John Lowe, an English professor at the University of Georgia, is researching a biography of Ernest J. Gaines, or, as he calls him, “Louisiana’s greatest writer.”
Gaines, writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and Lowe, a former professor at Harvard and at LSU, got to know each other well during Lowe’s 20 years in Baton Rouge, which is near Gaines’ home in Point Coupee Parish.
“I’ve interviewed him many times over the years, and, of course, all of that will go into the biography,” said Lowe, who has taught all of Gaines’ nine works of fiction, including his two best-known, “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “A Lesson Before Dying.”
He recently spent several weeks at UL Lafayette’s Ernest J. Gaines Center, an international center for scholarship on the writer and his fiction that is housed in the University’s Edith Garland Dupré Library.
Lowe partnered with six other professors to provide lectures to about 25 university and college professors and literary scholars from all over the country who attended a four-week summer institute at the center. It was funded by a $196,232 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The institute provided a forum where participants could learn about Gaines, his novels, literary influences and contemporaries, and themes central to his work and other Southern literature. The institute also provided research opportunities. Resources at the center include archived material, such as Gaines’ manuscripts, correspondence, reviews and speeches.
Lowe led presentations about Gaines’ life and work during the institute, but also spent time combing through material at the center and visited with Gaines at the author’s home, where he also interviewed Gaines’ two siblings.
“The long-term benefit of the institute will be to increase people’s appreciation of Gaines and really bring his messages to thousands of more students,” Lowe explained. “He’s one of our greatest living writers. He’s up there with (Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner) Phillip Roth and (Nobel laureate) Toni Morrison. He’s not often thought of in that company, but he should be.”
Cheylon Woods, director of the Gaines Center, said many who attended the institute are professors who teach courses related to Gaines’ fiction, while others are interested in developing courses or curriculums based on his writing. “For people who are already teaching Gaines, or for those who want to teach him, the institute provided a framework for intense study of his work,” she said.
The literary career of the 83-year-old Gaines, a faculty member at UL Lafayette for 21 years before he retired in 2004, began in 1964 with the publication of “Catherine Carmier,” and includes nine works of fiction.
His “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” a first-person narrative of a fictional 110-year-old woman born into slavery, is required high school reading in France. Published in 1971, it earned the writer a widespread audience, critical acclaim and was adapted into a TV movie that won nine Emmy Awards. “A Lesson Before Dying,” about an illiterate man condemned to death that was published in 1993, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club.
Gaines received a National Medal of Arts in 2013 at the White House.
Desiree Evans, an independent scholar from New Orleans who attended the institute, grew up in St. Martinville, La., but learned about Gaines while a student at Northwestern University in Chicago. After attending the institute, she plans to introduce Gaines’ fiction into classes and workshops she conducts for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. “I’m excited at the chance to bring his work to the youth that I work with,” she said.
Maria Hebert-Leiter, an assistant professor of English at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa., said her primary interest in Gaines’ literature, and her reason for attending the institute, centers on his portrayals of Cajun culture.
“I think what’s really central to what Gaines is doing, is he’s writing about the human experience,” Hebert-Leiter said.
Marcia Gaudet, UL Lafayette professor of English emeritus and former director of the Gaines Center, was one of eight visiting scholars who lectured at the institute. She said Gaines’ fiction holds universal appeal because, though while set in Louisiana, it touches on themes that resonate in all places and cultures.
“(Gaines) writes about race relations and class distinctions, which are a reality not only in Louisiana, but every part of the world,” she said.