John W. Vandercook, although still in his early twenties, has already gained fame as a travel writer and as an anthropologist. But he has not always been an explorer hacking his way through jungles, for he has also spent two years as an actor and three as a reporter. He has been to every Negro republic on the face of the globe. With his young wife, a well-known sculptor, he spent many months in Haiti studying psychological and political conditions, and gathering material for his biography of the Black Emperor—Henry Christophe—whose story he has told so vividly in Black Majesty.
His first book, Tom-Tom, was written as result of a visit to Suriname in South America, when he went into the jungle and lived with the natives, studying their extraordinary civilization.
TOM-TOM
Tom-Tom, Vandercook's first book, aroused unusual interest not only in the literary world, but among those interested in primitive peoples and primitive psychology.
Arthur E. Spingarn, noted Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, wrote to the author: "Tom-Tom is written in the spirit of Rousseau and Chateaubriand, but the Negro has a right to such idealization as much as the Indian. It is a fascinating and enlightening book and deserves a great success. My slight acquaintance with the Guianas made it all the more real to me."
The strange world so vividly evoked in Tom-Tom lies deep in the treacherous jungles of Suriname, on the north coast of South America, Its inhabitants are bush Negroes, a remarkable and almost unknown people descended from African slaves brought to Suriname nearly two hundred years ago. "In the great jungle," writes Mr. Vandercook, "they have builded a society, a philosophy, a science, and an art which belongs in the jungle and enables them to live there, to triumph over the disasters of material misfortune, and attune their hearts and minds to the weird mood of the forest. . . ." Mr. Vandercook tells the story of that civilization and the valiant struggle that made it possible. He has captured the wonder of jungle life; he has written with sympathy and comprehension of the devious and fascinating psychology of the remarkable bush Negroes and the extraordinary things they have accomplished. There is a haunting beauty in Tom-Tom with its graphic descriptions of the great forests and the lives of those who live there.
