Henry van Dyke

Van Dyke, Henry (b. 1928), editor, journalist, and novelist. Born in Allegan, Michigan, Henry Van Dyke spent his childhood in Montgomery, Alabama, where his father taught at Alabama State Teachers College. He returned to Michigan for high school and remained to receive an MA in journalism from the University of Michigan in 1955. While at Michigan, Van Dyke received the Avery Hopwood Award for Fiction. After graduating he worked as a journalist and editor in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. During his time on the editorial staff at Basic Books in New York he finished his first published novel, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes (1965). His short pieces have appeared in Transatlantic Review, Generation, Antioch Review, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, 1979.

Van Dyke's work addresses race relations issues prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. He writes about conflict among African Americans, between African Americans and white and Jewish Americans. He is influenced by modernist writers and ideas. The plot of Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes revolves around the production of a Gertrude Stein play by self-proclaimed members of her circle. The production serves as the stage for exploring the relations between the young African American protagonist, Oliver, and the Jewish production team. His second novel, Blood of Stawberries (1968), is dedicated to the white chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance, Carl Van Vechten. Issues of race relations again arise in Dead Piano (1971), his third novel, this time within the African American community. Drawing on current affairs at the time of publication, Dead Piano uses an outsider, a militant African American group, to upset the social structure of a light-skinned, middle-class African American family. In the microcosm of a few stressful hours in the family's apartment, the characters address large social issues of assimilation and separatism.

Bibliography

• Granville Hicks, “Literary Horizons,” Saturday Review, 4 Jan. 1969, 93.
• Edward G. McGhee, “Henry Van Dyke,” in DLB, vol. 33, Afro-American Fiction Writers after 1955, eds. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1984, pp. 250–255

Caroline Senter

Henry van Dyke

Henry van Dyke (1852 – 1933) was an American author, educator, and clergyman.

Biography

He graduated from Princeton University in 1873 and from Princeton Theological Seminary, 1877 and served as a professor of English literature at Princeton between 1899 and 1923. In 1908-09 Dr. van Dyke was an American lecturer at the University of Paris. By appointment of President Wilson he became Minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg in 1913. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received many other honors. His son is Tertius van Dyke.

He chaired the committee that wrote the first Presbyterian printed liturgy, The Book of Common Worship of 1906. Among his popular writings are the two Christmas stories The Other Wise Man (1896) and The First Christmas Tree (1897). Various religious themes of his work are also expressed in his poetry, hymns and the essays collected in Little Rivers (1895) and Fisherman’s Luck (1899). He wrote the lyrics to the popular hymn, "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" (1907), sung to the tune of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. He compiled several short stories in The Blue Flower (1902) named after the key symbol of Romanticism introduced first by Novalis. He also contributed a chapter to the collaborative novel, The Whole Family (1908). Among his poems is Katrina's Sundial, the inspiration for the song Time Is by the group It's a Beautiful Day on their eponymous 1969 debut album.

Van Dyke's "Essays in Application" (1905) was quoted by Jack London in the dystopian novel "The Iron Heel". London disliked Van Dyke's ideas, but paid him the compliment of predicting that his writings would still be remembered six hundred years into the future and be cited by a Twenty-Sixth Century writer as "an example of bourgeois thinking".

Specifically, London took issue with van Dyke's statement

"The Bible teaches that God owns the world. He distributes to every man according to His own good pleasure, conformably to general laws."

This London considered as similar to the statement of the Charleston Baptist Association in the 1830's, which justified slavery on theological grounds.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Henry van Dyke

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry van Dyke

• Works by Henry Van Dyke at Project Gutenberg
• Librivox Audio of The Story of the Other Wise Man, Internet Archive
• Index entry for Henry Van Dyke at Poets' Corner

Preceded by Lloyd Bryce

U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands 1917–1919

Succeeded by John W. Garrett

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