I had read many books in the Vallejo library, but I had read only what I wanted to read, what I liked reading. Now I had to read what was needed to make me a writer, if I was to be a writer. Now I had to look deeper into the story or the novel, into what the writer was really trying to tell us; now I had to analyze form, which I had never thought of before. “Read Twain,” they said, “especially Huckleberry Finn; read Faulkner as much as you can; read Hemingway—see how ‘grace under pressure’ applies to you, to your people, especially to your athletes. Read Eudora Welty and Steinbeck; read James and Conrad. Have you read Flaubert?”
“No, I’ve read de Maupassant.”
“Read Flaubert. Have you read Cervantes and Shakespeare?”
“A little Shakespeare, but no Cervantes.”
“Read Don Quixote, and as much Shakespeare as you can. And the Russians?”
“I’ve read Turgenev and Chekhov.”
“You must read Tolstoy’s War and Peace; Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; Gogol’s Dead Souls, and The Inspector General if you have the time. Read Thomas Mann. Read him. Read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, and you should also read Dubliners. Forget Ulysses and Finnegans Wake for now. Read T. S. Eliot.”
“I don’t like that man. I don’t understand anything he’s talking about.”
“Read him. When you begin losing your hair and your teeth begin loosening in the gum, you’ll understand him. Read. Read. Read. You want to say something about your people? You did say you wanted to say something about your people, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then read, read, read—the tools of the trade. There are other tools that you’ll discover later, but these I recommend, and they are worthy tools, I assure you.”
So I read and I wrote, read and wrote. In all classes except creative writing I made average grades. In creative writing, only As. So I knew I was determined to be a writer. Everything pointed that way.
After San Francisco State College, I went to Stanford for a year. On leaving Stanford, I went back to San Francisco, where I rented a one-room apartment with a Murphy bed. A Murphy bed is one that you push into the wall during the day and pull out at night. Besides the bed, there were a small couch and two chairs in the room. I had a small kitchen, a small bath, a small hallway with a small dining table. The dining table would be my desk. There I was determined to make my name. From that small table, I would write the books that would bring me the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prizes, and lots and lots of money—l thought.
Earlier, I mentioned leaving Louisiana with a block of wood in a sack across my shoulder. Now this block of wood must reappear in my narrative. Chekhov said so. According to Chekhov, if a gun is over the mantel when the curtain rises, then it must be taken down before the curtain’s final descent. Therefore, being an admirer of Chekhov, I must include this block of wood somewhere in my story. Which reminds me of something else. One should never title a speech. Speeches should be either untitled as paintings are untitled or numbered as symphonies are numbered, but they should never be titled. Titles are so hard to stick by. (Many years ago I saw a French movie, one of those New Wave French movies of the fifties and sixties. It might have been Rififi—I’m not sure. But, anyway, the people inside the theater were advised not to reveal the ending to the people who were waiting in line to come inside. One fellow came out of the theater and told everybody in line to look out for the little white dog. Some people cursed him, some challenged to fight him, but he got away. We went into the theater and waited for the little white dog to show up on the screen. It never did.)
Anyway, earlier I mentioned a block of oak wood, and according to Mr. Chekhov, I must do something with that block of wood before closing.
But first, since the block of wood in the sack was only a symbol, what was its meaning? And again, as you may recall, I said that I didn’t know its meaning. Only that it was there, and that it was heavy, a burden to carry.
Now let’s go back to that one-room apartment with that block of oak wood in mind. In that room, I began to wonder what I should write about. At San Francisco State, at Stanford, on Guam, and in my home in Vallejo before going into the army, I had tried to write about the South, the old place, the old people, my brothers and sister, my friends, my church, and my little school. I remembered the letters I had written for the old people, the letters I had read for them. I thought about how I had gone to the store for them, how I had gone to the post office for them, how I had run from one house to another, borrowing a little sugar, salt, flour, or lard for them. I remembered how I had listened to them when they visited my aunt. I remembered how I had traveled with another aunt all over Pointe Coupee and West Baton Rouge Parishes, selling cosmetics. This aunt who sold cosmetics was Catholic and Creole, and I remembered how she and some of the other old Creoles talked about “them crazy ’mericans there on them plantation.” The other aunt, the one who had raised me, was dead now (she died in ’53, the same year I went into the army), but I could still remember her crawling over the floor, and cooking the food, and washing the clothes, and crawling across the porch to work in the vegetable garden beside the house after the sun had slipped behind our pecan tree. I could still see the rows of string beans and sweet peas and the rows of tomatoes and cucumbers where she worked.
In that small apartment sitting at that small wooden table, I could still remember the day I left Louisiana. And I could see those faces who didn’t wish to look back at me, the same ones for whom I had written and read the letters. And when they did look at me, no more than a glance. I saw in their faces their lives, the lives of their people, my people, the past. I saw in those faces at that moment what they would never be able to put into words. Now it began to dawn on me: the meaning of those letters that I had written for them. How I had had to create the letters. They would say, “Dear Sarah, I’m well.” Then they expected me to carry on from there. I had to tell Sarah all that they wanted to tell her but couldn’t. (“That’s why you go to school, ain’t it?” they asked. “Now say something to fill in both sides of that paper.”) And afterward, they would give me pralines, tea cakes, or a nickel.
