MG: I remember you saying that in “The Sky Is Gray” that indirection, “playing around the note,” was an influence from the blues.
GAINES: Yes, I said it all the time. You don’t have to see them thrown out of a store or a place where they’re going to get something to eat uptown. You don’t have to have that happen in order to get the feeling that this was a segregated world. Some things you don’t have to come to directly and scream at. You just play it smoothly and that is even more painful for you, a reader, to see—this mother and child walking down this cold street without being able to go in to get warm or to get something to eat. It’s so much more effective so that you leave some stuff out. But what you do is get that little line that really shows it exactly—that shows enough—and you leave the other stuff out. At least I feel that way.
MG: Yes. So it’s sort of like in blues, you hear the melody and they always come back to it, but they’re also going around it. We’re seeing all the things related.
GAINES: Yes, right. I was listening to a great solo by Lester Young— playing “My Funny Valentine.” And you very seldom hear “My Funny Valentine,” but he’s playing so much around it that you get a greater feeling for “My Funny Valentine” without really having to sing it. It’s things like that I try to do when I’m writing.
DB: It seems that you also use the repetition as a formal device as well with that tooth and the mother and the son. They go in and they’re pushed back out. They go in and they’re pushed back out.
GAINES: Just like in A Lesson Before Dying. You don’t have to see a guy going to the electric chair. You never see them pulling the thing and all that. That’s been done before. You don’t have to see it. You know, what I try to do is show the horror of it. Plus the exact way in which they brought the chair in and adjusted the thing, so they had the right corner, the wires in the right place, right near a window but pushed back into a corner, and all these little small details in the preparation to execute somebody. All these little things. To hear the generator from a long distance away. What I think is the most horrible thing is if you’re standing up there. And as Paul says, he dropped his head, he lowered his head because he didn’t want to look directly at the thing, but he heard the noise, and that’s much more powerful. That’s what I try to capture.
MG: One of the interesting things about having that kind of thing, like a generator—that struck me, in fact, when we saw the play this fall, is that idea of the “electric chair.” The electric chair is so foreign to contemporary students, but then in talking about that, they were asking why there was a generator. Well, I’m not exactly sure, but it occurred to me that electricity was not yet the norm at that time and place. Those were sounds, like the sound of the generator, that were just totally foreign, that they would not have heard anywhere. And the idea of using this as a way of execution when electricity was not yet understood. It was not a part of the average home yet in rural Louisiana. And I think it struck me that the effect on the people witnessing it at that time was probably much greater than looking at it in terms of electricity, which is something taken for granted now. But both the sound [of the generator] and the idea of electricity were not the norm then—and then the misuse of it. Something that could be used for good but wasn’t really available yet, and then a tremendous misuse of it.
GAINES: Another situation of getting around the whole thing instead of coming directly on it is the seductive scene between Marcus and Louise in the first scene in Of Love and Dust. Marcus is trying to break into the house where they are, and all you can hear is the noise in there and the running around the room in there. That, to me, is stronger than you seeing the physical thing going on. Just hearing this noise through that door, and then the silence. You don’t hear any noise anymore and you know they’re in there. You know, just playing around it.
MG: I think that playing around the note and the indirection you do so beautifully—and I know you’re probably not interested in what the critics are saying—but one of the big things in linguistic anthropology now is the idea of reported speech, and what happens when the speech is reported by someone else. And I thought how much your novels use that—especially in Of Love and Dust but in A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying as well. And you’ve said that—that it’s not that Grant has experienced it directly, but he reports what is told to him by someone else. I think someone needs to do an article on reported speech in Ernest Gaines’s novels.
DB: I was reminded just a while ago when you were talking about Marcus and how a character gets created, and you talked one time about the relationship between Marcus and another important popular cultural figure, Muhammad Ali. Could you say a little bit about that?
