Who knows how great a writer Jean Toomer could have become?

As expected, reading the intro to my 1975 edition of Jean Toomer's "Cane" makes the book (Toomer himself never called it a novel, but I think it is a seminal 20th-century novel, or work of fiction at least) sound really great - a brief listing of the types of characters in the stories, of the issues it takes on, of the styles that Toomer practices and explores, the book sounds as compendious and ambitious as Ulysses. Maybe it is. But unfortunately it's not all that great - it's clearly the work of a young man, an impatient writer who blasts through his material without giving it a lot of shape or direction. In a way the openness of the form is what makes the book appealing, but I think by the end most readers are yearning for some connection between the many pieces - interaction of characters, emergence of a single character or voice, development of plot? Toomer had the advantage of working on material that had barely if ever been touched by any other writers, so every one of the sections must have felt fresh and original at the time (1920s), less so today. Interesting to learn that he tried to publish Cane as only the "southern" sections, parts 1 and 3, but was told he didn't have enough material (true, it would have barely been a pamphlet, let alone a book), so he added the urban material of part 2, which is far less compelling and not well integrated. Sad to note that he did not publish any books (one maybe?) after Cane, though he wrote quite a bit and led a full and adventurous life - he didn't want to be typed as a black writer, but that was or could have been his ticket to more publication. It's a shame - I think he would have had so much more to say about his world; his style would have matured. For all my quibbles and concerns, Cane is an incredibly powerful first work of fiction for any writer of an time. Who knows how great a writer Toomer could have become? His fame is completely posthumous.