THENEWYORKER,MARCH30, 2020 81
Toomer who, having firmly abandoned
his identification with the Harlem Re-
naissance, black Americans, and the
South, continued to rove the country,
yearning to find a locale fit to birth what
he imagined as “a new race in Amer-
ica.” The play, which is semi-autobi-
ographical, chronicles his attempt to
manage this trick among the cacti and
adobe houses at the Taos art colony, in
New Mexico.
T
om Elliot, the play’s leading man,
is not unlike Toomer: cruel, curi-
ous, naïve, self-involved, cluelessly sex-
ist, an essentialist obsessed with racial
and regional admixture, a vague but ex-
pansive theorizer even when the mo-
ment calls for concision. He and his
wife, Grace, have arrived in Taos, where
they’ve rented a house. They’ve been to
New Mexico before, “magnetized” by
its small but vibrant artistic scene; they’ve
come to visit with friends and to frack
spiritual energies from a land that, to
them, feels fresh. Tom and Grace are
mirror images of Toomer and Content,
who were acquainted with the scene in
Taos thanks, in part, to their friendship
with the wealthy arts patron Mabel
Dodge Luhan (a fellow Gurdjieff dis-
ciple who fell rapturously in thrall to
Toomer’s high talking) and with Geor-
gia O’Keeffe.
The play is a test of that group’s guid-
ing, if often unspoken, principle: that,
owing to a place’s intrinsic, elemental
features—blue sky, red mud, brown
folks—it might work as a symbol of
the American future and as an enabler
for art. This was familiar territory for
Toomer. “Cane” ends with a play called
“Kabnis,” which portrays a Northern
teacher who has come southward, to
Georgia, his tourism the outer sign of
an inner quest. Where “Kabnis” is po-
etic and mysterious, in places hard to
follow at all except by rhythm and deftly
enjambed nighttime images, “A Drama
of the Southwest” is unsubtle in its study
of oppositions.
Before Tom and Grace show up in
Taos, after a lush stage description that
works better as a guide to Toomer’s psy-
che than as an inducement to set design
(try staging this: “Then silence again...
and life becomes existence again. . . and
existence, focused for a time in a group
of singing men, expands to the moun-
tain and the close stars”), we meet a pair
of Taos locals named Buckter T. Fact and
Ubeam Riseling. They sit on a roof and
talk about all those art colonists descend-
ing on their corner of the country. Rise-
ling—whom Toomer describes, crypti-
cally, as being “above art”—is rhapsodic
about the visitors; Fact, a butcher who is
“below art,” is more cynical. Through
their patter, Toomer’s own unmistakable
voice is sometimes awkwardly audible:
UBEAM: The spirit of the Indian still lives
in and dominates this land. Disappearing else-
where, it is vital here, vital like these hills....
To this little cluster of earth-built houses the
entire world comes.
BUCK FACT: Comes and goes as fast as it
can.... And why? What’s to be seen here?
One bank, one newspaper, grocery and drug
stores like you can see anywhere, an armory,
a baseball field, a fish hatchery, bad roads, the
plaza, and a dump heap. Why should anyone
come all this way to get dust in his eyes? As
for me, it means a job.Toomer’s travellers are gluttons for
the sensual. After visiting a sick friend,
Grace is crestfallen, less by the disease
than by what it does to the vibes. “What’sthe use of being here,” she says, “unless
you feel you are in the country and see
the mountains and the sunsets?” Like
glorified Airbnbers, Tom and Grace are
in constant contact with the owners of
the house they’ve rented, who take pains
to set rules and explain the situation
with the keys.
There’s little in the way of a plot. The
play is, instead, a group portrait. All of
Tom and Grace’s friends are ostensibly
writers and artists, but none—except the
sick friend, a poet named Lillian Range—
are getting any work done. They trade
thoughts about art, politics, Communism,
and the unremitting war between the
sexes. The only available intrigue is a spat
between a couple—a petty jealousy that
seems to peter out. Tom is trying to write
a book. He sets up plans for his “deserv-
ing hour” and sits down at the typewriter
but can’t think, and writes a meandering
letter to a friend. He reads the missive
aloud, at length—pages and pages, pre-
cious few of which would make it into
my imagined one-act. “To motor across
the continent is to let the physical world
come into you,” he writes. “In comes the
world of earth—and out go your thoughts
and feelings and even your ego.”
Toomer’s manuscript ends abruptly,
in what looks like the dead middle of
a domestic scene. We don’t get to see
Tom’s troubled ego dissolve. One sus-
pects that it never does. Instead, maybe
he finishes the book but stubbornly
languishes, still unsatisfied with the
writing. He gets into his car again, for-
getting Grace (I promise, he would)
and heading farther west, into obscu-
rity, deserving little but claiming all,
attacking the landscape like a bad, un-
stoppable germ. THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2020 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
VOLUME XCVI, NO. 6, March 30, 2020. THE NEW YORKER (ISSN 0028792X) is published weekly (except for four combined issues: February 17 & 24, June 8 & 15, July 6 & 13, and
August 3 & 10) by Condé Nast, a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. Eric Gillin, chief business
officer; Piper Goodspeed, head of brand revenue strategy; James Guilfoyle, executive director of finance and business operations; Fabio B. Bertoni, general counsel. Condé Nast Global: Roger Lynch,
chief executive officer; Wolfgang Blau, chief operating officer and president, international; Pamela Drucker Mann, global chief revenue officer and president, U.S. revenue; Anna Wintour, U.S. artis-
tic director and global content advisor; Mike Goss, chief financial officer; Samantha Morgan, chief of staff. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canadian Goods
and Services Tax Registration No. 123242885-RT0001.
POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE NEW YORKER, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE
INQUIRIES: Write to The New Yorker, P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, call (800) 825-2510, or e-mail [email protected]. Give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers:
If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the
magazine becomes undeliverable, you are dissatisfied with your subscription, you may receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of
order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. For advertising inquiries, e-mail [email protected]. For submission
guidelines, visit http://www.newyorker.com. For cover reprints, call (800) 897-8666, or e-mail [email protected]. For permissions and reprint requests, call (212) 630-5656, or e-mail [email protected].
No part of this periodical may be reproduced without the consent of The New Yorker. The New Yorker’s name and logo, and the various titles and headings herein, are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers
Inc. To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines, visit http://www.condenast.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would
interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, advise us at P.O. Box 37617, Boone, IA 50037, or call (800) 825-2510.
THE NEW YORKER IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS,
UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED
MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS
SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY THE NEW YORKER IN WRITING.