The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand, and The Stories

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780385721004
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Description

In The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen, whose career flamed brightly but briefly in the 1920s, we rediscover one of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Nella Larsen's subject is the struggle of sensitive, spirited heroines to find a place for themselves in a hostile world. Passing is the story of a light-skinned beauty who, after spending years passing for white, finds herself dangerously drawn to an old friend's Harlem neighborhood. In Quicksand, a restless young mulatto tries desperately to find a comfortable place in a world in which she sees herself as a perpetual outsider. Race and marriage offer few securities here or in the other stories in a collection that is compellingly readable, rich in psychological complexity, and imbued with a sense of place that brings Harlem vibrantly to life.

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Customer Reviews

Larsen speaks to those who've felt they never really fit in
This volume contains two novellas, Passing and Quicksand. I would recommend reading the introduction afterwards because it might spoil the stories. The two female protagonists in her stories are loosely autobiographical. Larson's mother was from Denmark and her father was Caribbean or African-American. Both protagonists are bi-racial women living during the Harlem Renaissance period and struggling to fit into segregated society.

I liked Quicksand better. Helga Crane also has a Danish mother and African-American father. As the story opens young Helga Crane is a teacher at a very strict school in an ultra-conservative small southern US city. She is lonely and isolated and far too intelligent for her environment. She finally makes the break and moves to New York City. After a long struggle to fit in she moves to Copenhagen. She is taken in by her mother's family. Instead of finding the love and acceptance she craves she is treated condescendingly like some exotic pet. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's good.

2006-12-21 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Complete fiction-- all too slight for the quality of her voice.
This little book represents the complete literary output of Nella Larsen, the great Harlem Renaissance writer. It is impossible to read without the sense of a voice that went quiet too soon. These are sophisticated works, full of issues about anger and identity. In the longer pieces it is frustratingly tangible how great she could have been had she been able to develop a larger body of work.

The pieces included in this work are:

"The Wrong Man" and "Freedom"-- these are two sensational short stories that Larsen published in women's magazines at the beginning of her writing career. If I have a quarrel with this collection, I have a quarrel with the fact that Larson (the editor) chose to put these stories first. While in some ways I understand it, they are so much weaker than the rest of her work that they do not create the right beginning for the book.

"Sanctuary" is a brilliant and powerful short story about a man hiding from the law. This story marked the end of her career, as accusations of plagiarism about the story drove her out of the public eye.

"Quicksand" was her first novel. Clearly drawn from the author's own experience (Larsen was born of a Danish mother and a West Indian father), it tells the story of Helga Crane. Helga constantly resists the idea that her life is defined by the color of her skin, but finds no available options for living any other way. She turns between her black friends in Harlem and her family in Copenhagen, trying to find a way to be herself.

"Passing" is a longer novel which is about two women from the same neighborhood who grew up to take very different routes. One has successfully passed as white, and is married to a white husband. One makes her home in Harlem and marries a black doctor. When they accidentally meet some time later in a different city, their lives once more connect. Irene and Clare are confronted with their own choices when they see what has become of the other woman.

Larsen died in obscurity in 1964, after 34 years of silence. In some respects, her work feels more modern than ever in the way it takes on the complexity of identity and questions notions of both feminism and race. I would suggest buying this edition if you aren't yet familiar with her work. Her output is sadly so slight that it makes sense to buy it all bound in one volume.

Recommended.

2006-07-16 | frumiousb (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) | Helpful Votes: 12 | Rating: 4

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Passing was a great read !!!!!
Passing, written by Nella Larson, portrays the thoughts and feelings of a black woman dealing with inter-racial issues during the early twentieth century. The main character Irene Redfield, who has led a semi pleasant life with her husband and child finds herself dealing with issues brought upon by her past childhood friend Claire. Claire creates an intense and unstable environment for Irene and her family throughout most of the story. Towards the end a dramatic and suspenseful moment leaves the reader to create an ending in itself. I enjoyed Passing and found it to be an interesting book in relation to the early Harlem Renaissance years.

