Customer Reviews (2)

Awesome!
Toomer was neither self-identified himself as African American nor as European American but sought to transend all racial existence.

Toomer was NOT "African American" but European-American
Readers who call Jean Toomer "black" or "African American" are totally in error.He rejected that racist "one drop" classification and deserves praise and admiration for doing so.Toomer's parents and grandparents were not "black middle class" but looked whiter than many Americans who call themselves "white." ... Read more

Product Description
This Volume brings together everything published by Jean Toomer, known as the Herald of the Harlem Renaissance Foreword; Well, it finally happened: in the year 2002, some thirty-five years following Jean Toomer's death in 1967, someone finally got around to compiling his uncollected works and publishing them in one magnificient volume. What a boon this will prove for Jean Toomer scholars! For now, instead of having to stumble blindly through the dark stacks of musty libraries throughout this great nation in search of those delightful little magazines of the '20s and '30, where Jean Toomer first published his poems and short stories, our scholars may now find them all under one well lighted roof. Our scholar has only to go to his local libray, check out The Uncollected Works of Jean Toomer, and bingo!, there's everything Toomer ever published right at his fingertips. It is interesting to note how John Griffin arranged Toomer's works in this volume. Instead of grouping them according to genre (poems, vignettes, short stories and essays), Griffin arranged them chronologically.Thus the reader can trace, from decade to decade, Toomer's evolution as a writer--not a boring pastime by any means. The first section (1922-29) contains several poems that Toomer published prior to the appearance of Cane in 1923, as well as several literary criticisms and book reviews. These poems, though published in some of the nation's leading little magazines of the 1920s, were deleted from the Cane manuscript at the last minute thanks to Waldo Frank, Toomer's benefactor and mentor. As for the book reviews and literay criticisms, not even the most astute reader would guess that these were written by the same person who authored Kabnis or any of the other stories in Cane. To the contrary, with such works Toomer (very annoyingly) attempts to assume a commanding intellectual voice that belies his true literary abilities. In a futile attempt to appear a man of letters, he uses a tortured, turgid style of writing, and a diction that is too esoteric to be interpreted by anyone other than himself.As for his sentence constructions, the vast majority of these are of the compound-complex variety, many running to 400-plus words in length, so that by the time the reader has finished plowing through one of these from one end to the other, he has forgotten how the sentence began or just what it was all about. In addition, this first section contains numerous works--two poems, three short stories, a play, and four essays--that are what one might call post-Cane works, and all written following Toomer's introduction to Georges Gurdjieff. These are, for the most part, nearly impossible even to follow, let alone interpret. As for Section Two (1930-1936), a fairly brief section, we find here two essays, two poems, a page of aphorisms, and a short story, which is all that Toomer published during this seven year period. This was truly a rollercoaster era in Toomer's life: he married noted author Margery Latimer in '32 (following their participation in the notorious Portage Experiment), only to see her die in childbirth a year later; then in '34 he married wealthy Margery Content and they became permanent residents of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.Still, through it all, Gurdjieff totally dominated Toomer's life. As for Toomer's publications during this period, in City Plowman, a lengthy essay concerning a visit with artist-photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, Toomer comes closest to achieving what he had struggled for in his numerous essays. It is cleanly and plainly written, with simple-to-compound sentence constructions and clear-yet-sophisticated diction. Here, in the first paragraph, he captures the reader's attention and maintains that hold throughout the essay. The final work of this section, a 740-line poem titled The Blue Meridian, celebrates the Mississippi River and America, and obviously reflects the influence of Walt Whitman. It is not light reading, and for all practical purposes, would be his last published poem. Section Three (1937-1950) was the era of the essay for Jean Toomer. He began by printing three of his own works in his converted mill house on his farm in Doylestown, what he called Mill House Press. These are very readable works. Then, a few years later, in 1944, following his conversion to the Quaker faith, he began to devote all his energies to writing religious essays for The Friends Intelligencier.He would publish thirteen of these over the next six years, essays dealing with moral and ethical issues that were praised by Quakers across America. And for good reason: they make for delightful reading, regardless of one's religious beliefs. After 1950 Toomer's health was in decline, and he had become seriously addicted to drugs and alcohol. He would publish nothing else. W. B. Martin; Prof. of English ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Religion / Christianity / Quaker; ... Read more

