Early Twentieth-Century Fiction e20fic19.blogs.rutgers.edu Prof. - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Early Twentieth-Century Fiction e20fic19.blogs.rutgers.edu

• Prof. Andrew Goldstone (andrew.goldstone@rutgers.edu)

Office hours: Murray 019, Thursdays 11:30–1:30 or by appointment November 4, 2019. Toomer (1).

review: property is theft

▶ the falcon as hollow center

▶ the falsified chain of transmission ▶ the (ludicrous) fake ▶ what is worth?

▶ what is literary worth, for the genre?

▶ the coin of experience ▶ “it is not a fragrant world” ▶ redemption? no, thanks

parallel histories

1892 Conan Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1893 James, “The Middle Years” 1916 Joyce, Portrait 1921 Woolf, Monday or Tuesday 1923 Sayers, Whose Body? 1929 Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 1929–30 Hammett, Maltese Falcon 1930 Faulkner, As I Lay Dying 1944 Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”

parallel histories

1892 Conan Doyle, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1893 James, “The Middle Years” 1903 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk 1916 Joyce, Portrait 1921 Woolf, Monday or Tuesday 1923 Toomer, Cane 1923 Sayers, Whose Body? 1925 Locke, ed., The New Negro 1926 Hughes, The Weary Blues 1929 Woolf, A Room of One’s Own 1929–30 Hammett, Maltese Falcon 1930 Faulkner, As I Lay Dying 1937 Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 1944 Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”

Left: NYT Book Review, June 10, 1923: 28. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Right: Ibid., September 16, 1923: 24. ProQuest.

categories

My racial composition and my position in the world are realities which I alone may determine…. I do not expect to be told what I should consider myself to be…. As a B and L author, I make the distinction between my fundamental position and the position which your publicity department may wish to establish for me in order that Cane reach as large a public as possible. In this connection I have told you…to make use of whatever racial factors you wish. Feature Negro if you wish, but do not expect me to feature it in advertisements for you. For myself, I have sufficiently featured Negro in Cane. Whatever statements I give will inevitably come from a synthetic human and art point of view; not from a racial one…. All of this may seem over-subtle and over-refined to you, but I assure you that it isn’t. Toomer to Horace Liveright, September 5, 1923. Beinecke library; Letters

• f Jean Toomer, 1919–1924, ed. Mark Whalan (Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 2006), 171–72.

Cane (New York: Liveright, 1923): dust jacket. Beinecke Library.

The gifted Negro has been too often thwarted from becoming a poet because his world was forever forcing him to recollect that he was a

• Negro. The artist must lose such lesser identities in the great well of life.

Waldo Frank, foreword to Cane (New York: Liveright, 1923), viii. HathiTrust.

The gifted Negro has been too often thwarted from becoming a poet because his world was forever forcing him to recollect that he was a

• Negro. The artist must lose such lesser identities in the great well of life.

Waldo Frank, foreword to Cane (New York: Liveright, 1923), viii. HathiTrust.

T H E C R I S I S

A R E C O R D

O F T H E D A R K E R

R A C E S

P U B L I S H E D M O N T H L Y A N D C O P Y R I G H T E D B Y T H E N A T I O N A L A S S O C I A T I O N F O R T H E A D V A N C E M E N T OF C O L O R E D P E O P L E , A T 70 F I F T H A V E N U E , N E W Y O R K C I T Y . CON- D U C T E D B Y W . E . B U R G H A R D T D U B O I S ; JESSI E R E D M O N F A U S E T , L I T E R A R Y E D I T O R ; A U G U S T U S G R A N V I L L E D I L L , B U S I N E S S M A N A G E R .

• Vol. 2 3 - N o . 6

APRIL, 1922 Whole No. 138

Page C O V E R "Spring." Drawing by Yolande D u Bois. O P I N I O N T h e W o r l d and U s ; T h e Dyer Bill in the Senate; T h e Sterling-Towner Bill; Maria Baldwin; T h e Case of Samuel Moore; The Spanish Fandango; Show Us, Missouri; Again Africa; The Demagog; Help 2 4 7 T H E N E G R O B A N K . Illustrated 2 5 3 L E X T A L I O N I S . A Story. Robert W . Bagnall 2 5 4 T H E P O R T U G U E S E N E G R O . Nicolas Santos-Pinto 2 5 9 B R A W L E Y ' S " S O C I A L H I S T O R Y O F T H E A M E R I C A N N E G R O " 2 6 0 S O N G O F T H E S O N . A Poem. Jean T o o m e r 2 6 1 T H E N A T I O N A L A S S O C I A T I O N F O R T H E A D V A N C E M E N T O F C O L O R E D P E O P L E 2 6 2 PRIDE. A Poem. Mortimer G. Mitchell 2 6 5 T H E H O R I Z O N . Illustrated 2 6 6 T H E L O O K I N G G L A S S 2 7 5 T H E R I C H B E G G A R . A Poem. Mary Effie Lee Newsome 2 8 0

THE MAY CRISIS

The cover will be Albert Smith's fine painting of Rene Maran. T h e special articles will be on the late Bert Williams and on the leaders o f N e g r o fraternities.

