Cane

I read the Penguin Classics version of Jean Toomer's Cane. It has a Foreword by Zinzi Clemmons and an Introduction by George Hutchinson. Hutchinson's introduction was my favorite part of this book. It motivated me to order Hutchinson's book on the Harlem Renaissance. Right off the bat, Toomer painte......more

An astonishingly beautiful, sensual, lyrical, formally experimental book. In character vignettes of one, two, three pages interleaved with short poems, Toomer explores the lives of black people, mostly in the rural south, specifically a tiny hamlet dominated by a sawmill (marked mostly by smells and......more

As a writer, Jean Toomer was an experimenter and an innovator. His style intertwines poetry and prose in such a way that one flows in and out of the other. For me, Cane reads like improvisational jazz; there is often a repetition of verse that sounds more like song than soliloquy. Nowhere is Toomer’s......more

Jean Toomer's Cane Jean Toomer's "Cane" (1933) is one of the lesser-known masterworks of American literature. An enigmatic figure, Toomer (1894 -- 1967) wrote "Cane" at the age of 27 and never published another novel, assuming that "Cane" itself can loosely be so described. The book frequently is des......more

Jean Toomer is an Extraordinaire author. Reading this series of vignettes is nothing like I have ever experienced with literature. Out of this entire collection, the initial 'Karintha' is motivating me to examine into it deeper; realizing that story implies Karintha turns to prostitution as revenge......more