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Parables of Manhood
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11117 |
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BOOK WORLD
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10 / 1993 |
4,452 Words |
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John Lowe
John Lowe is professor of English at Louisiana State
University, Baton Rouge. Author of Jump at the Sun: Zora
Neale Hurston's Cosmic Comedy (1994), he has published many
articles and essays on African-American, southern, Native
American, and ethnic literature, as well as pieces on humor
and humor theory. He is currently completing The
Americanization of Ethnic Humor, a cross-cultural,
multidisciplinary examination of changing patterns in
American comic literature. |
A LESSON BEFORE DYING
Ernest Gaines
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993
Ernest Gaines has set virtually all of his work in the fictional hamlet of Bayonne, Louisiana, and its parish, St. Raphael. His magnificent new novel, A Lesson before Dying, adds some new panels to his fictional chronicles, panels that resonate with additional power for those who have read Gaines' earlier work. The plot of the new book is addressed in an accompanying essay; I will therefore confine myself to a discussion of the myriad ways in which Gaines builds the momentum of A Lesson from the experiments and achievements of his earlier works.
Because of the common setting of the tales, Gaines' fiction has often been compared with William Faulkner's, in that both write about a mythical area in their native states. Bayonne and St. Raphael correspond to New Roads, Louisiana, and Point Coupee Parish, whereas Faulkner's town of Jefferson, the county seat of Yoknapatawpha County, represents his actual home of Oxford, in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Faulkner's readers relished each new piece's contribution to Yoknapatawpha's lore; similarly, one comes to any new work by Ernest Gaines with increased anticipation if one has read his prior books. Bayonne's smoldering landscape of fields, bayous, and brooding skies offers a sentient backdrop for Gaines' parables of the search for identity, dignity, and communal strength. As each new narrative panel is added, we learn how to better interpret those that precede it. In this sense, Gaines' gradual development of his fictional realm resembles the beautiful Bayeaux Tapestry, woven in 1086 to commemorate the Norman Conquest. This pictographic history unflinchingly chronicles an often bloody and violent story; ironically, its seventy-two scenes are rendered in exquisite embroidery, on a seamless piece of linen. One has the option, when scanning it, of moving back to an earlier panel to understand a later one.
A Lesson before Dying offers a similar opportunity. Gaines has no interest in merely documenting the past; he knows how powerful it can be when used as a tool to understand our present. A Lesson actually concerns a contemporary social issue--the disproportionate incarceration and execution of black men in our nation's prisons. As such, it offers a powerful jeremiad for America. It is set, however, in 1948, not 1993, because Gaines wants to return to an era when the racial aspects of the situation were far more obvious and pronounced, when white people of power cared less about covering their motives and tracks. Gaines'
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