Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, and Thomas Mann. His exploration of Na-
tive American issues is continued in a collection
of poems titled Some Observations of a Stranger at
Zuni in the Latter Part of the Century (1989).
Major’s range of forms and subjects reflects his
commitment to artistic freedom made explicit in
his essays and interviews, many of which are col-
lected in The Dark and Feeling (1974). He insists
that it is the quality of the work rather than its
ideology that determines its importance. Even in
his 1967 manifesto, “Black Criteria,” which calls
for greater use of African-American materials and
a rejection of much of Western tradition, he still
concludes that the integrity of the artistic vision
is the essential criterion. With this perspective,
he has insisted on his difference from the BLACK
AESTHETIC artists of the 1960s and 1970s and from
the more recent variation associated with Afrocen-
trism. He has consistently argued that, while the
African-American artist should make use of black
cultural materials as part of the environment, the
primary obligation is to the work itself and not to
political and social ideas.
Major’s work as editor and lexicographer has
demonstrated his commitment to language and to
literary freedom. His Dictionary of Afro American
Slang (1970), expanded and updated in Juba to Jive
(1994), provides a major resource for discussions
of African-American language use. His anthologies,
The New Black Poetry (1969), The Garden Thrives:
Twentieth-Century African-American Poetry (1996),
and Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African-
American Short Stories (1993), offer a wide range
of literary expression within the African-American
tradition. He is professor of English at the Univer-
sity of California, Davis, where he teaches Ameri-
can literature and creative writing. With his wife,
Pamela Ritter Major, he lives in Davis, where he
continues to write and paint.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, Bernard W. Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits
of an African American Postmodernist. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Byerman, Keith Eldon. Fingering the Jagged Grain:
Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction. Ath-
ens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.
Klinkowitz, Jerome. “The Self-Apparent Word: Clar-
ence Major’s Innovative Fiction.” In Black Ameri-
can Prose Theory, edited by Joe Weixlmann and
Chester J. Fontenot, 199–214. Greenwood, Fla.:
Penkevill, 1984.
Special issue, Black American Literature Forum 13
(Summer 1979).
Special issue, African American Review 28 (Spring
1994).
Keith ByermanMajor, Marcus (1975– )
Marcus Major was born at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, into a military family. During his child-
hood, he lived on military bases in Maryland,
Alabama, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and New Jersey,
while his father pursued his career in the army.
Major is a graduate of Richard Stockton Col-
lege, in Pomona, New Jersey, where he received
a degree in literature and a teaching certificate
in African-American studies. Although he began
a career in education, teaching elementary and
middle school in Newark, New Jersey, he turned
to his real joy, writing, in 1998 at the encourage-
ment of a former classmate.
Major is the author of three novels: Good Peo-
ples (2001), A Man Most Worthy (2002), and Four
Guys and Trouble (2001). Properly described as
romance novels, the central theme in Major’s
novels is developing and maintaining fidelity,
respect, and reciprocity in monogamous rela-
tionships. This is not often easy to do, given the
urban “players” who people Major’s fiction as
well as the seductress female player who knows
what she wants and goes after it, no matter what.
In Good People, when Myles Moore meets and
falls in love with Marisa Marrero, a successful
Latina attorney and talk show host, he is happy
finally to be in a meaningful relationship with
the woman of his dreams. However, monogamy328 Major, Marcus