Cane by Jean Toomer; narrated by Sean Crisden | 2013; originally published 1923 | Dreamscape Media | Audiobook $ 27
Rich in imagery, Toomer’s impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. This iconic work of American literature is published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.
To be super clear, before you read the rest of this review, that one-star rating is specifically for this version on audio.
One of my goals for my big list of classic lit to read was to include more selections by authors of color or including characters of color. Cane is a collection of short stories about African-Americans in both the North and the South, written by mixed-race author Jean Toomer of the Harlem Renaissance — though apparently the author generally preferred not to be associated with that movement at the time and also did not want to be identified by racial terms at all. Anyway, this book fit the bill.
This was quite honestly just not a great choice to listen to rather than read in print, for a combination of reasons. First, rather than being a straightforward narrative it’s actually a collection of rather impressionistic prose and poem stories. This can be tricky to interpret through spoken language. I’m not a great poetry reader, but I do want to give this book a fair try in its original format. I ended up putting a print copy on hold at my local public library, but the dang thing has been overdue already for ages now, so who knows when or if it’ll be available again.
This audiobook might actually have been fine with a very talented voice actor, but this leads me to the other problem I had with it, and the reason for marking it as one star instead of “unrated” — the narrator’s near-flat, sometimes frankly odd inflection sounded to me almost like AI. I seriously double-checked just to make sure this audiobook version wasn’t actually narrated by a robot.
The only sorta-worth-listening-to part of the audio version was the afterward, which offered some interesting historical context and personal details about the author. But even that was almost painful to listen to, given my aforementioned problems with the narrator’s voice.
I don’t really know how to recommend this book, as it’s likely that my opinion of it could have been quite different if I’d read the print version to start with. So I’ll just recommend that if you are interested in Cane, pick up a paperback copy — or if you absolutely must get it on audio, try to find some edition other than this one.
Links:
- Jean Toomer Papers collection, including digital materials, at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
- Biography of author from Poetry Foundation
- “Jean Toomer: The Fluidity of Racial Identity” from the National Portrait Gallery
- “How Jean Toomer Rejected the Black-White Binary” from The Paris Review
Publication information: Toomer, Jean. Cane. Holland, Ohio: Dreamscape Media, 2013. Audiobook.
Source: Public library, via Hoopla.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
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