Reviews: 13

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Exclusive Online Reviews The "central theme of Major's life and career ... is a story of paradox," Keith E. Byerman writes in "Performing Transgression, Seeking Community," the introduction to The Art and Life of Clarence Major, the surprising first full-length bio-critical study of "an artistic renaissance man" (2). Following my introduction, "Clarence Major's Transgressive Voice and Double Consciousness as an African American Postmodernist Artist," it showcases selections from his novels (5), poems (13), and paintings (16), with commentary by critics (10) in Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African American Postmodernist. Some readers will ask, how were his failures at marriage related to his early problems with alcohol and bohemian defiance of definitions of black masculinity during the black power and black arts movements, whose political art-for-people's-sake aesthetic he rejected?