FIFTEEN CENTS A COPY; ONE DOLLAR AND A HALF A YEAR

F O R E I G N S U B S C R I P T I O N T W E N T Y - F I V E C E N T S E X T R A R F N F W A L S • The date o£ expiration of eack subscription is printed on the wrapper. When the lubscription is due, a blue renewal blank is enclosed. f T T A N G E O F A D D R E S S * The address of a subscriber can be changed as often as desired. In ordering a change of address, both the old and the new address must be given. Two weeks' notice is required. M A N U S C R I P T S and drawings relating to colored people are desired. They must be accom panied by return postage. If found unavailable they will be returned.

• p^torerl as second class matter November 2, 1910, at the post office at N e w York, N e w

Y o r k , under the A c t of March 3, 1879.

261 SONG OF THE SON

SONG OF THE SON

JEAN T O O M E R

POUR,

O pour, that parting soul in song, O pour it in the saw-dust glow of night, Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight, And let the valley carry it along, And let the valley carry it along. O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree So scant of grass, so profligate of pines, Now just before an epoch's sun declines Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee, Thy son, I have in time returned to thee. In time, for though the sun is setting on A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set; Though late, O soil it is not too late yet To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone, Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone. O Negro slaves, dark-purple ripened plums, Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air, Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes An everlasting song, a singing tree, Carrolling softly souls of slavery, • All that they were, and that they are to me,— Carrolling softly souls of slavery.

Crisis 23, no. 6 (April 1922): 243, 261. Modernist Journals Project.

Autumn 1922

THE LITTLE REVIEW

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ART AND LETTERS

SUBSCRIPTION

YEARLY: $4.00 £1 FOREIGN

SINGLE N U M B E R

$1.00

A D M I N I S T R A T I O N Margaret A N D E R S O N jh Ezra P O U N D Francis PICABIA

address: 27 west eighth street, new york english office: egoist publishing co., 2 3 adelphi terrace house, robert street, london w. c. 2.

Entered as scond class matter October 28, 1921, at the post office at new york, n. y., under the act of march 3, 1879.

CONTENTS

Photograph (Stella and Duchamp) Man Ray Poems with Drawings Jean de Bosschere The Death of Tragedy Kenneth Burke Garden Mitchell Dawson

• B. B., or the Birthplace of Bonnes

Gertrude Stein Conte pour la comtesse de Noailles Pierre de Massot Fern Jean Toomer Funeral Isidor Schneider Ocean Aquarium 16 Reproductions of the work of Joseph Stella Landscape "Gardening with Brains" jh "Ulysses" jh Having a Gland Time "Narcisse" Notes, etc. jh R Rose Selàvie Man Ray Ma main tremble Francis Picabia Aesthetic Meditations, II Guillaume Apollinaire (with illustrations) The Reader Critic Good Painting Francis Picabia O N S A L E A L L F I R S T C L A S S B O O K S T O R E S

• F. B. NEUMAYER: 70 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON

S H A K E S P E A R E A N D C O M P A N Y : P A R I S V I e V O L. I X N O . 3

FERN

F

A C E flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes. The soft suggestion

• f down slightly darkened, like the shadow of a bird's

wing, the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was aquiline Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling when I followed the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In this, that they sought noth- ing, that is nothing that was obvious and tangible and that one could see; and they gave the impression that nothing was to be denied. When a woman seeks, you will have observed, her eyes deny. Fern's eyes desired nothing that you could give her; there was no reason why they should withold. Men saw her eyes and fooled themselves. Fern's eyes said to them that she was easy. When she was young a few men took her, but got no joy from it. And then, once done, they felt bound to her (quite unlike their hit and run with other girls), felt as though it would take them a lifetime to fulfill an obligation which they could find no name for. They became attached to her and hungered after finding the barest trace of what she might desire. As she grew up new men who came to town felt as almost everyone did whoever saw her, that they woud not be denied. Men were ever- lastingly bringing her their bodies. Something inside of her got tired of them I guess, for I am certain that for the life of her she could not tell why or how she began to turn them off. A man in fever is no trifling thing to send away. They began to leave her, baffled and ashamed, yet vowing to themselves that some- day they would do some fine thing for her: send her candy every week and not let her know who it came from, watch out for her wedding-day and give her a magnificent something with no name

25

Little Review 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1922): 1, 25. Modernist Journals Project.

