Abstract This article analyzes Clarence Major’s underappreciated novel Emergency Exit by focusing on the audience’s “interface” on the story. Discussion about the novel and Major’s own reflections on it have tended to focus on what the novel does not do—its refusal to offer mimetic characters and its embrace of “pure writing.” Drawing on scholarship mostly focused on computer interfaces by Lori Emerson and Alexander Galloway, this article explores the way that Major stages our “interface” on this fictional world—a topic nicely captured by the very title of the novel, emphasizing entrances and exits. Ultimately, this article argues, Major’s focus on entrances and thresholds more broadly asks readers to consider the nature of the social itself, the interaction between people, objects, and language, and represents a crucial stage of his writing career.
Daniel Punday (Sun,) studied this question.