Presents essays by leading short-story writers on their favorite American short stories and why they like them. It will send readers to the library or bookstore to read - or re-read - the stories selected. On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction he or she values. Among the writers whose stories are discussed are such American masters as James, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Fitzgerald, Porter, Carver, Wright, Updike, Bellow, Salinger,Malamud, and Welty; but the book also includes pieces on stories by canonical but lesser-known practitioners such as Andre Dubus, Ellen Glasgow, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, George Garrett, Elizabeth Tallent, William Goyen, Jerome Weidman, Peter Matthiessen, Grace Paley, William H. Gass, and Jamaica Kincaid, and relative newcomers such as Lorrie Moore, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Phil Klay, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Edward P. Jones. Why I Like This Story will send readers to the library or bookstore to read or re-read the stories selected. Among the contributors to the book are Julia Alvarez, Andrea Barrett, Richard Bausch, Ann Beattie, Andre Dubus, George Garrett, William H. Gass, Julia Glass, Doris Grumbach, Jane Hamilton, Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Clarence Major, Howard Norman, Annie Proulx, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Spencer, and Mako Yoshikawa. Editor Jackson R. Bryer is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland.

Lavish praise for come by here

"With elegant simplicity and uncommon wisdom, Clarence Major gives us not just the truth of his mother’s life but the unspoken truth behind the lie of color in the American story. A compelling narrative."
–– Rilla Askew, author, Fire in Beulah

"A brilliant rendering of a rich and eventful life. With creative insight, love, and admiration, Major shows us how in family life down through the generations, race really matters."
–– Andrew Billingsley, author, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder:
The Enduring Legacy of African American Families

Critical acclaim for Clarence Major

"Clarence Major has a remarkable mind and the talent to match."
–– Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate

"One of America’s most gifted and versatile writers."
–– Library Journal

Clarence Major is one of America's literary masters. He has published numerous books, from novels to poetry and short story collections. Among his many accolades, he was a finalist for the National Book Award and a Fulbright scholar and received the PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award. His work has been featured in many literary journals, newspapers, and magazines, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Ploughshares. Whether you've known Major's work for decades or are new to his singular style, The Essential Clarence Major offers a thrilling overview of an exceptional career, from his early groundbreaking fiction to his most recent poems. Included here are excerpts from Major's best novels, a selection of his finest short stories and poetry, more than a dozen thought-provoking essays, a taste of his autobiography. Award-winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter Kia Corthron introduces the collection, artfully illuminating Major's importance as one of the foremost and original voices in contemporary American literature.

A pulsating, powerful tale of the blues, from one of the great American writers of the twentieth century It is Chicago in the 1950s and Manfred Banks has the Dirty Bird Blues. A musician and a blue-collar worker, he feels hard the tug of his two responsibilities: those to his wife and child, and those to rhythm and rhyme, to the lyrics that groove a hollow in his mind. Beneath both is the awful grinding racism Manfred meets on streets each day; that which plucks opportunity from his grasp; that which keeps him wandering in search of fresh starts. And so, in want of easy answers, he turns to the 'Dirty Bird': Old Crow brand whiskey. One of Clarence Major's most influential novels, Dirty Bird Blues is both an extraordinary portrayal of twentieth-century Black reality, and an ode to the richness and power of the blues.

Beginning and ending in Clarence Major's atelier, My Studio demonstrates how art can influence our perception of the world, prompting ""all the parts [to] coalesce into a cohesive whole."" With precise and engaging imagery, Major contemplates the spaces we occupy and the ""beauty in everyday things"" from the familiarity of his studio. ""This is more than a room,"" he observes. ""It's an unimpeded mental vista."" Major harnesses both humor and seriousness to investigate a wide range of human experiences. In A Tragedy Indisputable, he considers the funeral of a young boy, and the bewilderment and confusion of the crowd, whose ""allegiance to logic and reason [is] now in perpetual sway."" In another poem, he paints the picture of a serene day interrupted by ""the hammer's sympathy for the nail, the chatter of ghosts in the bedroom."" In rethinking the relationship between poetry and the world of visual art, Major crafts an intricate and insightful collection, full of passion and inventive language, in which everyday life becomes an opportunity for inward reflection.

