Cane (1923)

This novel by Jean Toomer is short but difficult—I’m not even sure it’s a novel. It struck me as more a montage of poetry, script, and strangely written prose pieces. The first two-thirds is mostly very short pieces, and the last third is one long piece. Toomer is connected with the Harlem Renaissance but it was an association he resisted and rejected. His feelings about his heritage were complicated. His father was born into slavery. But Toomer, understandably enough, already wanted to live in a post-racial society. He identified as “American” and chafed under the “Negro” label. In many ways Cane represents these confusions and resentment. I didn’t get much from it. It seemed to me little more than occasionally interesting fragments and a lot of eccentric prose. Some pieces are written as or include passages set out like lines from a script for a stage play. The last, long section is mostly that. As usual, most poetry is lost on me. I note the rhyme schemes as such and rarely have the patience to parse it out. I’m reading this because it’s on Larry McCaffery’s list, “20th Century’s Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction.” I see on the internet that Cane was generally liked in its time and after. Langston Hughes liked it. So did Richard Wright. W.E.B. Du Bois, reviewing it, wrote, “Toomer does not impress me as one who knows his Georgia but he does know human beings.” I can see that, in glimpses, but mostly it strikes me as distracted writing. Toomer was working a full-time job while he worked on Cane, principal of the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute in Georgia. Wikipedia classifies Toomer and Cane as “High Modernist,” which maybe explains the weak or nonexistent narrative through-line. The novel it reminds me of most is William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, also deeply fragmented, in part because of the demands of a full-time job, but with more apparent story to it. I’m willing to take the word of the majority on Cane and think maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind for it. It’s a short book, but could well stand up to the scrutiny of multiple sessions of a reading group. From his biography more than his novel, I feel some affinity with Toomer, human being stuck with a demanding full-time job and the ambition to write.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“Out of Season” (1923)

This story by Ernest Hemingway is possibly his first under influence of Ezra Pound and Pound’s “imagism,” which attempts to use omission to strengthen the impact or meaning of a poem or story. It’s an intriguing and very Poundian idea. Look at him go in perhaps his most famous poem, “In a Station of the Metro”: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd: / Petals on a wet, black bough” (that’s the whole thing; let it tumble in your mind). In many ways Hemingway is just the man for imagism. This story is also the first that Hemingway reconstructed after a suitcase full of manuscripts was stolen. He claimed later this story came back to him quickly. There is some sense in it of laboring to exhaustion (natural enough as he is recreating it), but for the most part I think it works pretty well. Set in Italy after the Great War, it involves a local, Peduzzi, who has signed on to take an American married couple on an illicit fishing expedition. The incidents are fragmented yet potent with suggestion: Noticing a “Fascist café” sets the historical era vividly and economically. Peduzzi, the guide, is working to make the outing as easy for himself as possible yet he also hopes to make as much off the Americans as he can, including, perhaps most importantly, drink. There is tension between the couple. It’s not clear she’s interested in fishing at all, as she lags well behind the two men, carrying the fishing rods and saying very little. The townspeople observing this group seem sullen, as if resenting how the Americans can break the rules with impunity, or perhaps they are envious of Peduzzi. Hemingway is obviously working out his technique. It’s often not subtle or effective at all that things are missing. Yet just as often these things can be felt through the gaps. This story first appeared in a 1923 privately published edition, Three Stories & Ten Poems. By the time it made it into the 1925 edition of the In Our Time collection it was accompanied by vignette paragraphs that alternate with the stories. I don’t always understand the relation of these vignettes to the stories—it’s art, it’s poetry—but “Out of Season” is preceded by one about bullfighting. The first time I read this story that vignette annoyed me and colored my reaction some. A later second reading (minus the vignette) won me over more. A tremendous amount is communicated here by the shattered minimalist approach. It seems strange to me that someone so resolutely masculinist—it’s arguably Hemingway’s greatest influence, and not a good one—is also so tender and studied about his aesthetics.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
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“The Tarn” (1923)

