Parties: A Novel of Contemporary New York Life

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930. First edition. A small stain on the top edge, boards a bit soiled, an about very good copy without dustwrapper. Nicely Inscribed by the author: "For Emilio in memory of the time when we will go to parties again [three words indecipherable] Carlo. September 2, 1942." In this novel, Van Vechten thoroughly distills the peculiar intensity of late 1920s Manhattan, when the city functioned as a crucible for social experimentation. Racial boundaries temporarily blurred in nightclub darkness, sexual mores underwent radical revision, and speakeasy culture created an atmosphere of shared transgression that momentarily dissolved class distinctions. Van Vechten captures the era's defining paradox: the simultaneous embrace of surface frivolity and desperate authenticity. The compulsive pursuit of novelty masked a collective anxiety about meaning in a world where the Great War had discredited traditional structures of authority, yet no viable replacements had emerged.