Abstract

The most legendary of the Mississippi bluesmen was Robert Johnson. He was born in 1911 in the southern town of Hazlehurst, but was raised by his single mother in the northern Delta town of Robinsonville. By the age of 19, he was already a widower and no longer wished to lead the life of a sharecropper. This short novel attempts to go beyond the music to get a sense of the man that was Robert Johnson. Working within the gaps of the historical record, this work uses a linear narrative that straddles the boundary between past and present, and call attentions to the dislocation between what we know and what we don't know. Using mostly historical personages, the piece focuses on the theme of passion as the fuel of life, whether music, love, or murder; its simple goal was to find a language that could mirror or express, the experience of the blues. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)