Reflex and Bone Structure by Clarence Major

First published: 1975

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Experimental; detective

Time of work: Late 1960’s or early 1970’s

Locale: New York, New York

Principal Characters:

• The Narrator, a primary character although nameless and never described
• Cora Hull, a black actress
• Canada Jackson, a serious suitor of Cora
• Dale, an Off-Broadway actor

The Novel

The interrelationships of four characters are examined in this novel of discursive experimentation. The main protagonists of the novel are the narrator, Cora Hull, Canada Jackson, and Dale. Cora Hull is present during most of the action, which takes place primarily in New York City, with occasional trips to places such as the Poconos and New England. Since none of the trips is described in any detail, readers cannot be sure whether they really take place. The characters can travel as easily to the South Pole as to the neighborhood theater. The novel is written in the first person and in the present tense, which gives the narrator complete control over what takes place. In fact, the narrator tells readers that he is unreliable and consciously manipulating the text. He stresses the fact that he is simply an act of his own imagination. Because of the episodic, often contradictory form of the novel, a reader’s suspension of disbelief is challenged. There is little certainty about anything in this novel, which is one of the implied intents of the narrator, who often claims that forgetfulness or simple arbitrariness purposely alters the text.

There are, however, certain motifs that recur throughout the text that provide stable points of reference. The primary frame of reference is the narrator, who tells readers that he is writing a novel while he is writing it. The narrator comments continuously on the problems he has in constructing the text as a result of his own misinterpretations, his forgetfulness, his difficulty in describing how things appear or are, and his constant flights of fancy. All the other characters are at the mercy of the narrator’s whims. Thus, they at times are sent away or drop out of the action depending on the narrator’s moods. Often, the narrator will contradict himself or even blend himself into the other characters. While the activity of all four characters takes place in a skewed, apparently haphazard time frame, the story obviously centers around Cora Hull. Cora is presented in a variety of ways. At one time, she is studying feminist theory. Often she is appearing in a play, but readers learn little about the drama. Usually, she is presented in relation to one of the three other characters in an indeterminate time frame. Cora is the center of the novel, and all the other characters are redefined through her, but she too is endlessly mutable. Commonly, she is the locus of their sexual attention as well as a physical presence to which the narrator returns again and again.

Although Canada, Dale, and the narrator are fixated on Cora, none of them maintains any long-term relationships. They revolve around one another without really understanding one another. Their closeness is suggested by the interwoven repetition of their personal and sexual encounters, which are presented in matter-of-fact terms. The narrator claims they all have problems focusing on anything. At various times, they live either in the same apartment or in close proximity to one another. Much of the novel takes place inside apartments, in rooms ill-defined and vague. The narrator complains about this, claiming they stay inside with closed-in thoughts too much.

From the various locales mentioned, a reader can tell that the characters live in Manhattan. Cora is an actress often at rehearsals or trying out for plays. Dale and Canada have no known occupations, although they are associated with the theater as actors. The narrator at one point calls himself a theater director. They drift in and out of the timeless plot, sometimes threatening, sometimes friendly, but never really defined. Another recurring motif is a young Puerto Rican boy who wears a green shirt. The boy is seen everywhere and somehow has access to the apartments of the characters. He is mysteriously attracted to Cora and appears at regular intervals throughout the novel without altering the direction of action or having anything to do with the rest of the characters.

There are other repeated motifs that give the novel the eerie sense of suspense associated with detective fiction. A bomb has exploded on the street, and the police are investigating the apparent assassination of two people. Somebody with a suitcase has been murdered. There are indications that the murder has been committed by an unnamed revolutionary group. Hints are given that Canada is a member of the black revolutionary group responsible for the bombing; all the characters are fingerprinted as suspects. The nameless police return again and again to the scene of the crime with no apparent success in their investigation. The boy with the green shirt says he knows who owned the suitcase that exploded. The narrator says that the boy lies. The narrator also says that the crime occurred just outside his apartment. At times, the narrator states that it was Cora who was killed, but a few pages later, Cora is back. In the end, the narrator claims that it was he who murdered Dale and Cora, suggesting that the murder is a figment of his literary imagination.

Likewise, at various times in the course of the narrative, well-known literary and cinematic icons such as Agatha Christie and John Wayne appear. The narrator makes numerous references to old movies and actors from early crime films; the cinematic references reflect the narrator’s interest in film and mirror the cinematic quality of the text, which occurs in small “takes.” There are also a number of sections that consist simply of lists, more often than not lists of black musicians or other well-known African American artists. These lists seem to function as a type of naïve empiricism, proving by their very existence that a world outside the text does exist as well as affirming the positive quality of African American cultural expression.

The novel is composed of small vignettes broken into two sections, entitled “A Bad Connection” and “Body Heat.” Approximately equal in length, these two sections offer no clue as to the meaning of their titles or their function in the overall narrative. There is no discernible change in storytelling method or characters from one section to the next. In fact, the novel ends much as it began, with the narrator slipping in and out of surreal dream sequences in which the characters blend with one another and into absurd scenarios.

