Cane: A Library of America eBook Classic

by Jean Toomer

Overview

Jean Toomer’s revolutionary masterpiece Cane (1923) ushered in the era we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, and has come to be considered one of the classic works of American literary modernism. A boldly experimental “novel” mixing prose, poetry, and dramatic sketches, the book’s hallmark is its formal sophistication; sexuality, racism, and industrialization are among its major themes. Above all else it offers unforgettably evocative portraits of the African American lives Toomer encountered in rural Georgia, by turns down-to-earth, heartfelt, hauntingly lyrical.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598535730
Publisher:	Library of America
Publication date:	01/01/2019
Series:	Library of America E-Book Classics
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	134
File size:	346 KB

About the Author

Jean Toomer (1899–1967) was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in the household of his maternal grandfather, a prominent mixed-race Louisiana politician. Dropping out of college, he moved to New York, where he discovered the literary circles of Harlem and Greenwich Village and contributed to avant-garde magazines. He began Cane soon after he was appointed as temporary principal of an agricultural school in Smyrna, Georgia. Later an exponent of the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff and a convert to Quakerism, he published aphorisms and religious works; his Collected Poems appeared posthumously in 1988.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, Cane ranks with Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelist's highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style." - Robert A. Bone, The Negro Novel in America (1965)

Editorial Reviews

By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, Cane ranks with Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelist's highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style.”

Robert A. Bone

"By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, Cane ranks with Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelist's highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style." - Robert A. Bone, The Negro Novel in America (1965)

From the Publisher