The Wayward and the Seeking includes autobiographical selections, short fiction, poetry, two plays, and a number of Toomer's aphorisms and maxims … a representative selection of Toomer's creative efforts between 1924 and the mid-1930s. It is an important work because, for the first time, it provides an opportunity for understanding the relationship between the man and the artist and, by extension, the relationship among the boundaries of personal freedom, social limitations, and the creative process. (p. 158)
[Autobiography] is important to any study of Toomer, both because of Toomer's interest in that literary form as a tool of introspection, a method of evaluating and understanding the self, and because it is our main source of information about the development of his life. Toomer wrote a great deal about himself, often weaving autobiographical elements into his fiction, as in the writing of Cane…. Toomer's penchant for examining his own experiences probably began many years earlier and grew out of his childhood preoccupation with his interior world….
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