2003-03-20 (Indonesia) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Quicksand

Description

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Quicksand, was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance amid a deeply religious society.

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Customer Reviews

Quiet Genius
Nella Larsen's "Quicksand" is a sleeper masterpiece. She artfully weaves a tale of coming of age & unrequited love. The characters are real, and the conclusion is open to several different interpretations.

2008-05-23 (Miami, FL, USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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An unfortunately forgotten classic
Quicksand is an epic story of a tragic heroine written with taste and a great deal of wit. I can't help but wonder how the works of Nella Larsen are so criminally ignored by those interested in the study of African-American literature and the Harlem Renaissance (most texts make a brief footnote, failing to acknowledge the incredible value of this novel and its companion, the erotic and controversial Passing).
The novel follows the ups and downs of Helga Crane, a young woman doomed by her own intelligence and beauty. She is intellectually above those who are supposedly paving the way to success and equality for the black race. She sees a great deal of false pretense and [economic] selfishness in many of the people that she encounters throughout her journey, which is no more than a quest for independence and the possibility of happiness.
Her racial background (mixed, "brought up" by a hateful white stepfather and an ailing mother) defines the way in which she sees the world. She learns to manipulate colour and sex to her own advantage, only to discover in the end that she failed at understanding her real mission in this world. Her rebellious, never content character leads her to a nervous breakdown and the making of a terrible decision that defines her fate. At this point, in the midst of everything that she disliked in life (dirt, pregnancy, ignorance, rural life, religion) she realises that all of her existence she had been walking upon quicksand (her own soul being made of it), and that all she can do now is finally stop fighting; letting herself drown; escaping the struggle.
Larsen's way of ending her novels has been often criticised as rather abrupt and unexpected (Passing ending with the sudden death of its protagonist). I tend to disagree with those who dislike the way in which Quicksand closes. The author has presented a heroine whose life has been marked by struggle, fighting with fate, with herself, with her own race and sexuality. By placing Helga in such deplorable conditions (as her life seemed to reach some balance), Larsen makes a clear criticism of the position of women (as well as a commentary on race, religion, economic exploitation, and other topics) in a world that could not forgive intelligence or bravery in such a gender.
Quicksand touches upon so many subjects in such a sharp manner that it may take more than one read to discover the hidden layers within the novel. If any novel about race has come close to perfection this has to be the one, Passing being a close competitor for that feat. Hopefully one day they will receive the recognition that they deserve.

2002-02-04 | intellectualised (Miami, Fl United States) | Helpful Votes: 25 | Rating: 5

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A Worthy Effort
Nella Larsen does an exemplary job of devling into the human psyche with Passing. Unlike the color-struck works of Dorothy West this Harlem Renaissance author brings all of the pain of duality of multi-cultural people to the reader. Helga Crane lives between the two worlds of white and black and expresses the same anguish that many middle class blacks feel today. She is not the "tragic mulatto" as many critic paint her. This book should be read by anyone with an interest in the politics of race.

1998-12-14 | Helpful Votes: 12 | Rating: 4

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Passing

Description

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Passing confronts the reality of racial passing. The novel focuses on two childhood friends Clare and Irene, both of whom are light skinned enough to pass as white, who have reconnected with one another after many years apart. Clare has chosen to pass while Irene has embraced her racial heritage and become an important member of her community. The Novel examines how people pass on many different levels and in many different ways. Some forms of passing are perfectly acceptable while others can lead to disaster.

