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"[Cane] has been reverberating in me to anastonishing degree. I love it passionately; could not possibly exist without it." —Alice WalkerA literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear.
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Customer Reviews (23)

An important novel
When Ralph Waldo Emerson penned his famous essay The Poet in the middle of the 19th century, there was no real "American Literature." Yes, there was literature written in the United States, by "American" authors, with some semblance of American settings and American themes, but the most popular works of that time were, for all intents and purposes, very much British (booo). The American literary identity was still forming. Everything from poetry to drama (can anyone name the first real example of American drama?) to the novel had a decidedly British "accent."

The only real American form at that time was short fiction. Mark Twain certainly could not be confused with Dickens. Likewise, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville can all be considered founding fathers of a truly American literary genre, the short story. Yet, Hawthorne's style still existed within the decorum of the British tradition, Poe set a great deal of his works in Gothic, European landscapes and Melville was, well, Melville ...

It was not until Walt Whitman that an authentic, unapologetic, and rightfully contradictory American voice was heard in literature. Whitman the poet, like Whitman the man, was gruff, emotional, independent, curious, observant, sensual, and very much the new American Adam. However, while Whitman was changing poetics forever, the American novel was still locked in British conventions of form. That is, until, Jean Toomer.

Toomer's Cane was something unlike any novel the world had ever seen - a literary gumbo of poetry, folk drama, short fiction, gospel and Homeric epic. Its narrative, a non-linear thread of vignettes, moves from the piney woods of South Georgia to the urban landscapes of Washington, D.C. and Chicago and back again. In these rich scenes, Toomer traces the drama and tragedy of the African American experience, first in slavery and then in the oppressive post-Civil War Jim Crow era.


Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

The novel is a a cultural masterpiece of both folk and literary tradition, yet challenges convention at every turn. Prose reads like poetry, poetry serves as chapters. Toomer translates oral formulaic forms, like call and response and poetic refrain, into literary devices that sing from the page like living voices. His novel may be the most underrated work in the American literary canon. Toomer was 50 years or more ahead of his time - we are just now realizing his genius. I've been in love with this novel since I first picked it up from a used book store 20 years ago and I feel it belongs on every serious reader's to-do list.

Great seller!
The book came quickly and was in the promised shape. Will definitely but from this seller in the future.

Excellent
This is not a book that is likely to be appreciated by the pabulum fed mass readership of today, because it requires emotional and intellectual engagement, and refuses to give answers, while wishing its readers to take what they need at each reading. It is also still relevant because its form's perpetual renewal transcends its time, even its use of outdated terms. Look at other black fiction from the era and you will see that Cane is still relevant and undated. Even compared to the later, limp, stereotyped tales of an Alice Walker or Toni Morrison this book is visionary, however focused its beam.Some critics, over the decades, have tried to autobiographize the book, out of the necessity of their inability to relate to black art, and black culture, and Toomer's alleged ambivalence on the subject of race and class in America because he was a light-skinned black, whom some of his black critics even doubted was black, but that is a mistake, for every work reveals something of its author, if only in his choice of subject matter. Toomer may have been any of a dozen of his characters, but that is not the point of the book. He is and isn't those characters, but the truth is it does not matter, for all sugar cane has the same fate, and that was the point. Another thing to note is that of all the so-called jazz poems or works of `written' jazz- prose or poetry, none is more true to the improvisational darting nature of that dying musical form than this book. That is why any deeper analysis of themes, motives, and characters is bound to be superfluous, at least in a mere review, because a reader will inevitably, and as Toomer wanted, see something else in this Rorschachian book. And that's a very good thing.

Perfection
This is the most amazing book.I am so sad that Jean Toomer did not write any other fiction.

Wonderful reading
Cane is a collection of short stories that are loosely connected by theme and mood. It seems that the characters are very stifled by their environment. The main characters of each story seem to be either too introspective to include anyone in their lives or too extrospective/judgmental to form an honest bond with anyone. One quote from the book I think sums it up: "Time and space do not exist in a canefield." I think Toomer was saying that slavery still exists, but rather within the souls of black people. The memory or the history of it is the root of a very serious unhappiness, which begets stagnation, indifference and social impotence. ... Read more

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Aphorisms about modern man and his relationship with technology and society ... Read more

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An Exploration of The Work
For the three days, I've been carrying around a little book, "Essentials: Jean Toomer."
This 90 page book illustrates Jean Toomer is far more powerful far than what is usually granted, by narrow racialists, to this author of "Cane". I believe Toomer is one of the the most important thinkers of the twentieth century.

