SOURCE: Gaines, Ernest J., and Forrest Ingram and Barbara Steinberg. “On the Verge: An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines.” In Conversations with Ernest Gaines, edited by John Lowe, pp. 39-55. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

In the following excerpt from an interview originally published in New Orleans Review in 1973, Gaines discusses the major theme and characters in the stories in Bloodline, the literary influences that helped shape them, and his conception of the collection as a unified work.

[Ingram and Steinberg]: Do you think you'll continue writing about Louisiana and the South?

[Gaines]: Till I get it all out of me, yes. I hope I never do. I don't think there's anything more important.

You're not thinking, say, of taking up California as a setting for your books?

I have tried to. I think I've written four novels about California, but they've all been very very bad, because...