Abstract
JpUBLISHED IN I923 by Boni and Liveright, Jean Toomer's Cane was an instant failure. Although praised by the literary avantgarde of the twenties (Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Burke, Hart Crane, Waldo Frank, Gorham Munson, to name a few), the novel sold only 500 copies in the first year. From one point of view, it is strange the novel fared so badly, for it was experimental in the manner of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, whose influence is quite noticeable in Cane,' and it antedates by two years the publication (also by Boni and Liveright) of Hemingway's In Our Time, whose form it most distinctly resembles. Also, given the emergence of exotic Harlem and an interest in things Negro, the public seemed ready for a novel like Cane, or at least so felt Horace Liveright.2 Still, the novel failed, and Toomer began a slow retreat into obscurity. With the revival of interest in black literature, its reputa-
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