Toomer's "Cane" was published in 1923, is considered by many to be the first literary work of the Harlem Renaissance. "Cane" was published before he met Gurdjieff. "Essentials" was published in 1931, seven years after he met Gurdjieff and while he was leading a group of people in Chicago who were attempting to practice the Gurdjieff's system of pyschological/philosphical method of living. "Essentials" had a very small run and was uninteresting to most of those people expecting a repeat "Cane." Here is a sample of some of Toomer's aphorisms: "Men are inclined either to work without hope, or hope without work. ... Social ills are caused by man's wish to have results greater than his efforts. "
This "Essentials: Jean Toomer" is an edited version of "Essentials" and has been re-published by Rudolph Byrd, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Nothing has been taken out of "Essentials"; however, something is added:
1. the former unpublished introduction, by Gorham Munson, written for the original.
2. a preface by Charles Johnson, African American author of National Book Award winning "Middle Passage"

Johnson says, "In American Literature, Toomer is unique -- a metaphysical pioneering genius, and this volume ['essentials'] of distilled reflections are indeed essential for the [twenty-first century]."

GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN
Jean Toomer was one of the great literary figures from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. His signature work, Cane, is known by most people who have studied African-American literatureo. Lesser known to readers is this brilliant work, Essentials, published in 1931.

After his success with Cane, Toomer disappeared from the literary scene to pursue his own philosophical and psychological inquiries. He went against the grain of his time which believed African-Americans were not capable of exploring the world of metaphysics, let alone psychology. Toomer, way ahead of his time proved them wrong as he sought enlightenment in the teachings of George Gurdjieff. During this time (1924-1935), Toomer published this slim volume offering his attempts to grapple with the experience of what it means to be human.

Essentials is a collection of Toomer's ponderings in his search for wholeness in a fragmented world. Drawing on modern psychology and eastern religious belief Toomer falls into the comapny of Emerson, Thoreau and Gibran as he deals with that which is transcendent. He revives the use of aphorisms to convey timeless truths in a world which is incable of moving beyond its limited definitions of life.

Long ignored, this work gives us a glimpse of Toomer's metaphysical side. Through it we capture another alternative view of dealing with reality. It is essential reading for anyone interested in metaphysics, African-American literature, Toomer and as an example of a Black writer who refused to be limited by definitions of race for his life. Think on his words. Grow in the wisdom shared by a great literary giant of the 20th century. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is the only collected edition of poems by Jean Toomer, the enigmatic American writer, Gurdjieffian guru, and Quaker convert who is perhaps best known for his 1923 lyrical narrative Cane.The fifty-five poems here—most of them previously unpublished—chart a fascinating evolution of artistic consciousness.

The book is divided into sections reflecting four distinct periods of creativity in Toomer's career.The Aesthetic period includes Imagist, Symbolist, and other experimental pieces, such as "Five Vignettes," while "Georgia Dusk" and the newly discovered poem "Tell Me" come from Toomer' s Ancestral Consciousness period in the early 1920s."The Blue Meridian" and other Objective Consciousness poems reveal the influence of idealist philosopher Georges Gurdjieff.Among the works of this period the editor presents a group of local color poems picturing the landscape of the American Southwest, including "Imprint for Rio Grande.""It Is Everywhere," another newly discovered poem, celebrates America and democratic idealism.The Quaker religious philosophy of Toomer's final years is demonstrated in such Christian Existential works as "They Are Not Missed" and "To Gurdjieff Dying."

Robert Jones's clear and comprehensive introduction examines the major poems in this volume and serves as a guide through the stages of Toomer's evolution as an artist and thinker. The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer will prove essential to Toomer's admirers as well as to scholars and students of modern poetry, Afro-American literature, and American studies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What About The Works of the writer.
I really wish that some pepole out there would focus more on Mr. Toomer's writing talents and noton this whole "was he or wasn't he" about his racial background.I believe that Jean Toomer's words are powerful and universal for all people! His imagery is so amazing it's almost visual, and he is able to make the political deeply personal and not preachy. The works of this brilliant writer is far more important to me than the tiresome, trivial, and unfortunate pettiness of some individuals who want to argue about a subject that is designed to be derisive and distracting in a time when "Rome is Burning!"

