SOURCE: “Jean Toomer,” in Down Home: Origins of the Afro-American Short Story, Columbia University Press, 1988, pp. 222–28.

In the following excerpt, Bone discusses “Fern,” “Theater,” and “Bona and Paul” as prime examples of Toomer's narrative technique.

The genre of Cane has been the subject of considerable speculation and debate. Some critics have viewed the book as an experimental novel; others as a miscellany, composed of poetic, dramatic, and narrative elements; still others as a work sui generis, which deliberately violates the standard categories. The problem is complicated by the fact that parts of Cane were published independently as poems, sketches, and stories.¹ This would suggest that Toomer thought of them as separate entities, whatever their subsequent function in the overall design. Without attempting to resolve the larger issue, let us reduce the book to its constituent parts, in order to determine which may be legitimately classified as short stories...