Re: Name Check

The first thing to note is that, in my previous post, I
unintentionally truncated the title of Clarence Major's novel.  It's
actually called Reflex & Bone Structure.  I read it in a Mercury House
edition.  That outfit describe themselves as: "a nonprofit publishing
company devoted to the free exchange of ideas and guided by a
dedication to literary values."  Before the novel was released by
Mercury House, in 1996, it was published in 1975 by Fiction Collective.

I go into that little bit of publishing history because I think you
will understand, reading it, that the novel is formally adventurous
and not the sort of sociological fiction that mainstream publishers
seem to like best, especially when they're talking about fiction by
black authors.  

Here, lifted from the back cover, is what Charles Johnson says about
it: "In such original novels as Reflex & Bone Structure [Clarence
Major] pursues an aesthetically necessary option for black writing. 
No writer, to my knowledge, has pushed [the] wing of modernism to the
structural limits achieved by Major, and what most of us seek—a place
in the literature of the age—Major earned a long time ago."

It amused me that this book was nominated in France for the Prix
Maurice Edgar Coindreau for literary crime fiction, because in fact it
is not, in any simplistic sense, crime fiction at all. Rather it is a
high modernist portrait of a woman / a high modernist portrait of a
female figment of an author's imagination, and the mystery lies in the
the tension between the descriptions on either side of that slash
mark. It is elliptical, fragmented and dense, but in the end ties
together, and is, as one turns the pages, engrossing.

From an article I found at: 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_2-3_37/ai_110531704

"In 1978, for example, Major takes special care to indicate exactly
where in the innovative fiction movement he belongs, and why. 'Just as
Ishmael Reed and George Schuyler have more in common with writers such
as William Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut than with realistic black
writers such as Ernest J. Gaines and James Baldwin,' he tells Doug
Boiling, 'my own efforts should be looked at alongside the works of
George Chambers, Jonathan Baumbach, and Russell Banks. To further
illustrate the point: some other writers who fit the category are
Ronald Sukenick, Steve Katz, Charles Wright, and Walter Abish.' Note
the precision of his choices: not Barth, Pynchon, Hawkes, or Gass,
whom many critics still fail to distinguish from the Sukenick-Katz
group, but rather Chambers and Abish, two writers yet to be noticed by
all but the most discerning scholars."

Major appears to be a prolific author, though as I said, Reflex & Bone
Structure, which I read yesterday, was my introduction to him.  What
do you know about him, Ralph?

And to bring this post back to the the primary subject of the list,
Major seems to me an author with whom Delany have wanted to engage,
but as far as I know he never has, or at least not in print.  Am I
wrong about that?

Best,

David 

--- In [email protected], Ralph Dumain <rdumain@...> wrote:
>
> Clarence Major goes back a long way. I discovered his existence 
> almost 40 years ago, but I can't remember what I ever read by him. 
> I'm pretty sure I haven't read any of his novels, but now I'm 
> starting to feel the itch.  Tell us more about this novel.
> 
> At 02:44 AM 7/13/2008, d_cozy wrote:
> 
> >Reading Clarence Major's novel, Bone Structure, I came across this:
> >
> >The next day they make a movie from his novel and Cora stars in it.
> >Dale has the male lead. Cora and Dale are dirt farmers in the South.
> >They do everything but fuck. They steal chickens and read
> >science-fiction novels by brilliant writers like Chop Belany. The
> >white folks get angry and threaten to burn their house down and run
> >them into the woods. But Dale and Cora hold their own. They have a
> >stack of rocks behind the front door; they will fight till the end.
> >
> >(And why did no one ever tell me about Clarence Major? If Bone
> >Structure is representative of his work, he's a writer to be reckoned
> >with.)
>



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