I call them “Dogged Writers” because you got to call them something.
Dogged Writers are not necessarily the best or the greatest, whatever those words mean in literature, these are the authors I would want to talk a walk with maybe and share a few drinks.
Just looking at them would make me feel better.
Which is why we start with Ernest Gaines.
Saw his photo and that smile and I felt better.
Ernest Gaines
“Without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, to me, life is an obscenity.”
by Amy Manikowski for biblio.com
Ernest Gaines is an award-winning American writer. Born January 15, 1933, the eldest of 12 children, Gaines was raised on a plantation in Louisiana where his family had been living for five generations. When he was 15 years old, he left the plantation to join his mother and stepfather in California, writing his first novel at the age of 17 while babysitting his brother. He attended San Francisco State University, where he published his first short story, The Turtles, and earned his degree in literature. Gaines then joined the Army for two years before attending Stanford University on a writing fellowship.
In 1964, Atheneum published Gaines’s first novel, Catherine Carmier, a rewrite of the first manuscript he wrote (and burned after it was rejected) at the age of 17.
Gaines’s second Novel, Of Love and Dust, was published in 1967 by Dial Press.
His third book, Bloodline, a collection of stories, was published by Dial in 1968.
Long Day in November is a children’s book written by Gaines and published in 1971 by Dial press. There are illustrations throughout the 137 pages by Don Bolognese. The book takes place in the rural South of the 1940s, and the story is told through Sonny, a 6-year-old whose family is breaking apart unless his father can save it with the help of the local conjure woman.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, published in 1971 by Dial Press, was Gaine’s first critical and commercial success. It was made into a groundbreaking television movie that same year, presenting African-Americans characters with depth and sympathy not previously seen in American television.
In 1972, Gaines was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1993, a MacArthur Fellow ‘Genius Grant.’
Alfred A. Knopf Co. published In My Father’s House(1978) about a respected Civil Rights leader and local minister in a small black community in Louisiana who comes face-to-face with the sins of his youth when a stranger comes to town.
Gaines’s two following novels, A Gathering Of Old Men (1983) andA Lesson Before Dying (1993) were made into movies as well. A Lesson Before Dying was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
Gaines got married in 1993, at the age of 60, to his wife Dianne Saulney, an attorney he met at a book fair, stating that he had put marriage on hold to pursue his publishing career.
Throughout his career, Gaines gathered many accolades and awards. Among the most prestigious were the National Humanities Medal awarded by President Bill Clinton in 2000 and the National Medal of Arts awarded in 2013 by President Barack Obama. He was also was inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) as a Chevalier.
In 1995, the University of Mississippi published Conversations with Ernest Gaines edited by John Lowe. As stated by Bookfever.com who is currently listing a copy of this book: “Although Gaines has won many awards – including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the MacArthur “genius” award, and his books have been the basis of excellent films, he remains a very under-appreciated writer by the public as a whole.”
On the eve of Gaines’ retirement from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he published Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005). In 2008, the University of Lafayette established the Ernest J. Gaines Center to promote the life and study of his works.
His last book, a novella, The Tragedy of Brady Sims, published by Vintage in 2017, revolves around a human interest piece on Brady Sims, a black man charged with keeping the youth of his town in line, no matter what it takes, even if that means shooting his own son for his transgressions.
Gaines spent the last years of his life at the house he and his wife built in Oscar, Louisiana, on the land bought from the plantation where he had grown up. He had the building where he attended church and school moved onto the property. He died at his home on November 5th, 2019, of natural causes. He was 86 years old.
by Amy Manikowski for biblio.com.
Literary giant and griot Ernest Gaines dies at 86
by Herb Boyd for AmsterdamNews.com November 14, 2019
Like his most memorable character, Jane Pittman, Earnest James Gaines was a compelling storyteller, with an ear for the tone and the rhythm of the speech he heard coming of age in Louisiana, and a student of oral history. This literary giant who put us in touch with his southern experience died peacefully Nov. 5 at his home in Louisiana. He was 86.
Born on the River Lake Plantation near the small hamlet of Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Gaines and his family chose to live on the same plot of land that once housed the slave quarters of their ancestors. He was 8 years of age when his parents separated and his great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, became his guardian throughout his childhood, though she was born with a crippling disease and could only crawl to get from one place to another.
[Augusteen Jefferson, crippled from birth, crawled from the kitchen to the family’s garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for him and for six of his brothers and sisters.]
“My great aunt was probably the greatest influence in my life,” Gaines said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement in which he was inducted in 2001. “She was crippled. She never walked in her life. She crawled over the floor all her life. When my mother had to go out into the fields when we were smaller children, and then later go to California, she left us with my aunt, and my aunt could do everything except walk.”
He was 15 when he joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California, just northeast of San Francisco. To keep off the streets, his parents made him spend time in the library, and it was there that he began his lifelong love and interest in literature. Most enthralling for him was 19th century Russian literature, particularly the novels of Ivan Turgenev.
Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” gave him the blueprint he needed to structure his own early attempts to write and he was further invigorated by Turgenev’s treatment of serfdom, which mirrored his own rural experiences.
Gaines’ first novel “Catherine Carmier” was very much in the tradition of Turgenev with a similar plot about a young man who returns to his village, falls in love with a beautiful woman, and then loses her. It wasn’t well received by critics.
Undismayed by the lack of attention for his first novel, Gaines continued to write novels and short stories, none of which found favor with editors and publishers. Things began to change for the better by 1966 when the National Endowment of the Arts awarded him a grant. A year later his second novel, “Of Love and Dust,” was published. Like his first book, servitude and unrequited love were major themes, however, it did much better than his first novel. In 1968, “Bloodline,” a collection of short stories appeared with good notices, and each was imbued the life in the parishes that he knew so well.
He hit the literary jackpot in 1971 with “The Autobiography of Jane Pittman,” the same year he was appointed Writer-in-Residence at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Only after consultation with a close friend and editor did he finally resolve how the story would be told. Deciding on having the narrative delivered by Pittman in first person worked perfectly as she recounted the milestones of the 20th century. The book gained even more attraction and praise in 1974 when Cicely Tyson portrayed Jane Pittman in a televised version. “In My Father’s House” (1978) and “A Gathering of Old Men” (1983) were highly praised and earned him more awards and fellowships.
In 1983, Gaines was again a writer-in-residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “The first thing I tell my students when they ask me—well, anyone who asks me what do you say to an aspiring writer, I said, ‘I have six words of advice, and I have eight words of advice. The six words of advice are read, read, read, write, write, write, and the eight words of advice is read, read, read, read, write, write, write, write.’”
Gaines’ epic novel “A Lesson Before Dying” garnered him the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1993 and was adapted for television, the same year he received the MacArthur Genius award.
His last book “The Tragedy of Brady Sims” was published in 2017, and it took place in the rural setting that Gaines knew intimately. Sims does his best to maintain peace in a town on the verge of violence.
Keeping the peace, being humble, and investing his characters with some of the same integrity he possessed will be enduring traits and forever keep Gaines current.
A few Dogged Writers have made earlier appearances and are by personal fiat included in the Dogged Pack.
For starters, I can remember this one.
