U.S. & Canadian Authors - Interviews, American Literature - Regional Literature - Literary Criticism, African American Literature - Literary Criticism

Conversations with Ernest Gaines

Name: Conversations with Ernest Gaines
Author: John Lowe
ISBN: 9780878057825

by John Lowe

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Overview

The winner in 1994 of the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines, whose career spans more than thirty-five years, continues to receive increasing critical and popular attention. In the community of southern authors he finds his natural place. "Southern writers," he says, "have much more in common than differences. They have in common a certain point of view as well." Through television productions of his fiction - The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Gathering of Old Men, and "The Sky is Gray" - Gaines has become widely known and appreciated. Although focused principally upon African-American life in the Deep South, his writing bears strong influence of European authors. In these interviews, two of which have never before been printed, Ernest Gaines casts a retrospective light upon his long and productive career. Drawn from journals, magazines, and newspapers, the interviews are occasions for Gaines to recall his childhood, his "bohemian" days in San Francisco, his long effort to get published, and recent events in his life - including his marriage and his receiving a MacArthur Prize.

From Ernest Gaines:
My folks have lived in the same place for over a hundred years. . . . I can't imagine writing about another place. Everything comes back to Louisiana.

Southern writers have much more in common than differences. They have in common a certain point of view as well.

That's where wisdom comes from—listening. There's also silence from a glance. A look gives as much meaning as a word or a line.

We are all naive about the true history of blacks in this country. We have Du Bois, Douglass, and Booker T. Washington, but we don't have the story of the average black.