This book is greatly recommened! Please add it to your library. ... Read more

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Gives Great Insite into Cane and Toomer and Their Respective Place in the Harlem Renaissance
I'd recomend this book to anyone interested in digging deeper into the mistery that is Cane and Jean Toomer.Their is some litterary analysis but mostly the book disects Cane's role in the H.R. and the spiritual, racial, and philosophical motives Toomer may have intended by his novel and some that he may not have.By reading the essays in this book one can begin to understand the person Jean Toomer was and why Cane was over-looked in its time and is today an important work of the Harlem Renaissance. ... Read more

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Toomer letters reveal the writer's complexities
THE LETTERS OF JEAN TOOMER, 1919-1924, edited by Mark Whalen, with a Foreword by Barbara Foley. U. of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN; [...]. 2006. 249+xliv pp. $[...] hardcover, ISBN 1-57233-470-3. notes, appendix, bibliography, index.
Lewis Mumford, Alfred Steiglitz, Harte Crane, Countee Cullen, and Sherwood Anderson were among the notables of his era the leading Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer corresponded with. Toomer's letters to these and others have meticulous notes by Whalen, a lecturer in American literature at the U. of Exeter; which notes give a pronounced biographical and critical dimension to the volume. Most of the letters are now at the Beinecke Library at Yale. They were written in the few years surrounding the publication of Toomer's book "Cane" which brought him into the spotlight. Not only this and other works, but also many of the letters try to come to grips with Toomer's complex racial make-up. In a letter to his publisher Horace Liveright, he writes, "My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine...Feature Negro if you wish, but do not expect me to feature it in advertisements for you...Whatever statements I give will inevitably come from a synthetic human and art point of view; not from a racial one." Such letters record Toomer's finely-tuned thoughts on social, political, and literary realities and issues in America at the time. The letters from the relatively short period associated with the completion and publication of Toomer's signature work "Cane" give a crystallized picture of the psychology, values, and aims of this author. ... Read more

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Cane one of the major works of the Harlem Renaissance and Jean Toomer’s imagist masterpiece, is now a part of the canon in Afro-American literature. Teaching Jean Toomer’s 1923 Cane is a unique literary tool that explores the brilliance and far-sighted vision of Toomer, allowing Cane to be taught holistically as a discovery process, using the blues motif and the poetic essay. This book’s text and figures ground a discussion of Cane’s enigmatic and figurative language, connecting the Harlem Renaissance to the Negritude Movement and to later Afro-centric literary movements. This book also reviews P.B.S. Pinchback’s legacy as a non-Negro, able to pass easily in white society, the influence of Ouspensky, H. L Mencken’s critical work, The Paris Brotherhood, and "Saccaharum officinarum-G." Like the lunar arcs dividing Cane, the book works as an instructional map. The pictures from the first complete production also tell a remarkable story. ... Read more

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Review-"Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 Cane"
I had seen a few of the poems from Jean Toomer's book Cane in the various Black Poetry anthologies that I had collected, however I really had no clear knowledge of the importance of this work in the American literary landscape until reading Chezia Thompson Cager's, "Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 CANE." What I knew about Toomer or P.B.S. Pinchback before I read this book I could have put in a thimble. I knew Toomer was a bi-racial writer with sensibilities like Whitman, who moved between the Negro and Caucasian societies, and that his form of spirituality differed from most other Blacks in early 20th century America.

My understanding of Toomer was that he was a bit of a humanist - and I called the disembodied poems I had read in the various anthologies beautiful. I clearly did not understand how the metaphors in these poems related to the larger body of work in "Cane," or know how they reflected a complex view of the psychology of the Negro in 1920 America.

Thompson-Cager's analysis of "Cane" occurs on two levels. One gives the reader an in depth understanding of Toomer's social, intellectual, and spiritual development, which is juxtaposed alongside the history of the evolution of the African peoples in America. Her perspective is unique as she explores reasons behind this literary construction, which had previously eluded other critiques.

Thompson-Cager uses what is called "The Vertical Technique" in her analysis of "Cane". The text of Cane is explained using the following 4 stages of development; "The Incursion Cycle which depicts an attack on someone or something, The Atrophy Cycle Depicts the withering away of someone or something, The Destruction Cycle Depicts the annihilation or negative transformation of someone or something, and the rejuvenation Cycle Depicts the rebirth or the promise of a rebirth of someone or something." Thompson-Cager states that "The Vertical Technique puts all Africana people in the process of resolving a series of problems. Miraculously, Cane identifies and explores many of these problems still relevant in the twenty first century". (90) We could look at the people in Iraq over the past century, and use this same technique to write their multitude of stories.