In Myself Painting Clarence Major seeks to re-create for readers the inexpressible feeling that comes from creating art, with poems that speak not of painting itself but of its underlying process. Major incorporates the techniques of painting- particularly that of Post-Expressionism- into his verse, describing scenery with an artist's eye and using form and color to evoke striking images: ""Desire, artichoke green . . . leaves all radiant, / creating the thickness of blue shadows."" A master of highly structured free verse, Major also paints sounds, enthralling the reader in a realm of private symbols and dream visions. Using dynamic, surreal images, this original collection invites readers into the poet's own fascinating world.

Deeply felt and brimming with humor and philosophical inquiry, Sporadic Troubleshooting, the latest volume from Clarence Major, both acknowledges poetic literary tradition and explores exciting new territories in language. Throughout, Major uses an improvisational technique, applying it to well-known mythological stories to enhance narrative and lyrical intensity. Breathtakingly vivid, these poems are testaments to universal subjects such as love, charity, nature, fear, survival, loyalty, justice, and beauty. Major's poems offer vigorous inquiries into life and art with a view toward renewal and transformation.

In the first volume to collect the paintings and drawings of Clarence Major, readers are offered six decades of unique, colorful, and compelling canvases and works on paper-works of singular beauty and social relevance. These works represent Major's personal painterly journey of passionate commitment to art. This generous selection of more than 150 paintings and drawings shows us the melding of rich ideas and fertile images, the braiding of imagination and motif. With their pleasing arrangement of elements, the works come vividly to life. Major often juxtaposes a decorative scheme with his own unique choice of color combinations, reinforced with rigorous brushstrokes that release chromatic energy. The paintings complement and challenge the great traditions of Realism, Impressionism, and Expressionism. Major is primarily a figurative and landscape painter. Here we find landscapes of singular vitality, rich in color and design, dramatic landscapes, and cityscapes representing, among other things, Major's extensive travels in America and Europe. We are also treated to Major's signature figurative work. In these paintings, he ventures fearlessly into familiar yet unexpected areas of richness. Also included is an introductory essay, ""The Education of a Painter,"" written by the artist, which further sheds light on and helps to lay a biographical, social, and historical foundation for this essential volume, reflecting a lifetime of serious commitment to painting at its best.

Witness to a lynching in 1946, Lonnie is compelled to understand the brutal event and investigate his own culpability. Set in Georgia and drawn from real events, Anthony Grooms imagines his story from the perspectives of both the victims and the perpetrators. The Vain Conversation depicts a conversation in which all Americans must be engaged. A foreword is provided by American poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major. An afterward is written by T. Geronimo Johnson, the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville and Hold It 'Til It Hurts.

An engrossing novel based on the true story of the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia Inspired by true events, The Vain Conversation reflects on the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia from the perspectives of three characters-Bertrand Johnson, one of the victims; Noland Jacks, a presumed perpetrator; and Lonnie Henson, a witness to the murders as a ten-year-old boy. Lonnie's inexplicable feelings of culpability drive him in a search for meaning that takes him around the world and ultimately back to Georgia, where he must confront Jacks and his own demons, with the hopes that doing so will free him from the grip of the past. In The Vain Conversation, Anthony Grooms seeks to advance the national dialogue on race relations. With complexity, satire, and sometimes levity, he explores what it means to redeem, as well as to be redeemed, when dealing with America's race violence, and he speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere. A foreword is provided by American poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major. An afterword is written by T. Geronimo Johnson, the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville and Hold It 'Til It Hurts.

