Passing the Three Gates

"Jim McWilliams has gathered here the most significant of Charles Johnson's many interviews in a chronological progression, giving an invaluable account of Johnson's development from the late 1970s until the early years of the twenty-first century. The interviews bring up many essential elements of Johnson's life and work: his religious development from the AME Church to Buddhism; the importance to him of family; his emergence out of the civil rights and black power movements, and how his writing responds to both; the importance of his relationship with his mentor John Gardner and his own work as a teacher of creative writing; his interest in phenomenology and philosophical fiction.

Capping the collection are two previously unpublished interviews that reflect back upon Johnson's career, even as they look forward to what Johnson calls "Act Three" of his life."--BOOK JACKET.