Gentleman Jigger

Harlem Renaissance figure Nugent, who died in 1987, was a member of the self-proclaimed “Niggerati” that included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and others. His never before published roman à clef, written between 1928 and 1933, is a mess of a novel that’s still a useful first-hand account of Jazz Age identity politics. Book I features the exhilarating atmosphere of Harlem as the arts and intellectual movement catches fire. Unfortunately, the action is filtered through the eyes of Nugent’s alter ego, Stuartt, who despite an intriguing mix of characteristics—he’s a gay black man light-skinned enough to pass as white—is an insufferable narcissist. Shoehorned into the aimless scenes of gin-soaked parties—where Stuartt is always the star—are self-conscious but thought-provoking soliloquies about the age-old conundrum: race shouldn’t matter, but it does. Decidedly more provocative is Book II, in which a more vulnerable Stuartt moves to Greenwich Village and sleeps his way to the top of the Italian underworld. It’s shocking in the manner of pre-Code Hollywood, but the book, with its diffuse narrative and self-aggrandizing protagonist, suffers from its posthumous assembly. (Feb.)