In that room, I realized the meaning of that block of wood. These people had let me go to California, but I still had to write their letters. They made sure of that. Together, they cut a heavy block from one of our oldest live oaks, put it inside a strong croker sack, and said, “Here, and don’t you dare turn loose of that sack. You do, we’ll hear ’bout it, yeah.”
At San Francisco State and at Stanford, I was issued the hammer, the chisel, a grinding stone, and a few sharp knives to do the work. I got a part-time job at the post office in the evening; the rest of the time I was at the task.
A woman I had met while I was at San Francisco State told me how lucky I was to have this huge block of granite (she didn’t know it was oak) to work on, when many others who wanted to work had nothing at all to work on. I thought, “No kidding”—only I didn’t say “kidding.” I thought, “You don’t know the half of it. It wasn’t my choice; it was theirs.” But I didn’t say this to the woman, because she was a nice woman, and she and I would be very close friends for thirty-one years, until she died in 1987. She told me in 1956 that she would help me in every way she could, that she would like to see the work when it was done. She said that during the time I worked on the block she would help me buy and select clothes, she would cook and bring me food—but she wouldn’t give me money for whiskey or for other women.
I didn’t argue with the woman because she was very nice, and I accepted what she was kind enough to give me. And when I had chiseled off a chip from the block and carved it as well as I could, I would take it to her, and she would say yes, but not quite. And we would have small glasses of Stolichnaya vodka and orange juice, and we would sometimes go to a movie. She liked foreign films, so we would see one of the great Eisenstein films, or a Truffaut, or maybe one of Kurosawa’s films. Other times, we would go to a symphony, and always to a boo
kstore. There were great bookstores in North Beach and on Haight Street and Polk Street. Most of the bookstores had prints of famous paintings, and while she looked at the prints of Monet or Degas or Dufy, I would look at Modigliani and Van Gogh. Modigliani for the nudes, and Van Gogh for his country people. I like The Potato Eaters and the worker’s shoes and the people sowing wheat in the field. All this reminded me of home—Van Gogh did, not Modigliani.
And after leaving the bookstore or seeing a great film, I would go back home to work on the block. And I would go back to the woman to show her what I had done, and she would say yes, but not quite yet. And sometimes I would get angry with her, and I would ask her what the hell she knew about it. But after returning home, I would go to a pay phone and call her and apologize because I knew that she only wanted me to do it right. So I would go back and work again. I don’t know the number of hours or days or weeks or even months that I would put into one carving—but I do know that the Chinese grocer knew I had bought many cans of pork and beans, because one day when I came into his store he said, “Ah, the writer, pok-n-bens.”
“Did I say I wanted pork and beans?” I asked him. “Can’t you wait till I order?” He waited, eyeing me. Laughing inside, not out. “I want a can of Boston baked beans,” I said.
“Same shelf,” he said with a nod.
Then back to the block. Hours and days don’t matter. Ultimately I would take the little figure to the woman in Pacific Heights, one of San Francisco’s most exclusive sections, where we could look out of the window and see the bay and Angel Island and Alcatraz and part of the Golden Gate Bridge. The woman always had classical music on the big German radio, and she tried to show me the difference between Beethoven and Brahms. Beethoven’s Seventh and Ninth were her favorite of Beethoven’s symphonies; she liked Brahms’s Second and Fourth better than the First and Third. She tried to teach me the difference between the music of Ravel and that of Debussy. And she told me never to say Debussy, but to say De-be-see. She tried to get me to say Bach the way she did, but I told her it sounded as if I were trying to get phlegm from the roof of my mouth. “Have it your way, E,” she said. “Remain ignorant.” One day when I came to her apartment with one of my little carvings, I heard on the radio what I thought was a great piece of music. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. She told me that if I listened closely enough, I would hear that the music was constantly changing, which meant that the viewer had moved from one picture to another. And she told me that if I listened closely enough, I could hear that each change was definitely different. “Just as characters should be different in a book,” she said. “lf you like the record, I will get it for you.”
“I like it,” I said. “I like it very much.” And since then, music has always been one of the tools.
One day the woman said, “The work is getting better. We’ll send it to the people in the big city and see what they think of it.” So we did. And we got a message with the little figure saying, “Yes, but . . .” And I told the woman I was very tired and I doubted that I could go on. She pushed: “Yes, you can go on; I’ll be there to help you go on. You’re blessed.”
“I’m cursed, not blessed; I’m damned,” I said.
“You should be honored that they chose you,” she countered. “One day you’ll be thankful that you went on.” (At that time, I thought the woman was crazy, and I thought myself crazier, but still I went back.)