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A great deal of mystery surrounds G.I. Gurdjieff and "The Work." Today, many on the path of self-exploration find themselves drawn to the symbolism of the enneagram, and to Gurdjieff's other teachings. Gurdjieff was undeniably charismaticmany famous and influential people lived in his "shadow," accepting his guidance while changing and transforming their lives. Shadows of Heaven focuses on the relationship between Gurdjieff and the poet-novelist Nathan Jean Toomer, from 1924 until Gurdjieff's death in 1949, as well as each man's relationship with Edith Annesley Taylor and her son Paul, the author of this book. Caught in the middle of this tense triad of interests was the English critic-publisher A.R. Orage, who was close to all three parties, and whose wife, Jessie, was Edith's best friend. Paul Taylor's unique life experience has made it possible for him to combine his mother's memoir's conversations between Toomer and Gurdjieff, and entries from Jessie Orage's diary into this fascinating book. It is probably the first to reveal something of Gurdjieff's "love life" with the mothers of his children. Several new descriptions of Gurdjieff's voyages with his pupils reveal aspects of Gurdjieff's character not documented elsewhere. Excerpts from Jessie Orage's diaries testify to the magnetic attraction Gurdjieff exercised over those he felt were viral to the dissemination of his ideas. With 16 pages of never-before published photographs, this book presents a fresh new picture of Gurdjieff and his teaching, adding to his legend a tangible humanity to which we can all relate. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

To Each His Own Gurdjieff
History, according to Sir George Clark, is a "hard core of fact" with a "surrounding pulp of disputable interpretation." So is biography. And this restless dialectic of fact and exegesis, obstinately irresoluble in a satisfying final chord, is full of interest for the curious student of human nature. Only look for example at the burgeoning literature touching the holistic philosopher, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.

In Peter Brook's memoir Threads of Time and Paul Taylor's study Shadows of Heaven Gurdjieff is the highest common factor. True enough, Brook, at 73, is reprising his entire artistic life, shared with his wife Natasha Parry; true enough, Taylor is concerned to celebrate the American writer Jean Toomer, who adopted him in childhood - yet it is Gurdjieff who bids to hijack both books.

Taylor - no cultural nonentity himself (he collaborated with W. H. Auden in Norse translations) - enjoyed from infancy up a privileged entrée to the innermost Gurdjieffian set. Indeed, his flightily attractive mother Edith Annesley Taylor was one of Gurdjieff's many conquests ("He was not a nice man," she mused in the afterglow) and in November 1928 bore him a daughter named Eve. Brook, by contrast, never met Gurdjieff but in early 1950, aged 25, came enthusiastically under his influence as refracted through two powerful individualities - Jane Heap, who with Margaret Anderson had serialised Joyce's Ulysses, and subsequently Jeanne de Salzmann one of Gurdjieff's senior and intimate pupils.

Each author is here an insérend - narrator, witness, and participant in his tale. Each, incidentally, is let down by his copy editor: thus Brook has Gurdjieff born in Kars (Alexandropol actually), while Taylor, more damagingly, has Gurdjieff vowing to remove from his sight all those retainers who make his life "uncomfortable" (comfortable actually.) Beyond these parallels, the stylistic and methodological contrast between the two books practically makes one's eyes start out of one's head. Here is Professor Taylor, the very model of a neo-Rankeian - up to his armpits in facts; sinking fast (cf. Natasha Parry in Oh Les Beaux Jours); and grappling to drag the reader down with him. And here is Brook, so intent on going the Full Monty in exposing his artistic and spiritual conscience that he flings away the decent loincloth of historicity. If, to the over-cynical eye, Brook's memoir suggests the Evening Standard's social diary raised an octave - happy unpunctual hours with Beckett, Brecht, Dali, Genet et al - then Taylor's reads like a report of a grouchy Tax Inspector: every solitary cheque from Toomer to Gurdjieff accusatorially totted up.