Charts and diagrams demonstrate the function of the "vertical technique" and provide a roadmap to where each of the characters of Cane fit in the larger picture. The parallel information dealing with the history of the times which included issues around the inability of characters to realize artistic potential because of racial inequality, lack of women's rights, the implications of the Black migration, and the introduction of "legal" addictive narcotics into the culture,provides an excellent foundation for understanding the psychology of the culture as a whole.

After reading "Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 Cane," I came away with a better understanding of the metaphors in "Cane." As I re-read "Cane", I fully admired how Toomer loved the work of manipulating language. I did not see the text as disjointed ramblings, but rather a complex series of interdependent portraits created in such a way that they would not cause too much discomfort in the status quo. The language of "Cane" so eloquently describes some of the most inhumane acts and through Thompson-Cager's analysis, the code is broken.

"Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 CANE" is a challenging read, however like most challenges it has much to offer educators and writers.I highly recommend it to those who are interested in honing perspectives on the human condition and to those who want to try a different approach to the work of writing as witness.

There is a two disc companion CD that accompanies this work, "Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 CANE, The Performance", Adapted and Directed by Chezia Thompson Cager. This is an archival recording of a 1978 performance of "Cane". Photographs of the production are included in the book "Teaching Jean Toomer's 1923 CANE."I found that hearing the voices and dialects of the characters was essential to fully experiencing the "blues motif" style of "Cane". The quality of the CD is reminiscent of listening to a 45 on the Victrola, so older listeners will experience a bit of nostalgia, while younger listeners may be somewhat impatient with the lo-tech, no frills, true to the period quality of the disc.

Linda Joy Burke
Poet and Writer


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In times of political or social uncertainties the poet usually takes on the mantle of prophet, priest, or seer. He becomes not just the custodian of justice, but also the symbolic voice of the unified society. It is these unique and peculiar roles that Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Claude McKay (USA), and Jean Toomer (USA) used poetry as a medium to enunciate their anxieties, frustrations, doubts, hopes, and desires about the repressive systems in their respective countries. ... Read more

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The author aims to illuminate the theoretical basis to Jean Toomer's later literary works by examining his enthusiasm for the theories of the Russian psychologist and philosopher, Georgei Gurdjieff. ... Read more

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Jean Toomer achieved instant recognition as a critic and thinker in 1923 with the publication of his novel ^ICane^R, a harsh, eloquent vision of black American hardship and suffering. But because of his reclusive, introspective nature, Toomer's fame waned in later years, and today his other contributions to American thought and literature are all but forgotten. Now, this collection of unpublished writings restores a crucial dimension to our understanding of this important African American author. ... Read more

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This is a comprehensive biography on Jean Toomer who was known as the Herald of the Harlem Renaissance. The author delves into the esoteric nature of many of Toomer's life experiences. ... Read more

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Jean Toomer's adamant stance against racism and his call for a raceless society were far more complex than the average reader of works from the Harlem Renaissance might believe. In To Make a New Race Jon Woodson explores the intense influence of Greek-born mystic G. I. Gurdjieff on the thinking of Toomer and his coterie--Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larson, George Schuyler, Wallace Thurman--and, through them, the mystic's influence on many of the notables in African American literature.
Gurdjieff, born of poor Greco-Armenian parents on the Russo-Turkish frontier, espoused the theory that man is asleep and in prison unless he strains against the major burdens of life, especially those of identification, like race. Toomer, whose novel Cane became an inspiration to many later Harlem Renaissance writers, traveled to France and labored at Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. Later, the writer became one of the primary followers approved to teach Gurdjieff's philosophy in the United States.
Woodson's is the first study of Gurdjieff, Toomer, and the Harlem Renaissance to look beyond contemporary portrayals of the mystic in order to judge his influence. Scouring correspondence, manuscripts, and published texts, Woodson finds the direct links in which Gurdjieff through Toomer played a major role in the development of "objective literature." He discovers both coded and explicit ways in which Gurdjieff's philosophy shaped the world views of writers well into the 1960s. Moreover Woodson reinforces the extensive contribution Toomer and other African-American writers with all their international influences made to the American cultural scene.

Jon Woodson, an associate professor of English at Howard University in Washington, D.C., is a contributor to the collection, Black American Poets Between Worlds, 1940-1960. He has published articles in African American Review and other journals. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

This book marks new critical space
Previous critics have written about Toomer's biography, its interconnections with his art and the art of his contemporaries. However,no other critic to date have given so much prominence and meaningfulprominence to the philosophicalinfluence Gurdjieff had upon such blackwriters as Larsen, Schuyler, Thurman and Hurston. His interpretation isthoroughly grounded in firm intellectual work.

