Fw: Re: Re: Name Check

This didn't go through the first time. See below.

-----Forwarded Message-----
>From: Ralph Dumain <[email protected]>
>Sent: Jul 13, 2008 8:16 PM
>To: [email protected], [email protected]
>Subject: Re: [delany-list] Re: Name Check
>
>
>Very interesting.  Thanks for the info.
>
>The embarrassing thing is that I can't remember much of anything. I recall Major being an avant-garde writer. I may remember him being anthologized as early as the Black Voices anthologies in 1968.  I believe he compiled a reference book, a dictionary of black slang, published by the Communist Party. I have the impression that he and other black male avant-garde writers have been marginalized, esp. by the publishing boom of black female authors, who became stars, ironically after having been themselves marginalized.  I would imagine that the sexual politics of black intellectuals is rife with some bad feelings over who has gotten screwed by the literary gatekeepers.
>
>It's a wild guess, but there may be a tacit prejudice against black male avant-garde writers. I'm not in a position to evaluate what they are doing now or what they've accomplished, but I'm old enough to see that the historical phase of modernist writing has a certain importance, representing an urge I can understand, when people have reached the stage of calling attention to the presuppositions of thought and cultural production.  Perhaps that stage has been passed, but we shouldn't let its productions disappear down the memory hole of history, as so much does.
>
>I once saw Sukenick in person, reading from stuff he wrote back in the '60s.  When did I see him? My guess is late '80s, probably early '90s.  Hard to judge on that basis, but I have the impression he's a product of that cynical attitude towards mainstream American life that flourished in the '60s.
>
>-----Original Message----- 
>From: d_cozy 
>Sent: Jul 13, 2008 5:04 PM 
>To: [email protected] 
>Subject: [delany-list] 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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