tions, such as the one shared by Mathu and Candy; between older characters
like Mathu and Sheriff Mapes or Miss Merle; or younger characters like Gil
“Salt” Boutan and Cal “Pepper” Harrison—teammates on Louisiana State
University’s winning football team.RESOURCES
Primary Works
“Ernest Gaines Interview,” Academy of Achievement http://www.achievement.
org/autodoc/page/gai0int-1 [accessed 24 November 2009].
Discussion of Gaines’s life and work.
Marcia Gaudet and Carl Wooton, eds., Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversa-
tions on The Writer’s Craft (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1990).
Interviews organized thematically. The book includes photographs of the author
and of the plantation on which he grew up.
John Lowe, ed., Conversations with Ernest Gaines ( Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1995).
Useful resource that provides an overview of Gaines’s work and critical reception
in an introduction and a biographical chronology. The interviews span the period
from 1969 to 1994.
Criticism
Valerie Melissa Babb, Ernest Gaines (Boston: Twayne, 1991).
Places Gaines within the griot tradition. Chapters are devoted to his novels from
Catherine Carmier to A Gathering of Old Men and his collection of short stories.
Jerry H. Bryant, “Ernest J. Gaines: Change, Growth, and History,” Southern
Review, 10 (October 1984): 851–864.
Analyzes Gaines’s novels, with particular attention to the major themes and ele-
ments that make him a classic Southern American writer.
Karen Carmean, Ernest J. Gaines: A Critical Companion (Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 1998).
A thorough study of Gaines’s fiction through A Lesson before Dying (1994). The
book includes a useful bibliography of interviews, reviews, and criticism.
Keith Clark, Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).
Provides an extended analysis in chapter 3 of depictions of black men and mas-
culinity in Gaines’s fiction including A Gathering of Old Men.
Mary Ellen Doyle, Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002).
Traces “Gaines’s evolution as an artist” from short-story writer to novelist, includ-
ing biographical details related to his craft.