A must have
To Make a New Race is a must have book for all literary scholars and those interested in African American history. I received it this morning and haven't put it down since. Woodson does a fine job of decoding the influnceof Gurdijeff and Toomer on the writers and artists of the HarlemRenaissance ... Read more

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Jean Toomer's Cane was the first major text of the Harlem Renaissance and the first important modernist text by an African-American writer. It powerfully depicts the terror in the history of American race relations, a public world of lynchings, race riots, and Jim Crow, and a private world of internalized conflict over identity and race which mirrored struggles in the culture at large. Toomer's own life reflected that internal conflict, and he has been an ambiguous figure in literary history, an author who wrote a text that had a tremendous effect on African-American authors but who eventually tried to distance himself from Cane and from his identification as a black writer. In Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History, Charles Scruggs and Lee VanDemarr examine original sources - Toomer's rediscovered early writings on politics and race, his extensive correspondence with Waldo Frank, and unpublished portions of his autobiographies - to show how the cultural wars of the 1920s influenced the shaping of Toomer's book and his subsequent efforts to escape the racial definitions of American society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

In A Perfect World
I have not read any of Jean Toomer's work as of yet, only articles, some of his poems and this book about his life.The authors try to keep Toomer's varied accomplishments in perspective. They aim to correct misunderstandings regarding Toomer's position on race and offer his concept of the "universal man"; as one beyond racial boundaries.They also look closely at Toomer's inclination toward mysticism and spirituality. The authors find that Toomer's intense need to be perfect and whole gave focus to the many passions he embraced throughout his life. Jean's self-description in 1922 was as follows:

"Racially, I seem to have (who knows for sure) seven blood mixtures: French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish, and Indian. One half of my family is definitely colored.... And, I alone, as far as I know, have striven for a spiritual fusion analogous to the fact of racial intermingling."

Later in his life, about 1948, when he is plagued with illness, there remains continual unresolved problems with the black heritage of his racial make-up (his daughter Marjery was not informed of any of her racial heritage). He then says of himself:

"I do not really know myself, who I am, my selfhood, my spiritual identity, or what I am. I have some information about it, but also some misinformation, some misunderstanding, but much illusion. Real motivations? What is my aim, assuming that I have but one aim? I do not really know my wife, my child, my closest friends. I do not know anyone or anything."

I feel Jean Toomer was a man who was troubled by his heritage.He may have been better off to make a choice than to spend his life searching and hoping for a different world where race didn't matter.Although, I also feel that Jean was a head of his time in his thinking when he states that the racial issue in America would be resolved only when white America could accept the fact that its racial 'purity' was a myth...On the other hand, racial purity among blacks was just as much a myth and only encouraged defensiveness and unconscious imitation, like that of an adolescent who defines his revolt against his parents by the very values he istrying to renounce. Race, he said, was a fictional construct, of no use for understanding people."

It's true that whites are not pure, blacks are not pure, and race is a social (fictional) construct, now proven by science, but realistically physical appearance still determines for the most part what race a person is assumed to be, so therefore troubled times still remain in mixed-race cultures where some have not, as of yet, grasped this thinking.

Physically white, and he had every right to identify as such, but racially mixed, he just couldn't make a choice in a society that sees colors not just beings, brought to mind by his poem titled, "People."Toomer did not define himself as an African American but as an American. Toomer's lifelong effort to transcend what he regarded as the narrow divisions of race is fully explored in his works. Toomer's position on race is the principal reason for the absence of racial themes in his writings produced during and after his discovery of Gurdjieff and Quakerism, as well as for his conscious disassociation from Cane: the work that has earned him a central place in the African American literary tradition.A place he didn't really seem to want to be, despite his concept of the "universal man"; as one beyond racial boundaries.

Toomer's philosophy was a wonderful notion, but not realistic.In not telling his daughter about her ancestry, continuously marrying white, and in most of his pursuits, it seems he lived more of a white life despite his refusal to conform to a racial classification.

Jean has been both praised and condemned by black critics and authors.He did what he felt was best on the surface, but not necessarily what was best for his inner being.

This is a good book about an interesting man.

