My Amputations - Reviews

"My Amputations, Clarence Major's fifth novel, is an explosively rich book about a man persued by his shadow. Its protagonist is either a desperate ex-con who has become convinced that he is an important American novelist or a desperate American novelist who has become convinced that he--and most of what passes for literary life on the continent--is a con. Clarence Major has split the difference between Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Herman Melville's The Confidence Man to produce this dark, funny tale about the great American hustle. Partly a picaresque adventure out of Chester Himes, partly an Evelyn Waugh-sharp satire on the writing life, partly a determinedly self-reflexive and modernist fable about identity, My Amputations is distinguished by the extraordinarily inventive rhythms of its language. A book full of laughter and rueful sadness and swift contempt, its deepest resonance is the hunger to be healed."

--Denise Levertov, Robert Haas, Jonathan Galassi, Sandra Cisneros (Jurors, Western States Arts Foundation)

My Amputations reveals "that Clarence Major has a remarkable mind and the talent to match."

--Toni Morrison

"Since NO and Reflex and Bone Structure, Clarence Major has created characters who double-entendre themselves through the raucous and passionate environs their narrator shared with them. In My Amputations, the struggle to see, to speak, to understand our myriad fragmentations continues, with blues, guts, astounding wit: [it has] the libidinal textures of a fresh oil painting I wish I had commissioned."

--Ntozake Shange

"This is Clarence Major's best novel, which means it is very good indeed-an emotionally powerful, inventice act of language that draws together influences from black music, poetry, painting, the blues, and experimental prose to show us the possibilities of literary art. Once again, Major proves he is a pioneer on the cutting edge of contemporary fiction."

--Charles Johnson

"Clarence Major's fiction has always been distinguished by a universe of concern that does not compromise any truth to itself...but most importantly [My Amputations] enacts the process of finding his mature fictional voice. [It] is living fiction, as close to a truly organic text as we are ever likely to see."

--Jerome Klinkowitz