Golden Gate and Other Stories
[Available for purchase now on this site. Also available through our distributor, Itasca Books, our preferred US outlet Powell's Bookstore, our preferred UK bookstore Blackwell's and also available, we are told in France.]
Announcing publication of Golden Gate and Other Stories by the justly celebrated Clarence Major. As Luis Alberto Urrea says, “Clarence Major is the voice of our country singing sweet and bitter and loud.”
The book is a gathering of thirteen unpublished stories of aspiration, thriving and authentic lives set in California’s Bay Area. A few examples: A frustrated married woman searching for happiness online and at conferences. A reporter from San Francisco goes to Rome to interview the widow of a world-famous deceased American novelist. A young woman goes on a date with a young man just to teach him a lesson. In a San Francisco boarding house, a man is the bane of everyone’s existence. Two children are disappointed when their mother marries while they are away visiting their father. A dilettante throws parties everybody loves. A communist from France becomes paranoid when the man she is dating might be spying on her.
CLARENCE MAJOR’s two previous collections of short stories are Fun & Games and Chicago Heat; his novels include Dirty Bird Blues (a Penguin Classic), Such Was the Season, a Literary Guild selection, My Amputations, winner of the Western States Book Award; Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Harvard Review, and dozens of other periodicals. Major won a National Book Award Bronze Medal and many other awards. He was elected to The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2021. Major is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Twentieth Century American Literature at the University of California at Davis.
Reviews
Clarence Major is the voice of our country singing sweet and bitter and loud. I wish I had written these stories. I could never make the magic he has perfected. I love it, and I know readers will celebrate this book’s brilliance.”
Luis Alberto Urrea, author of House of Broken Dreams
I was entranced by this collection. The subtle power of these stories sneaks up from behind, creating startling climaxes with enigmatic endings that invite the reader to muse about what happens next. You will remember them. It’s a vital and important book!”
Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger’s Glasses and Enchantment
In this stunning collection of thirteen stories, set in San Francisco’s Bay area, Clarence Major reveals with jarring intimacy how age-old struggles with money, class, skin color, gender, identity, love, isolation, and illness lead to dire consequences or unexpected revelations. Spanning multiple decades from the 1960s to present time, Major builds empires of truth that will jolt you with their honesty and compassion. In each story, we encounter neighbors, artists, co-workers, families and friends yearning to thrive and live an authentic life. A tour de force. Absolutely riveting.”
Jessica Keener, author of Night Swim and Strangers in Budapest
Clarence Major has a remarkable gift of evoking time and place in this deeply affecting collection that captures the intimacies and the failings of love, as well as the yearning for personal identity. A warm, tender, thoughtful book.”
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, author of What Isn’t Remembered
There is love, duplicity, miscommunications, affection, and violence that constantly surprise. Spanning the years from the late 1960s to today, Major writes with verve and clarity about places he clearly loves (and that the reader will come to love, too).”
Whitney Otto, author of Eight Girls Taking Pictures
Clarence Major deftly achieves in Golden Gate what Joyce does in Dubliners, Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio, and Alice Munro in her stories of Southwestern Ontario. With subtle realistic vignettes of relationships between citizens of a particular city, Major plumbs universal depths with a simplicity of style that only comes with great mastery. As with all great literature, he leaves us to grapple with the earth shattering truths on our own. Long after I put down Golden Gate I am still shaking from the tremors of this masterpiece.”
David Santos Donaldson, author of Greenland
Clarence Major is a major American voice, and Golden Gate and Other Stories shows how he does it with the short story. This collection is a commentary on how they used to make stories, back when stories had a real impact, and it proves the vitality of the form by giving a voice to every kind of character, in a great variety of eras in the Bay Area, and by glancing at the deepest questions—political, philosoph-ical, aesthetic, humanist. No lane goes undriven, no idea of what a story is goes uninvestigated, no human weakness is overlooked, and no sympathy goes un-extended, in the profoundest ways. This is how stories look when a whole lifetime has been given to them. We should revere this kind of commitment.”
Rick Moody, author of Garden State
Clarence Major has a remarkable ability to capture the feel of the Bay Area, past and present, and to subtly show how the place has, and continues to, change. Golden Gate is full of vivid and perfectly constrained stories about the tenuous connections (and missed connections) between sometimes very different ways of living. These are stories that feel profoundly vital and humane--that feel like they're not about characters at all, but about real people.
Brian Evenson, author of Last Days