Clark Blaise's background and upbringing have provided him with the materials and the perspective for his highly praised fictional renderings of the quest for identity in a rootless and incoherent North American society. Born in Fargo, North Dakota, the son of Leo Blaise, a French-Canadian, and Anne Vanstone Blaise, an English-Canadian, Blaise grew up in a variety of areas in the United States because of his salesman father's peripatetic career. The American South, particularly the state of Florida, the Middle West, and the northeastern states were all at one time or another home to the Blaises. Blaise has noted that he attended twenty-five different schools before entering the ninth grade.

His high school years were spent in Pittsburgh, and his education continued at Denison University (Ohio), from which he graduated with a B.A. in 1961. Subsequently he studied creative writing under Bernard Malamud at Harvard and then continued...