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The heroine of Passing takes an elevator from the infernal August Chicago streets to the breezy rooftop of the heavenly Drayton Hotel, "wafted upward on a magic carpet to another world, pleasant, quiet, and strangely remote from the sizzling one that she had left below." Irene is black, but like her author, the Danish-African American Nella Larsen (a star of the 1920s to mid-1930s Harlem Renaissance and the first black woman to win a Guggenheim creative-writing award), she can "pass" in white society. Yet one woman in the tea room, "fair and golden, like a sunlit day," keeps staring at her, and eventually introduces herself as Irene's childhood friend Clare, who left their hometown 12 years before when her father died. Clare's father had been born "on the left hand"--he was the product of a legal marriage between a white man and a black woman and therefore cut off from his inheritance. So she was raised penniless by white racist relatives, and now she passes as white. Even Clare's violent white husband is in the dark about her past, though he teases her about her tan and affectionately calls her "Nig." He laughingly explains: "When we were first married, she was white as--as--well as white as a lily. But I declare she's getting darker and darker." As Larsen makes clear, Passing can also mean dying, and Clare is in peril of losing her identity and her life.

The tale is simple on the surface--a few adventures in Chicago and New York's high life, with lots of real people and race-mixing events described (explicated by Thadious M. Davis's helpful introduction and footnotes). But underneath, it seethes with rage, guilt, sex, and complex deceptions. Irene fears losing her black husband to Clare, who seems increasingly predatory. Or is this all in Irene's mind? And is everyone wearing a mask? Larsen's book is a scary hall of mirrors, a murder mystery that can't resolve itself. It sticks with you. --Tim Appelo

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Customer Reviews

Brilliant read.
Nella Larsen is one of those authors who, after reading her work, I can't really believe I'd never heard of before, and her slim novella, Passing, is the perfect example old saying about how good things come in small packages. Larsen was not the most prominent writer of the Harlem Renaissance but she manages to tackle race relations--the condition of being black in America at a time when it was really seen as a condition of the body, mind, and soul--in a way that no author before or since has done to the same extent.

When I was reading Passing, I couldn't help thinking that it was like a play, and indeed, the book is set up to mimic that setting with three clearly defined "acts." In Act One, two light-skinned black women meet in a Chicago restaurant while they are both passing as white. Irene Redfield is passing for the day, for convenience's sake, to get a seat in a whites-only restaurant; her estranged childhood friend Claire Kendry Bellew has crossed over for good. Claire is raising a white child with her white husband, who has no idea of his wife's heritage and even mocks her for her tolerance of Negroes. Though the women recognized the danger of renewing their old friendship, both seem intoxicated by the fluid, malleable position they occupy in society, and both crave, to a certain extent, what the other has. Staid Irene is dazzled by Claire's recklessness, and Claire misses the identity she put off in favor of her new one. In Act Two, the women return to their lives in New York, but can't help reaching out to the other, which leads to a dangerous showdown in the final, revealing scene.

Passing is not just a story of an American phenomenon which is mostly undiscussed today. Though it is that: and perhaps that's why Larsen is not taught in schools. The current teachable oeuvre has its emphasis on embracing blackness, the proud heritage, the strengths, the success of overcoming. Larsen makes no bones about admitting that at a certain time, it was better to white if you could manage it; or at least easier, open to more privileges, I should say. At the same time, Irene is proud to be an African-American, and her home life is not that of what you would expect. She is affluent, educated, and a sophisticated member of the black upper class, while the "luckier" Claire appears to have made her new life among attitudes of willful ignorance. Still, when Claire begins to captivate those in Irene's circle, including Irene's husband, Brian, Irene must face her own growing knowledge that her happy life, her pride in her identity, has perhaps been a sham. She begins to see that race, something she has tried to ignore, is more prevalent in her life than she had previously thought.

The result is an explosive mix of jealousy, anger, frustration, and humiliation, a powder keg of emotions. Larsen wasn't a very prolific writer in her career; perhaps it was because of the care she took with what she did write. To compare her to one who wrote at the same time would be apt: she takes the same care with language that Fitzgerald does with his Gatsby. Every word feels determinedly chosen to elicit a response, or provide a clue as to what the ultimate resolution of the story might be.

The one misstep comes during this explosive ending--there's a bit of deus-ex-machination going on when someone arrives somewhere they shouldn't be at just the wrong exact time to set everything off, but ultimately, Passing is a novel that is pretty damned near perfect, and pretty damned near original in its kind. We should read Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. DuBois, but there is nothing wrong with reading Larsen's ode to both pride and self-hatred, too. Passing exposes a new and different photograph of the time period and its emotional pitfalls. And more than that, it narrows the gap between prejudice and personal experience to a dangerously small margin. While other writers celebrate their black heritage, Larsen is asking, "What is black?" What does it mean? And how can it possibly matter in the ways people persist in thinking it does?

