Background
Jean Toomer was born on December 26, 1894, in Washington, D. C. , United States.
(This collection of unpublished autobiographical writings,...)
This collection of unpublished autobiographical writings, fiction, poetry, and dramatic works reveals the forces that beckoned Toomer away from a literary life
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(Jean Toomer achieved instant recognition as a critic and ...)
Jean Toomer achieved instant recognition as a critic and thinker in 1923 with the publication of his novel Cane, 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 Now, this collection of unpublished writings restores a crucial dimension to our understanding of this important African American author. Thematically arranging letters, sketches, poems, autobiography, short stories, a play, and a children's story, Frederik Rusch offers insight into Toomer's mind and spirituality, his feelings on racial identity in America, and his attitudes toward and ideas about Cane. Rusch highlights Toomer's reflections on America, its people, landscape, and politics, reveals his significance for the problems and issues of today, and helps us understand Toomer not only as writer, but also as social critic, prophet, mystic, and idealist. Exploring Toomer's attempts to find self-realization and transcend social and cultural definitions of race, this book offers a unique view of the United States through the life of one of its most significant and fascinating intellectuals.
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( A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . Th...)
A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . This book should be on all readers and writers desks and in their minds.?Maya Angelou First published in 1923, Jean Toomers Cane is an innovative literary work?part drama, part poetry, part fiction?powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomers impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. This iconic work of American literature is published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.
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Jean Toomer was born on December 26, 1894, in Washington, D. C. , United States.
Toomer attended an all-black elementary school, but lived in an affluent white neighborhood.
In New York, he entered an all-white high school but lived in an all-black neighborhood.
He moved back into his grandfather's home in Washington D. C. and graduated from an all-black high school. Living in both black and white worlds affected Toomer greatly.
He also studied many subjects such as agriculture, psychology, and literature.
Yet, he never earned a degree.
After graduating from the highly regarded all-black Dunbar High School, Toomer began to travel extensively, attending colleges over the next few years in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Chicago, and finally, New York, where he wrote and published many short stories, plays, and poems.
In 1922, he moved to Sparta, Georgia to become a school principal. It was from this trip to the South that he began writing heavily about the African-American experience, eventually culminating with the publication of his most famous work, Cane, an experimental collection of stories and poems. It was hailed by critics and is seen as an important part of the Harlem Renaissance. The work is also categorized with that of other writers of the time, such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and T. S. Eliot, for its contributions to Modernism.
Cane is structured in of three parts. The first third of the book is devoted to the black experience in the Southern farmland. As Bernard W. Bell noted, "Part One, with its focus on the Southern past and the libido, presents the rural thesis. " Houston A. Baker, Jr. , called Toomer's style "Southern psychological realism. " Toomer infused much of the first part with poetry. "In the sketches, the poet is uppermost, " wrote Robert Littell. "Many of them begin with three or four lines of verse, and end with the same lines, slightly changed. The construction here is musical. " The second part of Cane is more urban and concerned with Northern life. Charles W. Scruggs noted that Toomer revealed the importance of the second section in a letter to the author's brother shortly before the publication of Cane. "From three angles, Cane's design is a circle, " Scruggs quoted Toomer as writing. "Aesthetically, from simple forms to complex ones, and back to simple forms. Regionally, from the South up into the North, and back into the South again. " The conclusion of the work is a prose piece entitled "Kabnis. " Bell called this final part "a synthesis of the earlier sections. " The character of Kabnis, Bell claimed, represented "the Black writer whose difficulty in reconciling himself to the dilemma of being an Afro-American prevents him from tapping the creative reservoir of the soul. "
Praise for Toomer's writing is extensive. Baker cited his "mysterious brand of Southern psychological realism that has been matched only in the best work of William Faulkner. " Kenneth Rexroth was no less impressed. Critics such as Bell and Gorham Munson praised Toomer's use of language. "There can be no question of Jean Toomer's skill as a literary craftsman, " asserted Munson. "Toomer has founded his own speech. " Bell attributed Cane's "haunting, illusive beauty" to "Toomer's fascinating way with words. " He wrote, "The meaning of the book is implicit in the arabesque pattern of imagery, the subtle movement of symbolic actions and objects, the shifting rhythm of syntax and diction, and the infrastructure of a cosmic consciousness. "
After the publication of Cane, Toomer continued to write prodigiously; however, most of his work was rejected by publishers. He became increasingly interested in the teachings of George I. Gurdjieff, a Greek spiritual philosopher, and turned to teaching Gurdjieff's beliefs in America. Toomer stopped writing literary works in 1950 and died in 1967.
(Jean Toomer achieved instant recognition as a critic and ...)
(This collection of unpublished autobiographical writings,...)
( A breakthrough in prose and poetical writing. . . . Th...)
In 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life.
Toomer embraced the Quaker religion and lived his last decade as a recluse.
He was a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
He was a "fair-skinned, straight-nosed, straight-haired" African American.
In 1939 Toomer changed his name again, using "Nathan Jean Toomer", to emphasize that he was male. He may also have been reaching toward his paternal ancestry with it. He usually signed his name N. Jean Toomer, and continued to be called "Jean" by friends.
Quotes from others about the person
During this time of the Harlem Renaissance, "Toomer's rejection of race sounded, more importantly, like a rejection of white cultural hegemony, " stated Black Issues Book Review.
In his introduction to Cane, Waldo Frank wrote that, "a poet has arisen among our American youth who has known how to turn the essences and material of his Southland into the essences and materials of literature. "
Kenneth Rexroth was no less impressed. "Toomer is the first poet to unite folk culture and the elite culture of the white avant-garde, " he contended, "and he accomplishes this difficult task with considerable success. He is without doubt the most important Black poet. "
Toomer married twice, both white women, settling with his second wife in Pennsylvania.