What I liked best about this story by Hugh Walpole were the descriptive passages and especially the way he used color: “October is a wonderful month in the English Lakes, golden, rich, and perfumed, slow suns moving through apricot-tinted skies to ruby evening glories; the shadows lie then thick about that beautiful country, in dark purple patches of silver gauze, in thick splotches of amber and grey.” I also like the theme of professional jealousy between two writers, or at least by our first-person narrator here for his friend of 20 years. While understandable on one level—the successful one is also shallow and obtuse—it’s bitchy and petty. But it makes the story more entertaining. I had already checked with the kindle dictionary but eventually the story gets around to telling us what a tarn is: “... a miniature lake, a pool of water lying in the lap of the hill. Very quiet, lovely, silent. Some of them are immensely deep.” I found this story in The Weird, where we can see that editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer are drawn to the most elemental aspects of reality crumbling into irrational unknowability (Jeff VanderMeer also wrote the source novel for the movie Annihilation). Hey, who can’t get on board with that? The one excerpt that appears in the anthology, from Alfred Kubin’s 1908 novel The Other Side, holds visions of breakdown in biological systems and even at the level of molecular structure. Here it’s just water. Push a guy into the tarn to kill him (he can’t swim, it’s late, and the water is cold), then wait and see what happens in your dreams: “He sat up higher in bed, and then saw that down the wallpaper beneath the window water was undoubtedly trickling. He could see it lurch to the projecting wood of the sill, pause, and then slip, slither down the incline.” Water with malevolent agency, defying gravity—not bad! And supported nicely by Walpole’s effusive language. It’s just, alas, not at all believable. The story veers about from crystalline description to backbiting resentments and murder and into the soggy nightmare which may or may not have “really happened.” It’s hard to say and I feel a little whipsawed by it all. Walpole has some reputation but nothing of his has really knocked me out yet. In the end, this story is a little too fanciful for my taste, but it has its points. Maybe he’s got some better stuff somewhere.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
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"The Haunted Dolls' House" (1923)

I haven't entirely connected with M.R. James so far, and I'd really like to ever since I found out Mark E. Smith of the Fall was a fan. I still haven't got to all his best regarded stories but consensus seems to lean toward "Casting the Runes" as very best and it didn't do much for me (the Tourneur movie Curse of the Demon is faithful, not bad, and about as good). This later story is not that impressive either—haunted dollhouse with tiny ghostly figures reenacting murders in an intricate tableau every night at 1 a.m., what's to be done? Still, I was struck by the glowing imagery of the dollhouse in its overnight convulsions. I thought the story ought to be an ideal candidate and good bet for a movie adaptation, particularly in the silent era it comes from. It's probably a little old-fashioned now but I imagine, say, director Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, Tales From the Gimli Hospital) could do something with it. The detail I like is the sight of the dollhouse at night: " ... though there was no light at all in the room, the Dolls' House ... stood out with complete clearness.... The effect was that of a bright harvest moon shining full on the front of a big white stone mansion—a quarter of a mile away it might be, and yet every detail was photographically sharp." I like the image of our hero, Mr. Dillet, sitting up in bed in a dark room in the middle of the night and seeing that. Even silent movie technology in 1923 should have been able to handle it. Think of the French epic from 1923 La roue, or the 1924 version of Peter Pan, or certain effects in Metropolis that reduce actors to the size of dolls. Mr. Dillet is entirely rapt by his hobby of collecting antiques and especially dollhouses. When he brings home this one (it's not his first) he spends hours lovingly setting it up, arranging figures, furniture, and other accessories. That makes him likable even if he is moneyed and haughty, but it's also beside the point. As for the difficulties posed (mainly interrupted sleep) it appears you can do what Mr. Dillet finally does, put it in another room, and problem solved basically. It never seems to be threatening, only a nuisance at worst. Well, it might make you depressed to be reminded every night that some murders of innocents went apparently unpunished. That should never happen. But the magic, such as it is, is in the dollhouse and its ability to cast a campfire mood of comfort and thrilling strangeness.

The Big Book of the Masters of Horror, Weird and Supernatural Short Stories, pub. Dark Chaos
Realms of Darkness, ed. Mary Danby (out of print)
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