The epigram for this novel was taken from a poem by Countee Cullen: What is Africa to me? And indeed, Passing begs the question: what is Africa to someone like Claire Kendry, three centuries removed, with her seven white grandparents and her ivory skin? Larsen's answer is, of course, that it is nothing and everything, all at once. And then she turns the question on her white readers with subversive force: If Africa is all these things to yellow-haired Claire Kendry--what might it be to you, too?

Constance Reader reviews books at [...]

2010-07-27 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Love it!
This was a requirement for my online College class. I ordered it for next day delivery, because I initially ordered the wrong edition. It's a must have!

2010-05-20 | Lin (Yonkers,NY) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A thoughtful and intriguing book
This novel is a remarkable story of two early twentieth century African American women who had grown up together but whose lives diverged as they grew up. When a chance encounter brings them together again after a number of years, we learn that one married a black man and became active in the Harlem Renaissance; the other -- who was light-skinned enough to "pass" -- married a white man (a racist one, at that), leaving her heritage and previous identity behind. Can one truly reinvent oneself? How succesfully can one construct a self out of nothing?

I used this book in leading discussions for a college-level American history class. It never failed to generate ideas and interest.

2010-05-08 (Boston, MA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Passing
I love this story by Nella Larson. The essay in the book are alright, too.

2009-11-02 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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On time as expected (as usual).
As always, I got the book within a week of ordering it. Great book for doing research.

2008-09-19 | teacher mom (Monroe, LA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Quicksand and Passing

Description

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are both of her novels, Passing and Quicksand. Quicksand, was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance amid a deeply religious society. The novel is deeply pessimistic and ends as the protagonist is sucked into a life that is at odds with all that she had desired. Passing confronts the reality of racial passing. The novel focuses on two childhood friends Clare and Irene, both of whom are light skinned enough to pass as white, who have reconnected with one another after many years apart. Clare has chosen to pass while Irene has embraced her racial heritage and become an important member of her community. The Novel examines how people pass on many different levels and in many different ways. Some forms of passing are perfectly acceptable while others can lead to disaster.

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Customer Reviews

good seller
I received the book quickly and it was in the condition the seller described it as. Thank you.

2009-06-26 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A prescription
Being already mesmerized by the great Toni Morrison, I was quite surprised to literally "fall" on this book (found in a box of free books).
I'd say that Morrison is a pre-Larsen, but then, I may be finding out that these black ladies who write - so well - are very preocuppied with their race. Obviously, it's allright with me as it is exactly that fact that interests me very much. I learn in novels because it is part-reality, part-fiction.
(Please don't blame a white French-Canadian man for that.Curiosity doesn't kill this cat)
I began with Passing, as the story appealed to me. And I simply loved it. Never knew that passing existed (innocent me again) and this makes a large subject to cover. This, Larsen does delicately. And with great impact.
Next, Quicksand. I read it with much attention but got a bit lost towards the end. Something about a lack of proper closure for this novel made me feel like the author lost some interest in it or didn't know herself how to complete it. But, she does make her point clear.
(all that already pointed out in the intro, that should have been put at the end of the book, not at the beginning. Read it last too...).
A search on the net made me find out that Larsen is being studied in many different schools in America. This kind of prescribed reading may disgust some people (like us here who all had to read The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy) but bear in mind that teachers makes us read the real stuff. I invite you too go for it, especially Passing, that is really a great novel... with much to make us think about.

