Pulp Novels and Ernest Gaines?

When reading African American pulp novelists such as Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines of the late 1960s and 1970s, one would be hard pressed to find any similarities between their novels of urban life and the works of Ernest J. Gaines. However, upon digging deeper into these authors' oueveres, one finds that they both mined the South for part for their work. Iceberg Slim does this in Mama Black Widow (1969), a novel that traces Otis Tilson's life in Chicago. Before arriving in Chicago, Tilson's family worked as sharecroppers in the South. For Donald Goines, one of his final novels, Swamp Man (1975), takes place entirely in the South. It tells the story of George Jackson, an African American youth who lives in the backwater swamps with his grandfather. At the beginning of the novel, George's sister Henrietta returns home from college to visit. Henrietta's return, however, is not a joyful occasion because on her way home from the bus station in town the Jones brothers stop her and brutally rape her, turning her into a child in a woman's body. George sees this act of violence and vows to kill all four of the Jones brothers. Two years later, after the Jones brothers keep victimizing Henrietta, George enacts his revenge and ultimately dies in the process. Looking past the graphic description of Henrietta's rape, which takes place over two chapters, and the over-the-top stereotypes of both whites and blacks in the South, Swamp Man contains similarities to the Southern fiction that Gaines has produced throughout his career.

One of the main similarities can be seen in Henrietta's trajectory. She has been to college in Atlanta and returns home, albeit just to visit. For Henrietta, education provides an escape from the life that she experiences in the Deep South. She hopes, eventually, that George will follow in her footsteps and leave as well. She sends him books and problems to solve and is always amazed that he solves them without any formal education. Zeke, one of the Jones brothers, even comments that "George speaks like he's a Yankee or somethin'" because he reads books all of the time (36). The brothers also point out that they think Henrietta views herself as better than them. Sonny-Boy says, "[T]hat fuckin' bitch is still stuck-up as hell! Gets off the bus like she owns this here town, sees us sittin' here, then got the uppity not to speak" (25-26). In many ways, both George and Henrietta resemble the educated African American who returns in Gaines' work such as Jackson and Grant. While this type of character is not unique to Gaines (Toomer, DuBois, and others have the same trope), it is interesting that an author who consistently writes about the urban chooses the returning, educated African American as a character type when writing about the South.

Another similarity occurs near the beginning of the novel. When George realizes that his sister may be attacked on her way home from the bus station in town, he approaches his grandfather and says that he needs to take the shotgun with him in case he has to fight off her attackers. After asking for the shotgun, the narrator states that "[George] didn't want to look into those eyes because the boy was ashamed of his grandfather. Ashamed of the way his grandfather cringed when the whites were around. The old man couldn't help himself. He just shook. But the old man didn't tremble from fear. Instead, he shook from inner rage, a feeling of frustration because he knew he was helpless" (20).  Jefferson, the man who tries to keep Henrietta from walking home, mirrors the grandfather in his fears and rage. While talking to Henrietta, he tells her that he can't walk her home because the Jones brothers would kill him and rape her: "Ain't nothing I can do but die, and I just ain't ready to die" (31). After the rape, both men regret not acting, but it is too late. Psychologically beaten down George's grandfather and Jefferson are not anomalies in Southern literature or African American literature. Looking at them, though, in relation to Gaines, one can see similarities to the characters in A Gathering of Old Men.

Gaines has stated that while authors such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and others wrote about the urban environment, he wanted to focus on the rural South to provide a voice for those who did not appear in the texts about the urban. In 1972, Gaines said, "Since Wright's Native Son came out the books about the cities, the big city ghettoes, have sold. I would say most of your publishers are interested in that kind of book by a Black more than he is interested in a book by a Black about any other subject. Wright established almost a blueprint and it has been the most popular seller to a white audience" (Beauford 23). I guess that is partly why I find Goines' turn to the South so interesting. You have to remember that Swamp Man appeared in 1975, that's four years after the book publication and one year after the film version of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a novel that takes place entirely in the South and works to correct the stereotypes of African Americans in Southern fiction. You must also keep in mind that Goines, and Slim, wrote for money, aesthetic, and political reasons. Gaines' and Goines' reasons for writing, while possibly overlapping, were/are disparate. I'm not sure what to make of all of this so far, but I find it fascinating that urban, pulp novelists turned to the South for some of their writing. What other pulp novels by writers who tend to focus on the urban North focus on the South either in part of the novel or in the whole thing? Let us know in the comments below.

For more information on African American pulp novelists, see Justin Gifford's Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing (2013).    

Beauford, Fred. "A Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 16-24. Print. 

Goines, Donald. Swamp Man. Los Angeles: Holloway House, 2005. Print.