Taylor recklessly asserts that no-one of the post-war groups possessed the "authoritative knowledge, influence, and gift to carry things further." Brook would have none of this. He hymns - and far more persuasively - the "luminous presence" of his teacher Jeanne de Salzmann, whose death at 101 plunges him into "a long and ashen period of grief." Considering that the Virgin Mary, a minimalist figure in the Gospels and early patristic writings, now finds takers as the Mediatrix of All Graces and even Co-Redemptress, it is perhaps forgiveable that Madame de Salzmann's ascendancy in the Gurdjieffian pantheon has begun to intrigue university departments which address the morphology of so-called New Religious Movements.

To contemporary Gurdjieffians bloodied by the hard pounding of his recent neo-Enlightenment attackers (Peter Washington, Anthony Storr etc.) Brook's timely reinforcement could be as welcome as Blücher's arrival on the field of Waterloo. Unfortunately, Taylor's book drives a factual salient deep into the heartland of the Gurdjieffian Mythos. After Taylor, things can never be quite the same again. Goodbye soap-opera: hello deconstructionist scholarship. Goodbye romanticism: hello wie es eigentlich gewesen. It is nevertheless the disqualifying flaw of Taylor's study that the noumenal is so conspicuously lacking. Thrust by sheer accident of birth into a magic circle, he recognises no magic and canalises no magic. His Gurdjieff is a Prospero whose wand is phallic and whose books turn out to be private ledgers ignobly maintained on triple-entry accountancy principles. Surely there was much more to it than this.

Where Brook (a pulp of meaning man if ever there was one) arguably meshes too snugly with his text, Taylor (the fact man) betrays an almost endearing alienation from his chosen subject matter. He finds Gurdjieff and his magnum opus Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson equally "unreadable"; he conveniently disavows competence to address Gurdjieff's teaching; and he manages only a lame and misleading description of his Sacred Dances i.e. that they "resemble the dances of the Whirling Dervishes." So much for the uniqueness and complexity of Gurdjieff's extraordinary oeuvre; for Madame de Salzmann's lifelong effort to serve and nourish it; and for Brook's high risk strategy in placing a fraction of it before the public.

One fine day, I propose introducing these two authors to each other. I have in mind a short collaborative postscript called Threads of Heaven or Shadows of Time. Meanwhile, does Brook conceive what he owes to Taylor's mother? After all, it was Edith who in July 1926 thwarted Jessie Orage (wife of A. R. Orage, former editor of the New Age) from actually shooting Gurdjieff with a pearl-handled revolver. Brook should be very grateful. I know I am.

James Moore, Gurdjieff's biographer,
undertook the Gurdjieff module in the
Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism.

Merciless Destruction of Gurdjieff's Not-Too-Good-Image
I suppose the motivation for writing this book in the words of Gurdjieff in Beelzebub's Tales would be: 'to destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, rooted in him, about Gurdjieff himself".

I always thought that Gurdjieff took care that his own image was not without tarnish; this has been explained as his way of getting his followers not to identify the man with the teaching. Paul Beekman Taylor completes this work and achieves a clear separation, without leaving us any shadow of doubt.

Gurdjieff according to Mr. Taylor was a womanizer, father of his sister Eve and about half a dozen (if not more) of other children, who Gurdjieff left to their mothers to raise shunning all resposibility like plague (at least he did so with Eve). His Gurdjieff wrote appallingly childish letters in bad taste to Mr. Taylor's mother, Edith Annesly Taylor, who said of Gurdjieff: "He is not a nice man", and kept coming back to him like a jojo for about 25 years.

Jean Toomer, one of the many lovers of Edith Taylor, comes out much cleaner. As Gurdjieff would say: "very handy, no children, just handkerchief".

Nobody is a prophet in his own country; only very few of Gurdjieff's relatives, official or unofficial, seem to have learned from him about the things he taught. Mr. Taylor is almost family, but he learned at least one thing. His book has a one page record of the conversation he had with Gurdjieff in 1949, in which he said: "Come see me in New York, you pay me for summer here with story there, at Child's. Story is breath, life. Without story man have no self." Gurdjieff died before Paul Beekman Taylor told his story to him.

Now 50 years later he achieves with his story a good increase of the distance between Gurdjieff the man and his teaching.