GAINES: Well, when I wrote that book, I wanted for Marcus to be sort of with the “gab” of Muhammad Ali, and at the same time I wanted him to be somewhat like a guy I actually knew. And this guy lived in Baton Rouge, one of these Creole guys. And he was tough; this guy really was tough. And he was the kind of guy who could walk into a bar and say, “I can whip any man in the bar.” And he got into a fight in Baton Rouge, and two guys jumped him, and he got his knife out, and he killed one of the guys. He killed one of the guys. And was sent up for seven years in Angola, but he got out in five. And his boss tried to keep him out—they thought he was defending himself, you know. And he had a chance to stay out, but he would not. He refused to stay. He said I’m going to pay my dues because I don’t want to owe anything. So he went to Angola for five years, and he came back out. And they ran him out of Baton Rouge, ran him out of town, and so he went to Houston, Texas. But the word had gotten to Houston about this guy, and he picked up a woman in Houston, and they went to San Francisco. I had known him here in Louisiana, and I used to hang around with him in San Francisco. He’d walk into a bar and say, “I’ll whip any man in the bar. Anybody want to fight me?” And I’d say, “Lionel, don’t start that.” And he’d say, “You scared.” And I’d say, “Yes, you damn right. Somebody’s going to challenge you, man.” So, eventually, he would be killed—someone killed him. As a matter of fact, that happened the same weekend I came down here to start filming The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. I had seen him a couple of days before I came down here, and he said, “Boy, I sure would like to be in that picture show. I’d sure like to be in the picture show. You think you could get me a little part in it?” I said, “I don’t know.” So he said, “I want to get on down there. Let’s me and you get on down—drive down there.” He was one of these guys working as a mechanic, and he had a bunch of old cars around the place—all together probably couldn’t make one good car. But he wanted to get in one of those old Cadillacs and drive on down. I said, “I’m not going down there like that—probably couldn’t get out of San Francisco.” And so I left. I got a flight out, I think, on Thursday. And Saturday, a friend of mine came by to tell me that he had been killed. Anyway, Marcus was sort of based on him, but I wanted Muhammad Ali’s gift (or ability) to talk, talk, talk. I was writing Of Love and Dust at the same time
Muhammad Ali was a young guy. I think he had just changed his name to Muhammad Ali in the mid-sixties. That would be ’66 or ’67. So that was based around him. His looks and everything about him—and Lionel had his color and so on, kind of lightish brown. And his looks and his clothes. So, those two guys I had in mind.
MG: And Muhammad Ali had that wonderful artistic ability with words. He could have been a poet.
GAINES: He was a poet; he was a poet and he was a great fighter, too. And Marcus, too, would fight anybody, day or night. And Lionel was the same.
MG: Was Proctor [in “Three Men”] based on him as well?
GAINES: Well, Proctor not as much. But it’s the same sort of story. Proctor, you know, he decides he’s going to go up, but Marcus is the sort who says “I’m not going to Angola. I’m getting out of that place.” This is the same sort of story. Because I had written “Three Men” and offered it for publication in the collection of stories, but Bill Decker,
my editor, said, “First, give me a novel.” So, I said, okay, suppose someone like Proctor would try to get out of what happened? So in the novel, I changed the thing around.
DB: I did think a moment ago when you said that about Muhammad Ali being a poet, that you could make a case that Muhammad Ali taught the rappers how to rap.
MG: Yes, because he was the first to put what was always a part of the culture, especially playing the dozens and the rapping, out into the mainstream. And both because he was already a fighter and he already had the status of a champion, he made it much more acceptable. And then the black comedians took it over. Somebody eventually will do a study tracing how we got to rap. But I think you’re right. Ali did have a great influence.
GAINES: Yes, and there’s a group called the Last Poets, and they work that kind of music, too. And of course many, many years ago you had the groups (they didn’t call them rap) . . . it was a long way in coming, signifyin’ and all that.