2008-01-19 | Ravel is my cat's name... but he can't write. (Montréal, Québec Canada) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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Amazing Narrative and Multi-Faceted Topics
Passing is an amazing narrative. A key to the success of the narrative in Nella Larsen's Passing is the use of a limited third-person narrator, because it allows the villain to hide. Through the voice of Irene Redfield, characterizations get meted out as she sees fit, and only by Irene's portraits of others can we arrive at her own characteristics and motivations. As Irene describes and interacts with others, she unwittingly betrays her shrewd plans. Whether done subconsciously or not, her subtle actions and inactions tattle on her, yet she keeps the narrative vague enough that she comes off as a victim of Clare. Irene paints herself as a sheep and Clare as a wolf, when in fact the opposite is true. The affair that presumably takes place between Clare and Brian seems to catch Irene off-guard.

Keep an eye on Irene.

Amazing narrative on several levels. The crossing of domains in this novella is outstanding. Because Irene has control of the narrative, the childhood events and characterizations indict Clare as untrustworthy instead of as a misfortunate child who overcomes great obstacles. This distrust raises questions later on when Clare all but moves into Irene's house, and Irene doesn't protest for an "obscure reason."

2005-11-30 | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5

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2 nicely paired novellas
Quicksand is one of my favorite fictional stories. In truth, the word "fiction" can not adequately touch upon the essence of this novel. Helga Green's biographical information is nearly identical to that of Nella Larson, and in Helga we, the readers, see a reflection of Ms. Larsen.

Helga is a heroine, tragic not because of her fate, but of her resignation to her fate and inability to rise above it. Larsen realizes the bonds of racism and sexism that held steadfastedly in place, whether it's in Harlem or Copenhagen. A reader may either sympathesize with Helga's plight or sneer at her stupidity. But perhaps that's what Larson wants to portray. Sometimes one is irrational when it comes to the matters of the heart or the lack of. Even the most intelligent of us. We would gasp in surprise if the same fate fell upon others but would seem resigned when we are in the same situation.

Passing is considered by many critics as Larsen's "lesser novella." True, it is not as riveting as Quicksand, but it explores deeper issues of gender and the color barrier. While in Quicksand the relationship between Helga and Anne is at best lightly touched upon, the one between Clare and Irene is more complex and poignant.

Throughout the novel(la), there is a tinge of homoeroticism, if you read between the lines. This is a story, not so much of the tragic mulatta (even though tragedy tends to overshadow all else in Larsen's work), nor merely of the phenomenon of passing for white, but of two women's exploration of their own gender, sexual, and racial roles in the tumulous society of upper middle-class Harlem.

Both stories written in the early 1930s period, this book features Larsen at her best. Even though the endings to both are quite anti-climatic, one should find in her stories enough food for thought and a quite thorough insight into female African American conflicts and culture during the Renaissance era.

2005-07-29 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Only read Quicksand--wonderful book
I read this book years ago, in college. It made me much more sympathetic to the struggles of biracial (black and white) women, of the past and today -- I am an Asian-American female. The book is a beautifully written, but painful story of how the protagonist moves through her life in societies where she is kept down on many levels (socially, economically, psychologically, physically) -- basically her journey through the "quicksand" of classism, racism, and sexism. The book deserves a wide audience.

2004-11-27 | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

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The Complete and Unabridged Fiction of Nella Larsen

Description

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are both of her novels, Passing and Quicksand, as well as all three of her published short stories; "Freedom," "The Wrong Man, "and "Sanctuary." Quicksand, was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance amid a deeply religious society. The novel is deeply pessimistic and ends as the protagonist is sucked into a life that is at odds with all that she desired. Passing confronts the reality of racial passing. The novel focuses on two childhood friends Clare and Irene, both of whom are light skinned enough to pass as white, who have reconnected with one another after many years apart. Clare has chosen to pass while Irene has embraced her racial heritage and become an important member of her community. The Novel examines how people pass on many different levels and in many different ways. Some forms of passing are perfectly acceptable while others can lead to disaster.

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An Intimation of Things Distant: The Collected Fiction of Nella Larsen

Description

Here, for the first time in one volume, are the novels Quicksand and Passing with corrected endings, and three short stories, all by Nella Larsen, "mystery woman" of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first black woman to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Foreword by Marita Golden.

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