Toomer & Roth

It's curious that we're reading Toomer now, towards the end of the semester, after we've spent so much time analyzing prose, prose, and more prose. Toomer's prose feels nothing like prose, mostly because it reads as though it was more to do with oral tradition, poetry, and jazz. It takes on the "Signifying Monkey" tone of Ellison's more poetic passages in Invisible Man that, indeed, read like excerpts and not like driving components of the plot. The tone is characterized by an obvious performative quality, and a higher regard for the sonic effects of words and phrases as they're delivered, quite rhythmically, before an audience. Words and phrases repeat, as they do in poetry and song, subjects and proper nouns are omitted from sentences, and there's an underlying feeling that his audience understands his writing, despite the occasional missing pieces, because they've heard it all before in the oral tradition, in jazz, or in anything. The jazzy moments are sometimes at odds with the more "written" moments because of a conflict of language and style. In "Becky," he consciously addresses his audience in presuming that certain questions have been asked (not unlike Nabokov) about Becky's one Negro son, but adopts the precise language and dialog of those who would likely gossip about it, i.e. "Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the white folks mouths." He doesn't attribute the insult to the white folks themselves, but instead has a go at their "mouths," as though their mouths aren't attached to the rest of them. Same goes for, "Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the blak folk's muths." Unless this was a typo, the white impersonations he does get increasingly lazy, disinterested, angry, and so on. It could just be a typo, though, because there are a few in this paragraph already. "Muths" would be a funny slang for "mouth," or at least a funny way to articulate the sound of oral indolence.

Not all of his excerpts feel quite so talky. This excerpt, from Bona and Paul, has a much denser narrative quality:

"A strange thing happened to Paul. Suddenly he knew that people saw not attractiveness in his dark skin, but difference. Their stares, giving him to himself, filled something long empty within him, and were like green blades sprouting in his consciousness. There was a fullness, and strength and peace about it all. He saw himself, cloudy, but real. He saw the faces of the people at the tables round him. White lights, or as now, the pink lights of the Crimson Gardens gave a glow and immediacy to white faces. The pleasure of it equal to that of love or dream, of seeing this."

The sentences are fairly straightforward as they explain Paul's epiphany, and are fairly unconcerned with feeling spoken rather than written. The simple diction makes the passage especially poignant, as in the case of "He saw himself, cloudy, but real." It's a loaded statement of self-perception, and yet its terms are seemingly simple. He saw this, he saw that. The final sentence similarly speaks plainly, but qualifies itself at the end in being specific about what the pleasure of it really is.

The interesting thing about Harlem Renaissance writers, or so I've noticed, is the distinction between what is written and what is spoken in their prose. There are moments that clearly pulled from actual conversation or performances, and there are those that have been written out for a reader's sake. These moments are characteristically more profound, in Toomer's case, and feel much differently in the scattered scheme of his story telling.

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Roth's writing feels like good writing to me, though it's not especially easy to decide what good writing even feels like. I suppose he is clear and thorough in the same way that Bellow is (perhaps in the grand tradition of Jewish-American writers). Roth's appeal, I think, is in his well-crafted long sentences, or his drawn-out questions that are answered over a paragraph or so.

"And how did this affect him-the glorification, the sanctification, of every hook shot he sank, every pass he leaped up and caught, every line drive he rifled for a double down the left-field line? Is this what made him that staid and stone-faced boy? Or was the mature-seeming sobriety the outward manifestation of an arduous inward struggle to keep in check the narcissism that an entire community was ladling with love?"

The suspensive questions begs for a dramatic reading of pretty basic athletic maneuvers like a hook shot or a pass. Thus, he glorifies what is so standard by elevating the style, elongating his method of describing the Swede's moves to make it seem like more than they really are--because in fact, the Swede is probably less than he is made out to be. The later questions reveal the narrator's blunt skepticism of his revered subject, quite thoroughly diagnosing the entire community's psychological misconceptions about the Swede, and his direct effect on all of them. It takes on a passive, hands-off voice (i.e. "that an entire community was ladling with love") during a moment in which there is unabashed judgment fixed into the narrative. This seems to be the fun of Roth. His observations of particular moments and characters are astute and beautifully written without ever being deceptive or unaccessible.