“I set out deliberately to write a tour-de-force,” he claimed later. “Before I ever put pen to paper and set down the first words, I knew what the last word would be.… Before I began I said, I am going to write a book by which, at a pinch, I can stand or fall if I never touch ink again.” He wrote As I Lay Dying at the University of Mississippi power plant, where he was employed as a fireman and night watchman, mostly in the early morning, after everybody had gone to bed and power needs had diminished.
