Cane

Beautiful (in that brutal, tragic way we all love so much) and thought-provoking, up until the final story (which happens, also, to be by far the longest).

Filled with metaphors that harness the raw senses and impressions of the South with horrifying and unexpected potency. “Her mind is a pink meshbag filled with baby toes.”

I'm in the middle of the afterward but I'm finished the original text so I'm going to call it done - I read this for the Genre pick of Feb 2018 “Southern Gothic” in an attempt to hit both southern gothic and a black author for #blackoutreading / black history month. Nathan/Jean Pinchback Toomer is included as part of the Harlem Renaissance although he himself had a complicated relationship with blackness as an imposed identity and appeared “racially indeterminate” because of his mixed background.

I didn't see the Southern Gothic as clearly as Faulkner and O'Conner (to be fair, they ran more to the grotesque) - but Toomer also is not exactly from the South in the same way - he spent a short while working in Georgia which formed a large part of the inspiration for pieces in Cane. I would point to the use of landscape, atmosphere, and the legacy of racism and slavery as the clearest indications of the Southern Gothic in the majority of the prose pieces. There is also a ethereal moodiness to many of the female characters, and the inability to control access to one's own body as black people that was striking.

The language was challenging and beautiful, but just didn't do much for me.