At the time when I noticed the juxtaposing of unrelated things in the mind and actions of my grandmother and in the Negro blues songs, it never occurred to me that some day, many miles distant from my hometown, I would encounter a “theory” imported from Europe that would enable me to see and understand what those disjointed items meant when they were tied together by the mood, faith, or passion of a personality. What this “theory” was I shall explain later and link it with The Man Who Lived Underground.

Some years ago a series of moving pictures—perhaps many of them are still being shown somewhere in the theatres of the nation today—came out of Hollywood depicting the adventures of an invisible man, or a man who had discovered a way of making himself invisible, or a scientist who had concocted a means of rendering objects or persons invisible. I mention these melodramatic movies because their influence, direct and indirect, found their way into The Man Who Lived Underground. Now, it happens that the idea of invisibility dates back in my life to the religious teachings of my childhood, for my grandmother’s entire attitude toward life was based upon “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things unseen”; and, in contrast, I always wanted to see and touch what I believed, or arrive at its reality through modes of deductive, inductive, or associational reasoning. My hostility toward my grandmother’s religion did not keep its influence from registering upon my sensibilities during my adolescence, for my critical faculties were not developed enough for me to fight it off completely.

Whenever movies depicting the antics of invisible men were being shown, I could not rest until I had gone to see them, yet not knowing why they fascinated me so. I did not suspect that I was really enjoying the fulfillment of many of the folktales, fables, stories, and interpretations of life told me by my mother and grandmother when I was a child. It was not until these movies had made me think and feel so intensely that the relationship—the associational linkage between the two widely separated things—made itself manifest in me. Then I discovered that during all of my childhood I had lived among people who believed in invisible men, who believed that God, though invisible, actively regulated the most concrete and commonplace happenings of life. I think that it is but natural that I should have become excited over the question of how it would feel to stand outside of life and look at life.

At one period of my adolescence I thought that the twinkling of the stars was caused by the flight of angels to and fro in Heaven. (You see, I thought that stars were but ventilation holes in the floor of Heaven and their brightness was the gleam of an eternal sun that shone night and day!) Why should not the idea of invisibility intrigue me inasmuch as almost every day in my childhood someone reminded me solemnly that invisible angels were guarding my destiny? And the people who said this were willing and anxious to leave this world—for dying was but a transfiguration!—and go to Heaven where they could look down upon the sorrows of the life of this world without being a part of it, without being subject to its penalties and limitations.