Then, out of the blue, I became a published novelist, inherited a house, and got a job with IBM.

We were nigger rich.

We were rich before, in our hovel. Now, in a nice house, and with a better job, with both of us working at high-paying jobs, we were nigger rich.

Thoreau wrote in Walden that most of the farms in Concord had a mortgage on them, and, if a man inherited a paid-for farm, the first thing he did was take a mortgage out on it.

One implied meaning of nigger rich is you didn't earn it and you won't keep it.

Or maybe if you don't earn it, you won't keep it.

One reason I didn't call this piece "Nigger Rich" is I called a piece "Any Niggers in the Audience?" in an earlier book, and it appeared high up in the table of contents, and put people off. It prejudiced them against me, before they had a chance to see where I'm coming from.

Lenny Bruce used that, for shock effect.

But he had them sitting in front of him already. Where could they go?

A book, I have to attract readers, and the word nigger casts a death knell over the discussion. It's like calling someone a crypto-fascist. The conversation never gets back on an even keel. All they can do is call you a goddamned queer.