Mozart and Leadbelly (15 page)
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 spiritual 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.
MG: Do you think that is true in your writing now, especially in writing
The Man Who Whipped Children
[Gaines’s novel in progress]? Do you think you’re drawing from different influences at this stage?
GAINES: Yes, I think so. I think that my voice—my particular voice—is the most dull and boring thing in the world. I have to draw from other people. I have my own story to tell, but I’m constantly getting into the voices of other characters. I don’t wish to reach a point where I feel I cannot learn from others. I’m going to always try to learn from others. Like my brother, you know, who just lost his wife and less than two weeks later had to have his leg amputated. And I’d go in to cheer him up, and he was cheering
me
up all the time. My brother Lionel, you know, he’s
funny
. He was telling me the funniest stories about the hospital and some of the people in the hospital.
MG: I agree that’s one of the sources—in the oral tradition especially—the great storytellers like Lionel.
GAINES: Yes, he is a great storyteller. And he’s still telling stories. He was telling me that the doctors told him that they were afraid they would have to take his leg off. And he told the doctor, “I’d rather be up here with one leg than to be down there with two.”
MG:
Down
there!
DB: That’s great.
GAINES: So I told him, I said, “Man, you sure are brave.” I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to think about that for a week.
DB: And he could just rattle it off.
MG: And just the way he phrased it.
GAINES: His wife had just died a week or so before that. I said, damn, I know he’s always been a braver man than I, but damn! What are you going to do?
MG: I love that story you told me about when he wanted to get out of the hospital—
GAINES: Right, they told him he would leave on Wednesday, and he said, “They better not crawfish on me, or they’re going to see a one-leg man on the highway in his wheelchair.” He said, “I’m getting on out of here.” He had all those nurses and those doctors in that hospital laughing. He didn’t care what he said. I wish I had his courage.
Ernest J. Gaines
MOZART AND LEADBELLY
Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements. In 1996 he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana.
ALSO BY ERNEST J. GAINES
A Lesson Before Dying
A Gathering of Old Men
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
In My Father’s House
Bloodline
Of Love and Dust
Catherine Carmier
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2006
Copyright
©
2005 by Ernest J. Gaines
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
The following were originally published in earlier versions as listed: “Miss Jane and I,”
Callaloo
, 1978; “Mozart and Leadbelly,”
Phi Kappa Phi National Forum
, 1998; “A Very Big Order: Reconstructing Identity,”
Southern Review
, 1990, and Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities,
Louisiana Cultural Vistas
, 1990 (published simultaneously); “Bloodline in Ink,”
CEA Critic
, 1989, and
Georgia Review
, 1989; “Aunty and the Black Experience in Louisiana,”
Louisiana Tapestry
, 1982; “The Turtles,”
Transfer
, 1956; “Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit,”
Transfer
, 1957; “Mary Louise,”
Stanford Short Stories
, 1960; “My Grandpa and the Haint,”
New Mexico Quarterly
, 1966; “Oyster/Shrimp Po’boys, Chardonnay, and Conversation with Ernest Gaines,”
Interdisciplinary Humanities
, 2002, published as “The Influence of Multi-Art Forms on the Artist.”
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–
Mozart and Leadbelly: stories and essays / Ernest J. Gaines. —1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Louisiana—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–
—Childhood and youth. 3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography.
4. African American authors—Biography. 5. African Americans—Fiction.
6. California—Biography. 7. Louisiana—Biography. I. Title.
PS3557.A355M697 2005
818’.5409—dc22
2004063264
eISBN: 978-0-307-42695-6
v3.0