Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1922, and it was a sensation — the kind of novel that defines a social moment. Peter Whiffle is a young man of independent means who devotes his life to the project of writing a great book. He studies aestheticism, decadence, realism, and naturalism in turn; he travels to Paris, Florence, and New York; he consorts with artists, writers, and socialites; he plans elaborate literary projects that would synthesize all knowledge into a single perfect volume. He never writes a word.
The joke is obvious but Van Vechten sustains it brilliantly across 300 pages because Peter’s failure is not laziness but an excess of sensibility — he is too alive to every possibility to commit to any single one. The narrator, a thinly disguised Van Vechten, follows Peter through the salons, studios, and restaurants of prewar bohemia, recording his enthusiasms and abandonments with affectionate irony. The real pleasure of the novel is its atmosphere: the world it evokes — of artists’ cafés, private libraries, costume balls, and endless theoretical arguments about the nature of art — is rendered with the precision of someone who lived in it and saw through it simultaneously.
The novel is also a roman à clef, and contemporary readers delighted in identifying the originals of Van Vechten’s characters. Edith Dale is widely understood to be Mabel Dodge Luhan; other figures map onto Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, and various fixtures of the Arensberg circle. Knopf’s elegant production — the house was young and hungry for attention — made the physical book itself an object of aesthetic pleasure, which suited its subject perfectly.
Collecting Peter Whiffle
First edition (Knopf, New York, 1922): Yellow cloth with paper label. The Knopf first editions from this period are handsome books and increasingly collectible.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $150–$400
- Without jacket: $30–$75
- Signed copies: $200–$500