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.