DB: While we’re talking about poetry, you know that a remarkable piece of literature to me is Jefferson’s Notebook [from A Lesson Before Dying], and I think it’s one of the great American poems in the last half of the twentieth century. And I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit about how you came to that piece—or what you wanted to do with that piece of writing. Because I think it’s in some ways—probably not for you, but for us—in some ways it seems like such a brave piece of writing. Because all of a sudden the story is being told by people who have different kinds of effectiveness and facility with language. And then there’s this thing that comes up in the book that’s disarming because it’s so pure, and it’s so beautiful. And I wonder what you were trying to do—if you could talk a little bit about that.
GAINES: I was trying to have this person, this human person, who, ah—within a few weeks of his death—does this thing where he identifies himself as a human being on trial. Everything is “trying” for Jefferson. He tries to say something about himself as a human being. What does he believe in? What does he think? We don’t know him, I think, until he starts his diary. We don’t know a man until he speaks. He’s trying to say something, to show who he is. We have these pictures of him provided by Grant, but we don’t know what’s inside of him. And that’s what I needed to do. And I didn’t want any kind of soliloquy or aria to stop the walk, and when they ask if he had any final words I didn’t want for him to want to talk for an hour. I told my students I had no idea how I would solve this problem when I started to write the book. I had no idea there would be a diary. I had no idea there would be a radio in that story. I’ve used the analogy many times of getting on the train in San Francisco and going to New York. And you only know so much. You don’t know everything. And the radio is one of the things that came up for me on the train trip, and the diary came up for me on that trip. I spent half of every year over the next seven working on the book—’85 to ’92. So during those seven years, the idea of the radio and the notebook came up. I suppose if I had written the novel in three years, this wouldn’t have happened. I don’t know what would have happened. I have no idea. But for seven years I got to stand back and think. And, during the fall, I was teaching, and thinking all the time. And then I’d go back to San Francisco and write on that book. And, of course, I came up with the idea of the notebook. But the exact date I came up with it, I don’t know. I knew I had to have him say something about his life—about what he believed in, about justice, and about God, and injustice, and everyday, routine stuff, you know. What is life about to him? What is meaningful to him? But he had to give us those things himself because he would not reveal them to Grant or to Miss Emma or to anyone else. He had to give it himself. And he writes it at night, when nobody is there. He scratches all over this—writes it so awkward—over the line, under the line, above the line, across the line—he’s writing it without punctuation or capitalization or anything. He’s just writing it down, trying to say something about his life.
DB: I remember right at the beginning—you know, Grant’s been telling us about him all along—and I imagine him writing and not even being really aware of what’s he’s doing in the notebook except trying to express himself. But when he talks about telling Mr. Wiggins that the bluebird is singing—that’s such a jolting thing, you know, because you think that you’ve never been brought there. And this guy is about to die, and he knows that’s an inevitable thing, and he’s hearing birds singing and imagining that they’re blue. That’s just incredible to hear.
MG: While Darrell was talking about the diary, I got out this other quote from Porch Talk where you said:
I think art is order. I think art must be order, no matter what you do with it. I don’t care what Picasso did with twisted faces and bodies—all that sort of thing—I think there has to be a form of order there, or it’s not art. The novel to me is art. The short story is art. And there must be order. I don’t care what the chaos is. You must put it in some kind of decent form.
And then you go on to say that to you that’s sort of imposing that order on what may seem chaotic. And I think—
GAINES: I said that? That’s pretty good. I don’t know if I can say something good as that now.
MG: Yes, isn’t that cool—and you said a few good things today, too. And it reminded me of this when we were talking earlier with Darrell about the diary—because you’re taking something out of its normal form of written communication, and it at first appears to be chaos—and then you put this order on it, and it just becomes absolutely poetic. And I agree with Darrell. I think it is a form of poetry.
GAINES: Right, yes.
