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Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History Charles Scruggs and Lee VanDemarr. Jean Toomer and the Terrors of American History. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1998. 310 pp.
Jean Toomer's Cane was arguably the most artistically accomplished work ever produced by an African American at the time when it was published in 1923. That work is a hodgepodge of short stories, poems, quasi-autobiographical vignettes, and a play that comprise what has been called a novel only because there is no other genre that one could fathom within which to place it, just as its author would likewise become an unfathomable entity for contemporary scholars. Shortly after Cane appeared, Toomer forsook his black identity and by 1931, in a privately printed pamphlet, he was announcing, "As for being a Negro, this of course I am not-neither biologically nor socially [. . .]. In biological fact I am [. . .] all American [. . .]. In sociological fact I am also American." In the light of present-day biological anthropologists, Toomer might be regarded as a profoundly accurate commentator on the reality of racial composition. However, for quite some time, he has not been viewed that way at all. In fact, once Cane came back into print in the late 1960s, after decades of having been virtually ignored, critics chose instead to view the writer as psychologically disturbed.
As one might imagine, almost any help in unraveling the mystery of Toomer will be useful. Charles Scruggs and Lee VanDemarr have added immensely to the effort, explaining not only Toomer's family background (largely "mulatto") but also applying a crucial historical perspective to circumstances from Toomer's birth to his early adulthood. The authors are excellent, for example, in explaining such factors as Toomer's 1921...