More on Tim Gautreaux and Education

In the previous post, I wrote about education in Tim Gautreaux's short story "Welding With Children." Today, I want to write about education as it appears in two of his stories from Welding With Children: "Misuse of Light" and "Resistance." Lengthy discussions of education do not appear in either one of these stories, but the mention does serve some importance. When asked about whether or not he thought education separates Cajuns from a traditional way of life, thus homogenizing them, Gautreaux responded:

Yeah, I think so. Because, and that’s the way with just about anybody who is raised [among] the lower-middle class or blue-collar people and becomes educated, begins making money, begins to prosper, begins to move in the popular culture. [You] begin to feel that your plainer beginnings are something you should leave behind. And I think that’s sad. You begin to lose all sense of history and all sense of the past, and then you lose the sense of the importance of present things. (69)

The separation from the values and practices of the past can be seen in Gaines's works, as I have stated multiple times. In "Misuse of Light" and "Resistance" "formal" education at the university level becomes something unobtainable and honestly not needed. Again, I wrote about this with "Welding With Children."

In "Misuse of Light," Mel DeSoto works in a camera store in New Orleans and develops film. One day, a young woman comes in trying to sell her grandfather's photography equipment. Mel purchases the equipment and eventually develops the film. He discovers images on the film that appear to be a mystery, and the story traces Mel's search for the true meaning behind the photographs.

At the beginning of the story, as Mel cleans the newly acquired camera, the narrator informs us that Mel attended Tulane for a short time, much like the grandfather did at LSU for a semester in "Welding With Children." Like the grandfather, Mel experienced resistance at Tulane: "his work was not promising, and his professor would write on his project, sometimes on the photographs themselves, 'Misuse of light'" (22). Mel's professor at Tulane did not see his potential, and even his boss, Mr. Weinstein, views Mel's predilection to develop old photos from cameras the shop buys as ludicrous and nosy. Mel, on the other hand, sees the photos as art. Eventually, the continual disapproval of him viewing the photos as art, or as a mystery that needs to be solved, gets to him and whenever Mel buys a camera at the shop that contains film he dumps the film in the trash without developing it.

In regards to education, the story presents arguments about what constitutes art. For Mel, the images that he develops can be viewed as "artistic," but Mr. Weinstein sees the smudged, blurry prints as Mel being nosy. Like his professor at Tulane, Mr. Weinstein questions whether or not Mel actually knows what he is talking about and whether or not he can actually learn anything about true "art." There is no resolution to this quandary in the story; instead, the focus becomes the story behind the photograph. In this instance, the "art" of the photo tells a true, realistic story. For me, this reminds me of the comment, I believe by Sterling Brown, that fiction (or art) is based in 98-99% reality. The photograph, even though it is a facsimile of reality, becomes an "artistic" representation of the reality and the story being portrayed. Mel recognizes the "artistic" quality of the picture he discovers, unlike Mr. Weinstein, and I would argue, his professor at Tulane. While he could have learned about "art" in an institutionalized university setting, he learns about "art" and what it means to him on his own.

Like Mel in "Misuse of Light," Alvin Boudreaux in "Resistance" can be seen as an example of education in the workforce instead of in the "hallowed" halls of academia. The story sees Alvin helping his next door neighbor's daughter Carmine with her science fair project. The girl's father rejects the assistance and provides resistance to Alvin's attempts to help. When Carmine begins to explain her idea for a project to Alvin, she starts to worry that Alvin, a retired factory worker, doesn't know anything that can be helpful to her. Alvin tells her that he started his working life as a "millwright at LeBlanc Sugar Mill" and ended up retiring as the "foreman over all the maintenance people" (125). After hearing this, Carmine asks Alvin, "Does that mean you don't know anything about electricity?" (126). Alvin tells her that he worked on motors, and Carmine moves closer and begins to explain in detail how her project will work, telling him about the electrons running through a big cylinder and how resistors will control the flow of electrons. When she is done, Alvin astonishes her by asking her if they have to basically do the "scientific method" to show how the project works.

We do not know how far Alvin went in school, and we do not know if he went to college like Mel either. We can assume that he did not go to college and that he learned what he knows about electricity and resistors at LeBlanc Sugar Mill. Carmine appears amazed that Alvin knows these things, especially considering he did not learn them in school. Unlike Mel, we do not get the impression that others detracted Alvin from his pursuits, and like Mel, we see that Alvin is astute and intelligent even though he did not attend a university.

Doctors and lawyers do not provide the only source of educated individuals in the world, an Gautreaux shows this through his descriptions of characters like Mel, Alvin, and the grandfather in "Welding With Children." The stories do not show the gaps that education produces between the characters and the community, but they do show that "formal" education is not the be-all-end-all when it comes to showing how much knowledge someone maintains in his or her head.

For more of Tim, Gautreaux, check out Margaret Bauer's interview with him at Southern Spaces. Again, what are your thoughts on this topic? Where else do you see education being portrayed in Gautreaux's work? What does that portrayal say about the community and the individual?

Gautreaux, Tim. "Misuse of Light." Welding With Children: Stories. New York: Picador, 1999. 21-38. Print. 
Gautreaux, Tim. "Resistance." Welding With Children: Stories. New York: Picador, 1999. 121-139. Print.
Hebert-Leiter, Maria. "An Interview With Tim Gautreaux." Carolina Quarterly 57.2 (2005): 66-74. Print.