The Big Man & His Shadow
Account of how the fearless leader hoodwinks yet another pidgeon. Too bad Toomer & the rest of them couldn't honor & respect those who truly deserved it...their wives & mothers.

Taylor's book an interesting account from two perspectives
Paul Taylor's book has two perspectives.One is that of an insider who grew up within the Gurdjieff movement.His mother was Gurdjieff and Jean Toomer's lover.His own father remains an unsolved mystery.He tells manystories of the rather Bohemian love affairs the various members of theentourage "enjoyed" -- although they mostly sound miserable andcrazy.

Taylor, an English professor at the University of Geneva, alsomanages to put Jean Toomer and Gurdjieff into a larger academic perspective-- commenting on Toomer's race, and Gurdjieff's proximity to otherphilosophers and writers of his period.

The book is well-written --maintaining at one time a personal perspective, and a wider, moreobjective, academic perspective.For Gurdjieffians and Toomer fans alike-- the book is highly readable and informative.

-- Kirby Olson

Portrait of a Con Artist
Anyone interested in the psychology of religious fanaticism will find this book instructive, both through the author's nondeserved reverential attitude toward Gurdjieff, as well as the disgusting truths he revealsabout this "great teacher."Taylor thus displays his ownhypnosis by not even recognizing much of Gurdjieff's behavior (e.g.impregnating women & leaving them in the lurch) as atrocious. ... Read more

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I was not more than ten years old when I first heard mention of the Quakers. The grown-ups of my family were talking among themselves, speaking of an uncle of mine who lived in Philadelphia and operated a pharmacy near the university. I had never seen this uncle and was curious about him, so my ears were open. Presently a reference to the Quakers caught my attention. I wanted to know who the Quakers were. What was told me then I have remembered ever since. The Quakers, I was told, are people who wait for the spirit to move them.

A picture formed in my mind. Many a time I had seen my grandmother sitting quietly, an aura of peace around her as she sewed or crocheted or did her beautiful embroidery work. So I pictured older people, most of them with white hair like my grandparents, all with kindly faces, gathered in silent assembly, heads bent slightly forward, waiting to be moved. It never occurred to me that young people, boys and girls of my age and even younger, might be present and participating.

As the word "spirit" meant nothing definite to me, I could have no idea of just what would move the Quakers, but I had a sense that it would be something within them, perhaps like the stirrings that sometimes moved me, and I may have had a vague notion that this something within them was somehow related to what people called God. I never thought to ask what the Quakers might do after they were moved.

Had I been invited in those days to attend a Friends meeting for worship I would have gladly gone. I would have gone because my picturings had given me good feelings about the Quakers. I would have gone because, young though I was, I liked to be silent now and again. Sometimes my best friend and I would sit quietly together, happy that we were together but not wanting to talk. Sometimes I would go off by myself on walks to look at the wonders of nature, to think my own thoughts, to dream, to feel something stirring in me for which I had no name. Or I might withdraw for a time from the activities of the boys and girls and sit on the porch of our house, my outward eyes watching them at play, my inward eyes turned to an inner life that was as real to me, and sometimes more wonderful than my life with the group.

Download An Interpretation Of Friends Worship Now! ... Read more

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This digital document, covering the life and work of Jean Toomer, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1906 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

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Study of Jean Toomer centers on Toomer's address of race in his development as a writer; the South as a region that inspired him to focus on an examination of race; and after publication of his novel, CANE, eight years of correspondence tapping into an extended dialogue pertaining to issues about race. This biocritical study begins in January 1916 when Toomer entered the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, and ends in April 1931, when Toomer recorded that he would no longer address issues of race in his writing. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on September 22, 1998. The length of the article is 1262 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Jean Toomer: Selected Essays and Literary Criticism.(Review)
Author: John E. Bassett
Publication: The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 1998
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: 51Issue: 4Page: 766(1)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 944 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Yearbook of English Studies, published by Modern Humanities Research Association on January 1, 2004. The length of the article is 642 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Jean Toomer and the Harlem Renaissance.(Book Review)
Author: Christine MacLeod
Publication: Yearbook of English Studies (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2004
Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association
Volume: 34Page: 342(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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