In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conjugations and Reiterations 157 BB: As a matter of fact I wanted to ask you something about South to a Very Old Place. Last time that I saw you was when you came to Tuskegee to give the Ellison lecture and you read from the preface [of Trading Twelves: TheSelected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray].We stood outside the door, I and Kathryn Dufer, who you remember, and we sold South to a Very Old Place to the audience. And a lot of your friends and cohorts and people who knew you came by and they picked up the book and they started thumbing through the book looking for their names. They were very amused looking for their names. But it struck me when I reread it last week that it’s such a complex book. In a way, I think this question that I’m going to ask you would be like asking Joyce: “When you wrote Finnegans Wake who was the audience ?” because how many people read all the way through Finnegans Wake and really understand it? So I was wondering who you thought would be reading South to a Very Old Place? When you were writing, who were you thinking of as the reader? AM: When I write anything I’m aiming at the most sophisticated writer or reader that I can think of. I know the average person—they’re not interested in that. They haven’t read The Wasteland and all this stuff. I thought Robert Penn Warren would think it was a good book. BB: His name’s in it, too, isn’t it? AM:Yeah, he was involved. See, this is what happened.Willie Morris, who is a Mississippi boy, was the editor of Harper’s magazine at that time, and they were doing a series on going home in America.We had become friends, and of course I was a friend of Ellison’s, and he was a big friend of Ellison’s, always talking about Ellison, but he spent a lot of time with me, much more time, because Ralph was busy trying to finish the unfinished book. So ­ Willie and I were very close, and he got a lot [of information] about NewYork from me. My literary interests were more abstruse than his. So he sent me south to talk to some white intellectuals, newspapermen and so forth. And before going I talked to Robert PennWarren atYale, and C.VannWoodward atYale, and I make a whole metaphor out of the whole thing. The first metaphor is you can go south by going north from where I was at that point, Forty-­ second Street, and go uptown and you’re going down-home.You see, you go back down to Forty-second Street to Grand Central Station and go up north, Baker 158 and you go down-home because Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks and these people are teaching atYale. So the South is up there, but they are­ sophisticated southerners and literary southerners, which is in my context. They were the most impressive critics. They were the founders of New Criticism and all that stuff.That’s who I write for. I mean, if I were a boxer I would be trying to get in Madison SquareGarden or whatnot. If I were a ball player I would be thinking about being the one who took Alabama to the Rose Bowl. So it was always the highest or most sophisticated reader I could think of. These others have teachers like you to tell them what it was about. BB: That’s a good segue into my next question because I wanted to ask you something about your own career as a teacher.You say in The Hero and the Blues that good writing always instructs, and I always think of you as the consummate teacher. I know a lot of other people think of you as a teacher. Roberta [Maguire] thinks of you as a teacher, and other people. I wonder if you could reflect for a moment on your teaching, particularly when you taught at Tuskegee Institute—if you remember anything about what it was like to be in the classroom and to teach there, if you have any thoughts you would like to share with us. AM: Well, it goes back to when I was a student, I suppose. I had a favorite teacher whose name was Morteza Drexel Sprague who did a lot of things...

Share