The same openness and curiosity that make his work so various and rich allow Major to focus on and respond to each interviewer's concerns. Journalists, scholars, and show hosts pose questions about particular works, about the different ways Major creates, about his teaching of writing, about his views of nature, and about youth.

In interviews from 1969 to 2001, Major transforms every interview into an encounter that informs him as well as the interviewer. His interest in the dynamic nature of language and life emerges in several discussions. "If language didn't change, it would die, " he says in a 1994 interview. "It has to constantly change and evolve even if we're speaking at a small, secret level. It has to grow. Words are like organic things -- they don't just go on. Some are reborn in different form."

Featuring a previously unpublished interview with the volume's editor, as well asconversations with such notables as Larry McCaffery, Conversations with Clarence Major shows how the mind of an enormously talented and multifaceted artist works while conveying a sense of the generosity and optimism that keep Clarence Major experimenting and learning.