I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together.

While working as a drummer Crouch conducted the booking for an avant-garde jazz series at the club as well as organizing occasional concert events at the Ladies' Fort. In the 1990s he upset many political thinkers when he declared himself a "radical pragmatist". In 2005 he was selected as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights.