Praising Cane : Jean Toomer's literary innovations

Re-reading Jean Toomer's "Cane," as it's the next up for book group, which was postponed for a month, and I am trying to recall the novel, and still I'm worried: will the group make anything of this unusual work? Will they kill me for suggesting it? I hadn't read it since grad-school days, and can see that what struck me as revolutionary and inventive then seems a little tired and trite today - but I think the key is to understand Cane as of its time and place - and as well ahead of its time, too. Toomer's innovative style: he draws on many literary genres to create a portrait of the black community in the 1920s: short stories, drama, verse, song, even a bit of graphic arts. In some ways he's a precursor to (or at least a cohort of) Joyce, and definitely a precursor to the beats and later the metafiction writers of the 60s and 70s. In theme, he found material that no others were writing about: the "talented 10th," the educated young men of the black community who were breaking boundaries and exploring boundaries of race and culture - so a lot of the moments in Cane are about black men alienated from their families and roots, trying to "pass" in the white world of the cities, moving to the South to try to help poor blacks and feeling unknown and unwanted. In mood, the stories do feel very dated and sexist: almost all are about the bewitching power of southern Black women and how they drive men to extremes of behavior. In structure, the work (it's not exactly a novel and I don't think Toomer every called it a novel) is loose, almost random seeming - an emptied notebook - but I think it's meant to move not chronologically but like a musical composition in three movements.