Raymond's close friendship with the Nordic Stephen illustrates the Raymond's denial of racial differences. One of the main objectives of the young generation of writers in the Harlem Renaissance was to create for the sake of art alone. The young generation felt that to write only as and example of ones race constrained that art of the race aritst. Raymond's attempt to merge the two races in social settings, his attempt at integrating peacably and without issue, illustrates the pursuit of the artist's of the Harlem Renaissance to create art on a universal level, incorporating the knowledge of as Zora Neale Hurston put it "Colored Me". The young generation of artists to whom Thurman belonged to wrote about thier lives as blacks, but they did not constrain themselves to writing only about black issues, they wrote for a universal audience. They wrote with a knowledge of the ancient and magnificent contributions of the black race, and also with the modern hope of creating a truer and more reliable world. Although many people view this book as a sharp critique of the Harlem Renaissance, to me it seems to suggest a bit of the optimism of the generation of black intellectuals who took it upon themselves to uplift thier race through art.