Thunderclouds in the Forecast traverses the linked histories of two friends-one Black, the other white-who grew up wards of the state in New York. It's April 1976 and Ray is taking Amtrak to San Francisco to reconnect with Scotty, his oldest friend, who he met in a shelter for abandoned children. While Ray has embraced the stable tedium of steady employment, Scotty's life has been erratic, a trail of short-lived affairs and dead-end jobs. Maybe Ray, who's just won the lottery, is finally in a position to help him. When Ray's train is delayed in Lorena, a Gold Rush outpost turned college town, he meets Alice. Together they embark on a romance that tempts him to stay. By the time Ray arrives in San Francisco, Scotty has abandoned his bartending job, his rented room, and his scant belonging and skipped town with a married woman from Lorena. Now Ray has more than one reason to return. A preeminent American writer who thrives on reinvention, Clarence Major returns with an unforgettable exploration of life on the brink of sweeping change. With spare prose and subtle poignancy, Thunderclouds in the Forecast probes love, loyalty, and belonging. As Toni Morrison wrote, "Clarence Major has a remarkable mind and the talent to match."

Clarence Major is a consummate artist whose work in poetry, fiction, and painting has been widely recognized. He has been part of twenty-eight group exhibitions, has had fifteen one-man shows, and has published fourteen collections of poetry and nine works of fiction. Major's works-and this collection in particular-are distinguished by his poetic sociability and his unblinking but generous and affectionate portraiture. In From Now On, a retrospective of poems from the 1950s to the present-including selections from each of Major's previous books of poetry as well as a generous selection of new poems-Major creates a vivid gallery of nimbly drawn characters. Here he establishes a voice that is singular and musical, one that draws witty, moving, and empathetic portraits of African American urban and country dwellers. Ultimately, this collection maintains Major's intimate, conversational poetry while simultaneously becoming more eclectic, multicultural, and cosmopolitan. Major's poetry is affable, but it suggests an insistence that we can connect with history and social change through the dynamic lives of the people we encounter daily.

This novel, narrated by Baldy, a Navajo/Hopi guitar player, tells the story of Zuni folk singer Painted Turtle, from her childhood experiences on the reservation to her performances in cantinas in the Southwest. First published in 1988 and long out of print, this work from Clarence Major follows Painted Turtle as she seeks to assuage the spiritual sicknesses that have shaped her uneasy relationships with family, friends, and her tribe.

In "Down and Up," Clarence Major makes use of American and European public places, their character and voice, to construct poems that explore the physical world juxtaposed sharply with the inner world. Sometimes realistic, sometimes dreamlike, these poems are dynamic, universal in theme, and acknowledge a debt to the great tradition of modern American poetry. Clear eyed and painterly, they explore wherever Major's fancy takes him. His distinctive voice and compelling spatial and visual approach offer a connection between everyday human occurrences and the physical space they surround.

Originally published in 1986, this new edition returns to print a classic, influential work of American fiction The author of the acclaimed novel Reflex and Bone Structure returns here in My Amputations to the question of identity, the double, adventure, detection, and mystery, but with more hypnotic power and range. In My Amputations he has his protagonist, Mason Ellis (who may just be "a desperate ex-con" or a wronged American novelist out to right the wrong done to him), jump through flaming loops like a trained dog, so to speak. In other words, there seems to be no end to the troubles Mason Ellis faces. His story takes him from the South Side of Chicago, to New York, with a stint in Attica prison, across America and Europe and into the primal depths of Africa. Mason, all the while, tries to convince the reader that he is the important American writer he says he is. Upon his release from prison he sets out to prove his claim. After an audacious bank-robbery and a couple of burglaries that are hilarious, he goes into hiding to escape the malice of one of his cohorts, and eventually flees to Europe. The irony is that he is now as much the runner as the seeker. After encounters with a Zuni ex-folksinger, kidnappers, the New York underworld, literary groupies, an Italian swordsman, a violent German secret society, and an anti-bellum cotillion in rural Greece, he finds himself face to face (behind a mask) with his own destiny.