GREAT BOOK ON TOOMER!!
This is one of the best books I have ever read! Because I am a huge fan of CANE, I had to read this bio of Toomer. It is very detailed, very insightful, and provides a full view of Toomer and his family, leaving it to the reader to make a judgement about The Toomer family and Jean Toomer. I feel Toomer was a genius, and yes he was an egomaniac, but who cares? He was sensitive and spiritual and sexual and hungry for understanding and all those qualities come across in CANE and in this bio. Interestingly enough, his detatchment from blackness makes him more interesting because he forces you to think outside the box. [After all, the Black race is the only one in the US history to be said to hinge on "one drop" which is pretty ridiculous. "One drop" was a tool to keep lightskinned blacks from getting access to the money of their fathers.] I only wish Toomer could have written 1 or 2 more books in the vein of CANE.

Toomer rejected racist ideology...
The authors make it clear that Toomer rejected the racist ideologies of both 'blackness' and 'whiteness':

"And he had lived among blacks, among whites, among Jews, and in groups organized without racial labelsaround a shared interest such as literature or psychology, moving freelyfrom any one of these groups to any other. One mark of membership in the'colored' group, he said, was acceptance of the 'color line' with itsattendant expectations; neither his family nor he had ever been so bound.To be in the white group would also imply the exclusion of theother."

It's a great book!

We need more people like Jean Toomer today!
This is a great book focusing on a man who had the courage to reject society's efforts to impose a "racial" identity upon him. He steadfastly refused to be labeled "colored" (black) or "white" and considered classification the nemesis of mankind, a reflection of intellectual empty-headedness. A quote from the book:"Thus Toomer propounded the rather unpopular view that the racial issue in America would be resolved only when white America could accept the fact that its racial 'purity' was a myth, that indeed its racial isolation produced blandness and lack of character. On the other hand, racial purity among blacks was just as much a myth and only encouraged defensiveness and unconscious imitation, like that of an adolescent who defines his revolt against his parents by the very values he is trying to renounce. Race, he said, was a fictional construct, of no use for understanding people."We need more people like Jean Toomer today! ... Read more

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This book explores the significant intellectual impact the philosopher Jean Wahl had on the directions Gilles Deleuze took as a philosopher and writer of a philosophy of experimentation. The study of this influence also brings to light the significance of Deleuze's emphasis on "la pragmatique," inspired by Wahl's writings and teachings and his fascination with American pluralism and pragmatism, particularly that of William James. This book also attempts to put Deleuze's theories into action, to write in a deleuzian way about American "minor" literature and thought which Deleuze deemed "superior." This text inherently challenges and potentially provides an alternative way of reading/writing to standard critical approaches which Deleuze tells us necessarily reduce and distort a "minor" work's most lively, subtle and micro-politically efficient elements as they abort them from their "minoritarian" fields of meaning to coerce them into already existing, standard and standardizing concepts that belong to and reinforce the "Major Order's" organizational grid. ... Read more

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A close analysis of Toomer's poetry, letters, and essays
Split-Gut Song: Jean Toomer And The Poetics Of Modernity explores what it means to be a modern African-American poet by scrutinizing Jean Toomer's body of work, in particular "Cane", which was first published in 1923 and widely hailed as ushering in a truly artistic African-American literary tradition. Yet Toomer's experimental literature has often been viewed in terms of political radicalism rather than literary radicalism. Associate Professor of English Karen Jackson Ford offers a close analysis of Toomer's poetry, letters, and essays, extracting an analysis that explores a contradiction between traditional lyric poetry and the crushing pressures of modernity. Toomer's efforts to better understand and convey the tangled complexity that was race and art in 20th century America shines through in this articulate and carefully thought out work of literary criticism.
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Thoughtful and balanced
Nellie McKay's study of Jean Toomer is a careful and contexturalized assessment of Toomer and his writings.She resists the tendency in contemporary racial politics to applaud uncritically Toomer's assertions that he was not African American.As is quite obvious to anyone who has studied the 1920s in America, how one looked, as in skin color, was not the only factor that defined one's race; race was imposed brutally by a white institutional system using a variety of criteria; and it was also chosen by African Americans as a protest against the notion that the default American identity was European American. Toomer came from a long line of African Americans who made the political decision to define themselves as Negro despite their mixed-race heritage, in part as solidarity with those millions of darker skinned African Americans who could not "pass" into European-Americanness. Toomer broke with that tradition when he declared he was not Negro, a declaration made, interestingly, only after he had won fame for writing a book, Cane, that most, including his publishers, understood as a book by a Negro.Indeed, McKay's study was the first to interpret Cane as not necessarily a search for racial identity.This book deserves to be read as a needed antidote to the recent canonization of Toomer as a ideologist of post-blackness. ... Read more