Although Clarence Major is best known for his fiction, he has succeeded in a wide variety of linguistic undertakings. Poet, novelist, essayist, anthologist, editor, and lexicographer--Major has proved to be one of Afro-America's most versatile literary figures. In two of his most recently published novels, Reflex and Bone Structure (1975) and Emergency Exit (1979), he has pioneered a new direction for black American fiction, expressing his psychological, racial, and social concerns within a metafictional framework that leads his readers to explore, with him, the very nature of fictive discourse.

Major was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1936, but following his parents' divorce while Major was still a child, he and a younger sister moved to Chicago with their mother. The children did, however, maintain an enriching Southern connection by returning for summer visits to the homes of their father, their grandmothers, and various other relatives. By his mid-teens, Major had become...