When in 1923 the American writer Jean Toomer (1894-1967) published
Cane, his famous lyric and experimental novel of black southern
life, he received immediate recognition and acknowledgment for
having produced an American literary masterpiece. In the more than
40 years of his life following Cane, however, Toomer was neither to
publish voluminously nor to recapture the breadth of recognition
that had come to him after his first book. His life and thought,
nevertheless, continued to possess passion, relevance, and
consistency during the subsequent decades, and black and American
literature scholar Rusch (English/John Jay College/CUNY) has
compiled this welcome selection of unpublished Toomer writings in
order to provide a full overview both of the author's life and of
his thought. Fragments, letters (to Waldo Frank, Sherwood Anderson,
Horace Liveright, and Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, among
others), essays, fiction, poetry, even a children's story are
included. "The attainment of self-realization and psychic wholeness
leading to a new personal and social harmony was Toomer's aim
throughout his life," writes Rusch, speaking in his introduction of
Toomer's indefatigable idealism: "Toomer believed that human beings
could change, transcend their ordinary lives and selves, and find
true being and unity with others." Toomer himself, in a
Whitmanesque fragment dated 1931 and included in the volume, writes
that "There is a new race in America. I am a member of this new
race. It is neither white nor black nor in-between. It is the
American race, differing as much from white and black as white and
black differ from each other." And in a letter to Stieglitz of
October 21, 1939, he writes: "If I have not yet reached Heaven at
least my feet are more firmly planted on the Earth. As every jumper
knows, one must have good purchase on the ground in order really to
spring up." (Kirkus Reviews)
This collection of unpublished writings by Jean Toomer offers new insight into the thinking of the author of Cane. Often spiritual in tenor, the range of works reproduced here trace the evolution of a complex philosophy of kinship and self-determination through which Toomer hoped to transcend social and cultural definitions of race. Presenting a varied assemblage of correspondence, poetry, short fiction, and essays, Professor Rusch provides shape and focus for a collection of works by an author overdue for scholarly rediscovery in American classrooms.
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