Some nights, I would go for long walks in the wind and fog, and I would say out loud, “Please relieve this load from my shoulder. I don’t need the honors. Pass it on to someone else who deserves it more.” And when it was not taken away, I thought more than once about Ambrose Bierce. Why not walk away, as he had done, and never be heard of again? Some of my friends were going to Africa, Mexico, Europe. But on their return, they seemed worse off than before they left. I began to wonder if I had the nerve for the big drop from our famous Golden Gate Bridge. My aunt, whom I loved more than anyone else in the world, was dead now, so what did I owe this world? I owed this world nothing.
But back in that room, I would see those faces again, on the porch and by the fire. And I would see my aunt crawling over the floor, and cooking the food and washing the clothes, and never ever complaining. And I would see the faces of many of my friends who never had my chance. And I would pick up the hammer and the chisel or one of the knives and go back to work.
Twenty-five years later, it is I who have begun to search faces for that one to whom I can pass the tools. I’m not through with the block yet, but at the same time, I’m looking. And if you as teachers should find him or her before I do, then you pass on the tools. In the long run, he or she will not regret the favor.
AUNTY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN LOUISIANA
When people ask me who has been the greatest influence in my writing, I suppose they expect me to say another writer or a teacher. And I have learned much from teachers and writers and books. But the greatest influence on me as a writer and a man has been my aunt, Miss Augusteen Jefferson. Not for what she taught me with words— she did not give me advice (on leaving her), as Polonius gave Laertes; but she showed me, without the use of her legs, that I could do almost anything with those twenty-six letters if I would only work hard enough at it.
Of course, I have not. I have not read half as much as I should have. And surely I don’t spend nearly as much time at the desk as I should. Five days a week, five hours a day are too much for me. With her it was seven days a week, all day—and as far as I know she never had one day’s vacation in her life.
You know, there’s never a lack of others telling you what to do with your life. My young friends did not want me to write about the rural South, but about New Orleans—which I knew absolutely nothing at all about. Years later, when I was about to be discharged from the army, friends told me not to leave, because civilian life was pretty hard. In the army there was security. Jokingly they would add, “You will always have three beds here—one in the barracks, one in the hospital, and one in the stockade.” There was no lack of beds, or food, and of course the whole army would be behind you. What more security does one need? So why leave? You’re a bright young man, get along well with others, a born leader, can go to officers’ school if you wish. What more should you want?
After leaving the army, I enrolled at San Francisco State to study English literature and creative writing. I was so far behind in general education courses that I could not take creative writing classes until the second semester. During my first semester I had to take expository writing 110—I shall never forget it, nor will I ever forget the teacher, Mr. Stanley Paul Andersen, who taught the class. On my first paper he gave me a D, the second a D+, the third a D−. Each time he gave me a D, he called me to his office; each time he called me to his office, I told him I would do better next time. When he called me the third time, I told him to let me try writing a short story, not a composition, which I found so restricted. He told me that this was a composition writing class, not a creative writing class, but if I thought I could explain things better in fiction than I was doing in composition, then go on and do it.
I wrote a story I called “The Turtles.” Mr. Andersen liked it and passed it around to the other teachers, and later it would be the first story published in the new San Francisco State literary magazine. Miss Dorothea Oppenheimer, who was just starting her literary agency in San Francisco, saw the story and liked it, and she was my agent until she died. And I have been most grateful to Mr. Andersen ever since 1956.
You know, a teacher can only help just so much in preparing you for life—whether she is that crippled black woman on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation or a white professor of English in a western university. They can only open the door, and you must walk that old road alone. Often you fail the first time, but sometimes with that first failure, it makes you try just a little harder the next time. I don’t know what would have happened to me had Mr. Andersen insisted th
at I write the composition. Had he slammed that door in my face rather than crack it open so I might walk through, I have no idea how long it would have taken me to open that door again. Still I have not done all the work I should have done. Not read the books, not spent the hours at the desk I should have.
Students are always asking me if I would add anything to the books I have published. I tell them yes, if I could write the books all over again. But those books are already out there, they’re in the past, and I can’t go back to them. I must put what I left out of them in the next book. But isn’t this our main excuse? We’re always saying that if we could, we would do it better, but of course we know we can’t go back and redo, or do more.
I’m sure every student has heard his or her parents say, “If I had to do it all over again, I would . . . But . . . you must do it instead.” We’re lazy, we’re not courageous enough, we all can do a little bit more, and we should. But we never do.
You know, when you get to a certain age, you stop doing and you start giving advice. Those who don’t or can’t do it, teach it. I find myself telling my students what the great American novel ought to be about. That decade between ’58 and ’68, King’s Birmingham boycott to his death in ’68. During that decade more people of all social, educational, and economic backgrounds—from the lowest peasant position in Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, to the highest position in Washington, the presidency—were involved in changing social conditions in this country. Only because of those changes am I able to stand in the lists of American writers.
But there are still changes to be made, things to be done. We want you to do it, you, the bright ones out there. I tell my students that the great American novel using that decade between ’58 and ’68, if used well, can have the scope of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. They ask me why not do it myself? I tell them I’m too lazy. It will require too much work, too much research. Haven’t you heard that excuse before from the older ones? “I would do it . . . but . . .”