A MELUS Interview: Ernest J. Gaines

The following conversation with the writer was conducted on October 22, 1996. The conversation took place at the University of Bonn (Germany) prior to Ernest Gaines's public reading from A Lesson Before Dying. Interviewer: You've been in Europe now since February. What are your impressions about Europe, especially France? How do people react to your works? Gaines: I have been to France before. I was there in '92, and I spent some time in Angers as well as in Paris. I came back in '94 when A Lesson Before Dying was published in France, and I had this tremendous reception. And, of course, I taught creative writing at the university of Rennes this past spring. It was the first time that a creative writing class had been taught for a complete semester in France. My work has been received very well in France. The sale of the books has been good, and I suppose I've been interviewed more in France during the last year than I have been in the States in the last four or five years. But, at the same time, Germany was the first foreign country to publish and translate my work. They started with Catherine Carmier under the title It was the Nightingale, which was taken from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, one of those romantic stories. I started writing it when I was in Stanford and it took me a long time to do it because I didn't know how to write novels. Anyway, Germany published that story in the Seventies, and they also published The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and, of course, A Lesson Before Dying. They might have published A Gathering of Old Men, too, but I am not sure. Interviewer: Did you get the impression that critics in Europe react differently towards your novels than in the States? Gaines: Not all critics. I have a good friend in Paris, who taught at the Sorbonne, and I think he is as perceptive about my work as many American critics are, but he knows a lot about Afro-American writing. He is the executive of Richard Wright's papers, Michel Fabre. Michel has given me some good criticism, and my French translator has done an excellent job. Unfortunately, I haven't met critics who can explain the German translation to me, but I have met people in Paris who have explained the French translation. I don't read French. I have met the French translator, and, as a matter of fact, we had two or three readings together in Paris. I would read in English, of course, and she translated it into French, and we were sitting right there reading to an audience. Others who had read the novels and short stories both in French and in English have agreed that she is very good. So, there are those who understand the work and state it very clearly. Interviewer: What I think is very important in your works is that you are depicting the same area in all of them, and you are very specific; it is really so authentic that it almost becomes universal in a way, so that many people can relate to it even if they have never been there. Gaines: I got that technique from Faulkner, from his Yoknapatawpha County--and I can only say Yoknapatawpha County before I drink. And there is, of course, Joyce and Dublin. And Faulkner might have gotten the idea from Joyce. I think that in each one of the books, there is some other little detail I might bring out about the area. The area is one which I know pretty well. I lived there the first 15 and a half years of my life. Since I am teaching in Louisiana, I travel those roads, and the rivers, and the towns. Interviewer: In the project I'm working on, I am trying to work out your "philosophy of progress" as it may be implicitly reflected in your works. I start out by concentrating on those people who more or less openly rebel against the status quo, figures like Jackson Bradley, Marcus Payne, and Grant Wiggins. What I found very intriguing is that you seem to have much sympathy for all of your characters. Jackson Bradley, for example, is mainly a nihilist, but you make him very understandable, so that we can really relate to him and to his inner feelings. …