I ask you, friend (it makes no difference if you sit in the Pullman or the Jim Crow as the train crosses her road), what thoughts would come to you— that is, after you’d finished with the thoughts that leap into men’s minds at the sight of a pretty woman who will not deny them; what thoughts would come to you, had you seen her in a quick flash, keenly and intuitively, as she sat there on her porch when your train thundered by?…Something I would do for her. (“Fern,” 24) Her body was tortured with something it could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms and fingers till she shook them as if they burned her…. And then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A child’s voice, uncertain, or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I could hear only her song. (25–26)

I ask you, friend (it makes no difference if you sit in the Pullman or the Jim Crow as the train crosses her road), what thoughts would come to you— that is, after you’d finished with the thoughts that leap into men’s minds at the sight of a pretty woman who will not deny them; what thoughts would come to you, had you seen her in a quick flash, keenly and intuitively, as she sat there on her porch when your train thundered by?…Something I would do for her. (“Fern,” 24) Her body was tortured with something it could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms and fingers till she shook them as if they burned her…. And then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A child’s voice, uncertain, or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I could hear only her song. (25–26)

1894 b. Nathan Pinchback Toomer in DC 1914–17 attends six colleges/universities 1919–23 magazine publications (NY Call, Crisis, Liberator, little magazines) 1920 changes name: Jean Toomer 1921 Substitute principal, Sparta, GA: Agricultural and Industrial Institute 1923 Cane published by Liveright Small sales, critical success 1923– mystical/religious pursuits (Gurdjieff, Jungian, Quakers...) 1925 Cane excerpts in Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro anthology (JT is not happy) 1967 d.

Passport, 1926. Beinecke.

The drama surrounding the publication of Cane is a unique and revealing instance of the problem that no person considered “Negro,” according to the one-drop-rule of the U.S. regime of race, could get a hearing except under the sign of blackness. George Hutchinson, “Identity in Motion: Placing Cane,” in Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Geneviève Fabre and Michel Feith (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2001), 52.

The school in Sparta, Georgia. Jean Toomer Papers, Beinecke library.

A visit to Georgia last fall was the starting point of almost everything of worth that I have done. I heard folk-songs come from the lips of Negro

• peasants. I saw the rich dusk beauty that I had heard many false accents

about, and of which, till then, I was somewhat skeptical. And a deep part

• f my nature, a part that I had repressed, sprang suddenly to life and

responded to them. Letter to the Liberator (Claude McKay and Max Eastman), August 19, 1922, Letters of Jean Toomer, 1919–1924, ed. Mark Whalan (Knoxville: Univer- sity of Tennessee Press, 2006), 70–71.

black folk

Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. (“Cotton Song,” 13) “I saw a man arise, an he was big an black an powerful—” Some one yells, “Preach it, preacher, preach it!” “—but his head was caught up in th clouds. An while he was agazin at the heavens, heart filled up with th Lord, some little white-ant biddies came an tied his feet to chains.” (“Esther,” 30)

black folk

Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. (“Cotton Song,” 13) “I saw a man arise, an he was big an black an powerful—” Some one yells, “Preach it, preacher, preach it!” “—but his head was caught up in th clouds. An while he was agazin at the heavens, heart filled up with th Lord, some little white-ant biddies came an tied his feet to chains.” (“Esther,” 30)

the uses of language varieties

The accepted grammar (and by this I mean the kind that is taught in schools) may be a means to this end. In which case, the artist uses it. On the other hand, the accepted grammatical construction may prove to be an obstacle. Whereupon, the artist shelves it. In this case, the only legitimate criticism of him would be in answer to the question, does the result justify his freedom?… Conrad and [Anatole] France are masters after their fashion. And so are James Joyce and Waldo Frank. Literature is large enough to contain the contrasts. Readers of literature? Letter to Mary Burrill, n.d. [1922/1923], in Whalan, Letters of Jean Toomer, 109.

Wedges rust in soggy wood . . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? (“Seventh Street,” 53) What is the effect of Toomer’s non-standard language here? What does it represent?

Wedges rust in soggy wood . . . Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . . the sun. Wedges are brilliant in the sun; ribbons of wet wood dry and blow away. Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you flowing? (“Seventh Street,” 53) ▶ What is the effect of Toomer’s non-standard language here? What does it represent?

Toomer’s design

Cane’s design is a circle. 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. Or, from the North down into the South, and then a return North. From the point of view of the spiritual entity behind the work, the curve really starts with Bona and Paul (awakening), plunges into Kabnis, emerges in Karintha etc. swings upward into Theatre and Box Seat, and ends (pauses) in Harvest Song. Whew! Letter to Waldo Frank, December 12, 1922, in Letters, 101.

discussion: linkages

▶ Find a few points of contact between different sections of Cane. ▶ How do these linkages make meaning? What kind of context is the whole of Cane for each individual part?

next

▶ finish Cane