Callaloo

Introduction

I have been asked many times when will I write a story or a novel about California after having lived there forty-four years, and I always answer that I will but only after I have written Louisiana out of my life—which I hope shall never happen.

That does not mean that I have not tried to write about California—and I emphasize the word tried. I have parts of short stories, parts of novels—first drafts of all—in boxes at Dupré Library. Once I tried a romantic novel, based on Othello—love and jealousy—but no murder. After a first draft I put it away because it did not sound right. (Shakespeare had done it so much better three hundred years earlier.) I tried writing a novel about bohemian life in San Francisco, but after drinking a bottle of Liebfraumilch wine and eating a loaf of French bread with salami and cheese, mayonnaise and mustard, I became so ill that I realized that the bohemian life was not for me. There was a period when I read nothing but ghost stories, and I thought I could write one, too. I have said facetiously that it was so real that I scared myself, but the truth is that it never got off the ground. (I lost interest in it, because at about that same time I came up with the idea of a life story of a little lady who would live 110 years.)

But whenever I had a manuscript or a novel in New York with my agent or my editor, I would, to pass the time, resort to the short story. Sometimes the story would be about Louisiana, other times about San Francisco. The Louisiana story was always completed, the San Francisco story hardly ever. None were ever published.

Many years ago, in the late fifties or early sixties, I read a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer titled "The Spinoza of Market Street." I have forgotten what the story was about, but I could never forget the title—possibly because one of the main streets in San Francisco is called Market, and I have walked that street hundreds of times to clothing stores, movie theaters, record shops, and bookstores. And ever since I read that story by Singer, I've always wanted to write a story about San Francisco's Market Street.

In the fall of 1984, while on a one-semester leave from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, I taught creative writing at the University of Houston, Downtown. The hotel where I lived overlooked one of the main streets, and many times I stood at the window looking down at the traffic below. One day I saw a man shuffling along the sidewalk, holding up his trousers with his left hand, while he stuck out his right hand to others and begged for money. I had seen people beg on Market Street in San Francisco many times, but the image of this person stayed in my mind because I saw him probably once or twice a week, always coming from the same [End Page 907] direction, and always seeming to wear the same clothes—trousers much too big and much too long.

After I had seen him several times, I thought I could write a story about him. Who was he? Where was he coming from? Where was he going? Did he have a home? Did he have a family? Was he alone? Now, not only did I have to create a story around this figure, but I also had to find a title for the story.

For some reason, and I still don't know exactly why, the title of Isaac Singer's story came into my mind. It was a title that I could not forget any more than I could that person who shuffled along the sidewalk below the window of my hotel several times a week. Since I didn't know Houston well enough to write about it, I had...