Necessary Distance: Essays and Criticism - Softcover

Major, Clarence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1566891094 ISBN 13: 9781566891097

Publisher: Coffee House Press, 2001

Synopsis

Bringing together critical essays, articles, and reviews by 1999 National Book Award for Poetry finalist, this landmark collection is an impressive look back—and forward—by one of our most visionary authors. From essays on the craft of writing, to critiques of contemporary and classic African-American authors and their work, to observations on the quirkiness of the writing and publishing life, Necessary Distance is a compendium of the best nonfiction prose by an important figure in contemporary American letters.

This collection is a portrait of the artist's rise to prominence in American letters. "A writer is usually a person who has to learn how to keep his ego—like his virginity—and lose it at the same time. In other words, he becomes a kind of twin of himself. He remains that self-centered infant while transcending him to become the observer of his experience and, by extension, the observer of a wide range of experience within his cultural domain." From his apt observations on cultural doubleness, to his redefinition of a political poetry that is "organic in its ideas, . . . that in no way compromised its own artistic nature," to his consumate statement on the concept of rhythm in African -American poetry, Necessary Distance is a sweeping tour of new ground in literature and poetics.

Clarence Major is the author of nine novels, nine books of poetry, and many nonfiction works and was a 1999 finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry for Configurations. Major teaches at the University of California in Davis. He has written for the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Essence, and dozens of other periodicals.

About this title

About the Author:

Clarence Major's reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. As a finalist for a National Book Award he won a Bronze Medal for his book Configurations: New and Selected Poems, 1958-1998. Among other awards are a Fulbright and two Pushcart Prizes.  He is also the recipient of a National Council on the Arts Award, a New York Cultural Foundation Award, and the Stephen Henderson Poetry Award for Outstanding Achievement, all three for poetry. His poetry has appeared in hundreds of anthologies and periodicals, in English and in foreign languages, such as several of the Norton anthologies, including Postmodern Poetry in America; American Poetry Review; Kenyon Review; Callaloo; El Corno Emplumado (Mexico); East and West (India); Tuatara (Turkey); Vinduet (Norway); and Literatura na Swiecie (Poland). He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Davis.

From Library Journal:

Major, one of America's most gifted and versatile writers, continues to engage the reading public with his innovative fiction and poetry. During a career spanning nearly four decades, this accomplished poet and fiction writer (his 1999 Configurations was a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry) has also been a prolific essayist, as shown by this new compilation. Included in this volume are autobiographical pieces, book reviews, and short critical essays, many of which explore the link between African American literature and Eurocentric traditions. In remarks that are lively and enthusiastic, Major discusses such authors as Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first black poet to draw heavily upon African folk models; Wallace Thurman, a precocious early novelist who argued in favor of aesthetic freedom for black writers; and Claude McKay, a native Jamaican whose works are strongly associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Several of Major's personal recollections, like his boyhood purchase of a well-loved, secondhand copy of Walt Whitman's poems, are surprisingly touching and nostalgic. Recommended for all literary collections. Ellen Sullivan, Ferguson Lib., Stamford, CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1566891094
• ISBN 13: 9781566891097
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280