Originally published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane remains an innovative
literary work--part drama, party poetry, part fiction. This revised
Norton Critical Edition builds upon the First Edition (1988), which was
edited by the late Darwin T. Turner, a pioneering scholar in the field
of African American studies. The Second Edition begins with the editors'
introduction, a major work of scholarship that places Toomer within the
context of American Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. The
introduction provides groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer
and examines his complex, contradictory racial position as well as his
own pioneering views on race. Illustrative materials include government
documents containing contradictory information on Toomer's race, several
photographs of Toomer, and a map of Sparta, Georgia--the inspiration for
the first and third parts of Cane. The edition reprints the 1923
foreword to Cane by Toomer's friend Waldo Frank, which helped
introduce Toomer to a small but influential readership. Revised and
expanded explanatory annotations are also included.
"Backgrounds and Sources" collects a wealth of autobiographical writing
that illuminates important phases in Jean Toomer's intellectual life,
including a central chapter from The Wayward and the Seeking and
Toomer's essay on teaching the philosophy of Russian psychologist and
mystic Georges I. Gurdjieff, "Why I Entered the Gurdjieff Work." The
volume also reprints thirty of Toomer's letters from 1919-30, the height
of his literary career, to correspondents including Waldo Frank,
Sherwood Anderson, Claude McKay, Horace Liveright, Georgia O'Keeffe, and
James Weldon Johnson.
An unusually rich "Criticism" section demonstrates deep and abiding
interest in Cane. Five contemporary reviews--including those by Robert
Littell and W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke--suggest its initial
reception. From the wealth of scholarly commentary on Cane, the
editors have chosen twenty-one major interpretations spanning eight
decades including those by Langston Hughes, Robert Bone, Darwin T.
Turner, Charles T. Davis, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Barbara Foley, Mark
Whalan, and Nellie Y. McKay.
A Chronology, new to the Second Edition, and an updated Selected
Bibliography are also included.
