Parties: Scenes from Contemporary New York Life was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930, and it was Van Vechten’s final novel — he never wrote another, turning instead to photography. The timing was significant: Parties is a book about the last days of the Jazz Age, written by someone who had been one of its principal chroniclers and was now watching it die.
David and Rilda Westlake are a married couple who drink too much, spend too much, and attend too many parties — which is to say they are representative New Yorkers of 1929. The novel follows them through a series of increasingly frantic social events, each one a little more desperate, a little less fun, as the economy collapses and the speakeasy culture that sustained their world begins to dissolve. Characters drink themselves into stupors, have affairs that mean nothing, and wake up the next afternoon to do it again.
The novel was poorly received — critics found it thin and repetitive — but it has gained retrospective interest as a document of a specific historical moment: the transition from the excess of the twenties to the austerity of the thirties, observed from inside by someone who had no distance from his material. Van Vechten’s refusal to moralize about his characters’ behavior, which had seemed sophisticated in 1922, seemed irresponsible in 1930 — the world wanted seriousness, and he was still offering champagne.
Collecting Parties
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1930): Cloth binding with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- Without jacket: $15–$40