Henry Van Dyke

Henry L. Van Dyke, Jr. (October 3, 1928 – December 22, 2011) was an American novelist, editor, teacher and musician.

Biography Henry Van Dyke was born in Allegan, Michigan, United States, on October 3, 1928, to an academic family. He spent his childhood in Montgomery, Alabama, where his father taught at Alabama State Teachers College.

He returned to Michigan for high school, and his first ambition was to become a concert pianist. He enrolled in the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and planned to study music, but his father tried to force him to pursue pre-medical studies, so he dropped of university and joined the United States Army instead.

While at Michigan, he had won an Avery Hopwood Award for Fiction, which steered him toward creative writing. After moving to New York and getting on the editorial staff of Basic Books he settled down to serious writing in his spare time, and in 1965 his first novel, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes, was picked up by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. He would later write three more novels.

Throughout his life, Van Dyke had many friendships that crossed all racial and class lines, including Carl Van Vechten, who photographed him, Oxford don and writer Iris Murdoch, Bobby Short, whom he visited in the South of France, Patricia Neal, whom he took to the Carlyle to hear Bobby Short, and Lord Edward Montagu. Van Dyke also liked to describe his encounters with opera divas Jessye Norman and Leontyne Price. Beyond opera, his musical tastes were broad, ranging from Brahms and Scriabin to jazz.

Works

Fiction Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1965) Blood of Strawberries (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969) The Dead Piano (Farrar, Straus and Giroux,1971, reprinted by W. W. Norton, 1997) Lunacy and Caprice (W.W. Norton and Company 1987, Ballantine Books, 1987)