Cane is a series of poems, prose sketches, and short stories by Jean Toomer. It's one of the most celebrated creations of the Harlem Renaissance, though Toomer himself, for most of his life, resisted the association. He maintained that he was not a Black author, but an American author. (Of "mixed-race" (this is a social category, as indeed, are "white" and "Black") Toomer was often identified as "white" during his life time.)
If you take Richard Wright as one pole in early 20th Century Black American letters, and Zora Neale Hurston as the other, Toomer fits in on the Hurston end of the spectrum. Cane has an intense lynching scene, but the book, for the most part, avoids what Toni Morrison called the "white gaze," to focus on, mostly, Black and mixed-race characters and their inner conflicts. The first third of the book focuses on ordinary folks in rural Georgia (where Toomer spent time as a school principle), the second on educated Blacks in Washington DC, and the third part is a single story, written almost as a play, that focuses on a Black man from the North, living in rural Georgia, and his friends who, though Southern-born, look down upon their less educated local neighbors.
A poet, Toomer writes very lyrical prose, and one of the pleasures of the book are his many descriptions, in prose and poetry, of the beauty of the land. He often includes human activities in these descriptions, such as spontaneous singing that accompanies the "folk" in their daily work, rest, and worship.
Here's an example from the last story, "Kabnis":
A false dusk has come early. The countryside is ashen, chill. Cabins and roads and canebrakes whisper. The church choir, dipping into a long silence, sings:
My Lord, what a mourning, My Lord, what a mourning, My Lord, what a mourning, When the stars begin to fall.
Softly luminous over the hills and valleys, the faint spray of a scattered star...
But Toomer does not romanticize his characters. You'll find pride and folly as well as innocence and wisdom in his stories. Many of his characters, especially the more educated ones, suffer from internal conflicts. Their minds ricochet from love (lust?) to hate, respect to contempt, and many seem to perpetually reach for a salvation, or at least a satisfaction, that seems to be just beyond their reach. And against this inner conflict, the physical world, with all it's beauty and song provides a counter-point that seems just as mocking as it is inspiring.
(view spoiler)[In the last story, "Kabnis" (from which the quote above comes) Kabnis, a school teacher from the North, and his educated friends bitch and moan about the cultural backwardness of their isolated, small town (the straight-laced, priggish, and imaginatively limited school principal is ridiculed -- who then fires Kabnis for no good reason at all). At the end of the story the focus switches to an elderly man who has taken up residence in Kabnis' friend's cellar (shades of Invisible Man!) This elderly man, whose name is John, and who is called "Father John" by the young Black woman who brings him food (he is, to be sure, not a blood relative of anybody in the story), His chooses not to speak, except for one word: "sin." The woman, Carrie, thinks Father John wants to say more. Kabnis can't hide his distain for the man and his speech, and for all the man's kindred souls: "that bastard race thats roamin round th country. It looks like sin, if thats what y mean."
Carrie encourages the old man, and "his lips begin to work. 'Th sin whats fixed ... upon th white folks ... f tellin Jesus ... lies. O th sin th white folks 'mitted when they made th Bible lie.'
"Light streaks through the iron-barred cellar window. Within its soft circle, the figures of Carrie and Father John.
"Outside, the sun arises from its cradle in the tree-tops of the forest. Shadows of pines are dreams the sun shakes from its eyes. The sun arises. Gold-glowing child, it steps into the sky and sends a birth-song slanted down gray dust streets and sleepy windows of the southern town." (hide spoiler)]
Thus ends Cane.
(I know it seems odd to end this review with a hidden spoiler. I'm following the spoiler convention for those who'd care not to have any of the plot revealed before they read, but I really don't think Cane is the type of book that needs any "spoilers" to be hidden. The book is about characters and the ideas or themes their conflicts illustrate, and, to me, those kind of books retain their charm and value whether or not the reader "knows what's coming." So, I say, read the spoiler because I think it will whet your appetite for the book.)
If you take Richard Wright as one pole in early 20th Century Black American letters, and Zora Neale Hurston as the other, Toomer fits in on the Hurston end of the spectrum. Cane has an intense lynching scene, but the book, for the most part, avoids what Toni Morrison called the "white gaze," to focus on, mostly, Black and mixed-race characters and their inner conflicts. The first third of the book focuses on ordinary folks in rural Georgia (where Toomer spent time as a school principle), the second on educated Blacks in Washington DC, and the third part is a single story, written almost as a play, that focuses on a Black man from the North, living in rural Georgia, and his friends who, though Southern-born, look down upon their less educated local neighbors.
A poet, Toomer writes very lyrical prose, and one of the pleasures of the book are his many descriptions, in prose and poetry, of the beauty of the land. He often includes human activities in these descriptions, such as spontaneous singing that accompanies the "folk" in their daily work, rest, and worship.
Here's an example from the last story, "Kabnis":
A false dusk has come early. The countryside is ashen, chill. Cabins and roads and canebrakes whisper. The church choir, dipping into a long silence, sings:
My Lord, what a mourning,
My Lord, what a mourning,
My Lord, what a mourning,
When the stars begin to fall.
Softly luminous over the hills and valleys, the faint spray of a scattered star...
But Toomer does not romanticize his characters. You'll find pride and folly as well as innocence and wisdom in his stories. Many of his characters, especially the more educated ones, suffer from internal conflicts. Their minds ricochet from love (lust?) to hate, respect to contempt, and many seem to perpetually reach for a salvation, or at least a satisfaction, that seems to be just beyond their reach. And against this inner conflict, the physical world, with all it's beauty and song provides a counter-point that seems just as mocking as it is inspiring.
(view spoiler)[In the last story, "Kabnis" (from which the quote above comes) Kabnis, a school teacher from the North, and his educated friends bitch and moan about the cultural backwardness of their isolated, small town (the straight-laced, priggish, and imaginatively limited school principal is ridiculed -- who then fires Kabnis for no good reason at all). At the end of the story the focus switches to an elderly man who has taken up residence in Kabnis' friend's cellar (shades of Invisible Man!) This elderly man, whose name is John, and who is called "Father John" by the young Black woman who brings him food (he is, to be sure, not a blood relative of anybody in the story), His chooses not to speak, except for one word: "sin." The woman, Carrie, thinks Father John wants to say more. Kabnis can't hide his distain for the man and his speech, and for all the man's kindred souls: "that bastard race thats roamin round th country. It looks like sin, if thats what y mean."
Carrie encourages the old man, and "his lips begin to work. 'Th sin whats fixed ... upon th white folks ... f tellin Jesus ... lies. O th sin th white folks 'mitted when they made th Bible lie.'
"Light streaks through the iron-barred cellar window. Within its soft circle, the figures of Carrie and Father John.
"Outside, the sun arises from its cradle in the tree-tops of the forest. Shadows of pines are dreams the sun shakes from its eyes. The sun arises. Gold-glowing child, it steps into the sky and sends a birth-song slanted down gray dust streets and sleepy windows of the southern town." (hide spoiler)]
Thus ends Cane.
(I know it seems odd to end this review with a hidden spoiler. I'm following the spoiler convention for those who'd care not to have any of the plot revealed before they read, but I really don't think Cane is the type of book that needs any "spoilers" to be hidden. The book is about characters and the ideas or themes their conflicts illustrate, and, to me, those kind of books retain their charm and value whether or not the reader "knows what's coming." So, I say, read the spoiler because I think it will whet your appetite for the book.)