DB: You know that kind of slow revelation inside the notebook where he says that he’s sorry for having said what he said about Vivian. And then at the end of the story when he goes back to being aware of the outside world again and what’s going on outside of his cell, there’s that beautiful kind of repetition that brings it all full circle. And the pieces for me are so beautifully constructed. I think that part of the thing that affects me so much about it as a kind of poem is the way in which the speaker is so unaware in a way of what’s being said, but there’s a complete human being there.
GAINES: Yes.
MG: Did you have a sense of—I would think maybe the dates—but did you have any other sense of how you were imposing that order on the diary other than dates?
GAINES: Well, I thought the diary had to elevate the story. I thought that was the point of elevation. I think the story could not just go— it could not just go as Grant telling it. It had to be—what is that thing Joyce called it—the epiphany, the thing that brings everything to light. It’s the thing that raises it. It’s the thing that—often someone says, “I enjoyed your book.” But after you read the diary, if that does not elevate you, then I don’t know what else to do.
MG: That’s an interesting point, because we think of one of the functions of art is that it gives that uplifting—that there is a sense of being enlightened or braced up. And there is that response to the diary.
GAINES: That’s what I wanted the diary to be—that uplift. He’s talking about dying, and “I’m gonna die,” and says the bluebird is singing, and he pauses for a while, and says I hear my teeth hitting, and I hear my heart, but I’m strong. I’m going to be brave. All these things are the uplifting in his mind. He’s not going to be this coward they’ll have to drag. He’s not going to eat a whole gallon of ice cream with a pot spoon. He’s going to eat a little Dixie cup of ice cream. All of these little things elevate him—to salvation, to the uplifting of the soul.
MG: I understand from my students and most other people who have talked about it, that few people can get through that diary without tears, but by the end of it, they’re uplifted. By having gone through it, they survive it.
GAINES: Right, yes. Once you go through it, you feel better.
DB: And that part of the novel serves in the same way or it serves the same purpose—or has the same effect as the spiritual, too, because so often the spi
ritual is about something that’s heavy and burdensome, and then finally we sing it because we know it’s going to lift us.
MG: And even if we have tears while we’re singing it, we know it’s going to lead to uplifting.
GAINES: Right.
DB: I have just one more question, but while I was thinking of my last question, you mentioned Joyce’s epiphany, and I know Joyce is an important figure for you and an important storyteller, and I wondered if you could say a little bit, maybe one or two things, that you learned from Joyce.
GAINES: The number-one thing that I suppose we all—modern and contemporary writers—learned from Joyce is the stream of consciousness. I learned from Joyce and Faulkner how to center your work on an area. And then the one-day thing I got from Joyce’s Ulysses. You can do almost anything you want in that one day. Joyce must have gotten it from Greek tragedy, but I definitely got it from Joyce. And I was trying to do it with “A Long Day in November,” and I was trying to do it in A Gathering of Old Men. And in “The Sky Is Gray,” how to put the story together. You know, in “The Sky Is Gray,” I could have stretched out the story for weeks and months, and in A Gathering of Old Men, I could have stretched on for months. So that, and the concentration of your work in one locale—all came from Joyce . . . and Faulkner.
DB: In a lot of ways when I look at your work and I try to see what literary traditions—I think we all work in a kind of a continuum. We try to make art, but whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re continuing what somebody else started, and for me, I keep seeing Joyce, you know, at the headwaters in your work.
GAINES: Right, yes, and like Turgenev, I guess the small chapters and the small books. I think he was my first great influence after reading his Fathers and Sons—when I was writing Catherine Carmier. But you draw from everybody. I’m drawing from Shakespeare. When I was writing that chapter when Raoul discovers that Catherine is running away with Jackson, you know, I was thinking about King Lear. He was just going mad, you know. Raoul is going mad when he realizes that his daughter and his life are running away from him. Writing In My Father’s House, I had Greek tragedy in mind—the strong man falls, and he can’t get up and all this sort of thing. That’s why I had such a problem writing that book. You know, I’m drawing from all of these books I’ve read, things I’ve studied in college. I learned from all of that. It’s not only one.