Toomer who, having firmly abandoned
his identifu:ation with the Hark:m Re-
naissance, black Americans, and the
South, continued to rove the country,
yearning to fuul 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, naive, 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
wifi:, 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; th~
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 fcl1ow Gurdjicff dis-
ciple who fell rapturously in thrall to
Toorner's high talking) and with Geor-
gia O'Keeffe.
The play is a tart: of th.at 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
fallow at all cxa:pt 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 BucktcrT. Fact and
Ubeam Riseling. They sit on a roof and
t2llc about all those art colonists descend-
ing on their comer of the country. Rise-
ling--whom Toomer describes, aypti-
cally, as being "above art" -is rhapsodic
about the visitors; Fact. a butcher who is
"'below art," is more cynical. Through
their patter, Toomcr's own unmistakable
voice is sometimes awkwardly audible:
UBEAM: The spirit of the Indian lltill livea
in and dominates this land. Dilappearing else-
where, it is vital here, vital lib. these hills ....
To this little cluster of earth-built houses the
entire world comes.
BucK FACT: Comes and goe1 u fut as it
can ..•. And why~ What'• to be 1een here?
One bank, one newspaper, grocery and drug
stores like you Q.tt sec anywhere, an annory,
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, k:ss by the disease
than bywhat it docs to the vt°bcs. "What'sthe use of being here," she says, "unless
you fcc1 you arc 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--exccpt 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
bctwccn a couplo---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 k:t the physical world
come into you," he writes. "In comes the
world of earth-and out go your t:boughts
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. Insread, 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. •'ml!. NKWYORKKll.1$ A llllGISTKRED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCI! MAGAZINK PUBLISHl!llS INC. COPYRIGHT Ol020 CONDf NAST. AIL RIGHl'S Rl!SllllVEll. PRINTED IN THI!. U.S.A.
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