Necessary Distance: Afterthoughts on Becoming a Writer

Abstract

Ed. 's Note: Had I not come to trust Clarence Major's judgment, I'd have thought it odd, at the very least, that he would propose to introduce the fiction of his contemporaries with the tale of his becoming a writer. Pushing back skepticism, I began to read, turned skeptical for a time (forgive me, Clarence), then discovered the aptness of the writerly gesture. So step freely across this less than self-apparent threshold, reader, into the fiction of life and the life of contemporary black American fiction.