THE WRITING: How I wrote "Party Out of Bounds" ... Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3.

First, I had to buy a car.

I had a car already, of course -- I am a man, after all -- but I had messed it up by overfilling it with oil before driving it to Savannah. Valves or something blew out, and I left a trail of thick, blue smoke behind me the entire 250 miles. You could see it from space, probably. So, with that car disabled, I bought a Volkswagen from one of Rick the Printer's old girlfriends.

Second, I had to constrain my ambition. You probably wouldn't know it to look at it, but "Party Out of Bounds," to me, was going to be a combination of Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom" and Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." But I quickly made peace with that ambition. I could have had worse literary role models, I suppose. Many folks wanted the book to be more "Hollywood Babylon" and "Deliverance." There's still some of that, but most of those stories I saved to put in my shameless roman a clef, the novel "Apocalypse Kabuki" which I wrote at the same time I wrote "Party Out of Bounds."

Third, I had to talk to everybody. Not as easy as it sounds. But at least I had a car and a well-defined literary goal.

For three or four months I drove back and forth to Athens ...