I FIRST BECAME AWARE of Henry Van Dyke’s 1965 novel Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, which was reprinted for the first time last year, when I read on the website Literary Hub the Foreword to it by Van Dyke’s nephew, Erik Wood. My immediate response was to ask: How is it possible that I, an English professor with an interest, both personal and professional, in gay literature, had never heard of this brilliant novel, or its Black and gay author? From Wood’s foreword I learned that Van Dyke began the novel in the late 1950s, but it took him several years to find a publisher. Reviews were favorable. The Kansas City Star proclaimed that Van Dyke “gives us cause to hope that the Burroughses, Rechys, and Mailers may at last be succeeded by writers as intent upon the elegant phrasing of their messages as upon the messages themselves.” The New York Times called Van Duke “a talented writer and a brave one.” The Kirkus Review proclaimed Van Dyke “a real talent,” comparing him to Shirley Jackson. James Purdy proclaimed that “Mr. Van Dyke is a rarity, for he has written a charming and incisive, witty and entertaining book. He has loads of talent.” Not unexpectedly, perhaps, I found no contemporary reviews that explicitly addressed the novel’s homosexual content, or identified Oliver, the narrator-protagonist, or Van Dyke himself as gay.
Nils Clausson is emeritus professor of English at the Univ. of Regina in Manitoba, Canada.