As these characters intermingle, connect, and disconnect, however, there is a curious static quality about the text. The reader is never sure if anything happens. In fact, a reader becomes the detective of the novel, trying desperately to put all the disparate pieces together. A perverse, unnameable menace seems to keep anything from occurring in ways that can be understood. This menace may simply be the avowed manipulation of the narrator—or it may be the intent of the narrator to suggest that the true nature of existence consists of these seemingly random encounters with people and places to which there is no rhyme or reason.

The Characters

There are no characters as such in this experimental novel. The reader is given very little reliable information about the four people mentioned in the text, Cora Hull, Canada Jackson, Dale, and the narrator.

Cora Hull is at the center of the novel; the other characters, including the narrator, are usually described in relation to her. Cora may have been killed at the beginning of the novel. Therefore, the rest of the novel may be looked at as an attempt to explain and define Cora’s life. The short, episodic quality of the text includes many intriguing and sometimes contradictory descriptions of Cora.

Cora is presented in many moods and in many ways. Her life, however, does not seem to have a center or a definitive purpose. At one moment, she is a beginning actress who tries out for Off-Broadway shows. Later, she is described as being a famous actress. She is also described, variously, as a member of a black revolutionary group, a member of a white revolutionary group, and a feminist. Cora is a complicated character described in fleeting images that do not give a complete picture of her.

All three of the other characters, including the narrator, are described in relation to Cora. Canada, Dale, and the narrator are suitors of Cora, but none has any lasting relationships. These characters are also described in images that give impressions but form no clear picture. All the characters are in a constant state of flux, never staying in one place long enough to be fully described or analyzed.

The most interesting aspect of this experimental approach to characterization is the relation of the narrator to the text and to the other characters. The narrator informs readers early in the book that the other characters are under his control. The narrator confesses to being unreliable, forgetful, and absentminded. The use of fantasy and surreal episodes springing from the narrator’s imagination makes the characterization even harder to analyze. Also, the narrator confesses to being in love with Cora. As he is presented as one of three suitors to Cora’s affections, the way he describes Cora may be attributed to his jealousy or to his feelings of inferiority.

This nontraditional use of character description and motivation makes for an intriguing fictional presentation. The whole question of narrative control through the process of naming and describing is examined. Furthermore, the main character becomes the narrator; since he is writing the novel, his freedom of perception affects the way the novel is understood.

Major’s use of characterization in Reflex and Bone Structure forces readers to reexamine received notions of fictional presentation. The abstract flow of words functions nonrepresentationally on the page, in much the same way that abstract painting forces the viewer to see the paint before the image. In this sense, the book’s characters are more poetic constructs than realistic presentations.

Critical Context

Reflex and Bone Structure is a good example of Clarence Major’s continuing experiments in trying to erase the boundaries between prose and poetry. The novel fits into a body of work by the author devoted to innovative narrative techniques. In novels such as All-Night Visitors (1969), No (1973), and Emergency Exit (1979), the author uses a combination of prose experiments to present an alternative viewpoint of the African American experience. Major infuses language with new power through radical alterations of conventional plots and characterization. He stresses the beauties of sensual experience and the special gifts of black Americans.

Major is a poet and the author of the Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (1970); he is often cited as one of the founding theoreticians of the 1960’s new black aesthetic movement. As editor of the poetry anthology The New Black Poetry (1969), Major stresses the importance of African American poetic identity in collectively attempting to revolutionize social and political relationships through creation of a brotherhood of black consciousness. This African American cultural emphasis and heightened sense of the positive black identity are shared by other black writers such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Addison Gayle, and Ishmael Reed.

Bibliography

Bell, Bernard W. “Modernism and Postmodernism.” In The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Places Major in the African American postmodern tradition of experimenting with language and form. Sees Major as parodying the detective novel and testing the boundaries of its form.

Black American Literature Forum 13, no. 2 (1979). This special issue is devoted to Clarence Major and contains a number of interesting articles. Among these are “Towards a Primary Bibliography of Clarence Major,” by Joe Weixlmann and Clarence Major, and “Major’s Reflex and Bone Structure and the Anti-Detective Tradition,” by Larry McCaffrey and Linda Gregory.

Klinkowitz, Jerome. The Life of Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Includes a discussion of the disruptive qualities of Major’s work in relation to the postmodern text. Sees Major as an instrumental African American writer who blends social and racial critique into experimental texts.

Klinkowitz, Jerome. The Self-Apparent Word: Fiction as Language/Language as Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. Places Major in a postmodern tradition of writers including William S. Burroughs and John Barth. Considers Reflex and Bone Structure a text that draws vitality from the “self-apparency” of its construction.

Major, Clarence. The Dark and Feeling: Black American Writers and Their Work. New York: Third Press, 1974. A collection of varied essays, including Major’s seminal essay “Black Criteria.” Also a number of interviews, including a self-interview.

Soitos, Stephen F. “Reflex and Bone Structure: The Black Anti-Detective Novel.” In Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African American Postmodernist, edited by Bernard W. Bell. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Argues that Major’s novel resists and comments upon generic conventions and examines the role of race in that project.