My Amputations
My Amputations
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.
My Amputations, Clarence Major’s fifth novel, is an explosively rich book about a man pursued 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 three continents—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.'—Denise Levertov, Robert Haas, Jonathan Galassi, Sandra Cisneros (Jurors, Western States Arts Foundation, 1986 Western States Book Award for Fiction)
‘My Amputations is a picaresque novel that comes wailing out of the blues tradition: it is ironic, irreverent, sexy, on a first-name basis with the human condition.’—The New York Times
‘My Amputations ‘is a provocative advance in contemporary American writing. This novel should do much to make the name Clarence Major a byword among aficionados of adventurous fiction everywhere.’ — The Washington Post Book World
