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to write about San Francisco— the bohemian life in San Francisco, which I knew a little about. I wrote one novel in six months, another in about the same amount of time—and another novel about six months later. Within a year and a half or two years, I had written three of the worst novels that have ever been written by a published writer. I realized from those efforts that I was not a San Francisco writer—or at least not yet. And if I was not, then what—what then? Since I could not think of another Louisiana novel, what could I do? I got a job working with a printer. And when anyone asked me what I was doing, I told them I was learning the printing business. “What about your writing?” they asked me. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll put it down,” I said. But even when I was saying this, my mind was only on writing—writing something else about Louisiana. I knew that I had more to say—and eventually it would come—but when and how, I didn’t know.
    Then one day I was playing some of my records, and a particular verse caught my attention. I should note here that I’m an avid record collector. I have over five hundred LPs of all kinds of music— jazz, blues, spirituals, European and African folk music, American Indian music, etc., etc. I think I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have learned by reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crying, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie’s big band—all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature. But the rural blues, maybe because of my background, is my choice in music. So, I was sitting around listening to a record by Lightnin’ Hopkins, and these words stuck in my mind: “The worse thing this black man ever done—when he moved his wife and family to Mr. Tim Moore’s farm. Mr. Tim Moore’s man don’t stand and grin; say ‘If you stay out the graveyard, nigger, I’ll keep you out the pen.’ ” These words haunted me for weeks, for months—without my knowing why, or what I would ever do with them.
    Then I came back here in 1965, and a friend of mine and I were talking, and during our conversation he told me that someone we knew had been killed by a man in Baton Rouge, and that the person who had killed him was sent to prison for only a short time and then released. When I heard this, I had no idea that this incident could have any connection with Lightnin’ Hopkins’s blues verse. But the two things—the murder and the song—stayed in my mind, stayed in mind so much that I began to wonder what I could do with them. Then I recalled hearing about two other incidents in which blacks had murdered blacks. In Case One, when a white lawyer offered his services for a small fee, the prisoner told him that he would rather go to the pen and pay for his crime. But in Case Two, the prisoner left with his white employer. Remembering the first incident, I wrote the long story “Three Men,” which was published in my
Bloodline
collection. But the second incident would require much more time and thinking. What would I do with my young killer once I got him out of prison? It took about a year, I suppose, before it all jelled in my mind, and then I started writing, in the summer of 1966, the novel
Of Love and Dust.
The novel takes place the summer I left the South. The action takes place on a plantation along False River. I used that particular place and that time because I knew more about them than I did about Baton Rouge. And I think I also used that time and place because, again, I was trying to say something about my past, something of what I had left out in
Catherine Carmier.
I wanted to talk about the fields a little bit more, about the plantation store, the river, the church, the house fairs, etc., etc., etc. And yet, when that novel,
Of Love and Dust,
was finished, I realized