The Little Stream: An Early Draft of Catherine Carmier

Box 1-Folder 7 The Little Stream

In preparation for the Second Annual Ernest J. Gaines Lecture tomorrow by Dr. John Lowe, I would like to take the time to do a quick post on one of the early drafts of Catherine Carmier. The draft, entitled The Little Stream, shows Gaines working on his craft, honing it to make it tighter. The draft does not contain the fluidity of the finished novel, but it does shine a light on Gaines' evolution as a writer. The narrator of The Little Stream is third person omniscient, for the most part. At some points within the manuscript, the narration shifts to first person. At times this occurs abruptly, at other times it appears rather seamless and fluid. One such instance occurs in chapter 9 when David (Jackson in the finished novel) goes to church with his Aunt Charlotte. David sits in the back of the church, not wanting to be involved with the service, but just going, partly out of respect for his Aunt. The narrator begins in third person, saying, "He did not relax until an old woman sitting beside his aunt began a song" (141). Immediately after this sentence, the next paragraph switches, without cues, to a first person point of view and we see David's thoughts as the church service commences. The paragraph begins, "Nothing has changed. I got a glimpse of the water cooler as I came in" (141). This shift occurs almost seamlessly, and it can be seen in the picture of the manuscript above.

Along with the shifts in point of view throughout the draft, themes and locations that permeate Gaines oeuvre can be seen throughout as well. One such location appears in the paragraph mentioned above. David, while sitting in the back of the church, begins to think about attending school in the church house as a youngster. Thinking about standing in front of the class and writing on the blackboard while the teacher taught another class, he intones, "Primer, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth--all for one man to teach. How did I do it? How? How could anyone learn anything[?]" (141). David's thoughts here prefigure Grant's thoughts about his teaching condition in A Lesson before Dying (1993). Watching the older boys chop and saw wood as the younger students learn lessons inside the school, Grant ponders whether or not he is actually teaching them, anything. He asks,

What am I doing? Am I reading them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything? (62) 

Continuing this train of thought, Grant thinks back to his classmates, commenting that they had "Gone to the fields, to the small towns, to the cities--where they died" (61). Grant's thoughts here mirror David's from The Little Stream. Both ponder the role of education in the quarters and whether or not it provides anything more than a holding place for students before they go to work in the fields.

After thinking about his own students and classmates, Grant begins to recall his own teacher, Matthew Antoine, and his thoughts on teaching in the quarters. Speaking with the teacher right before his death, Grant says that he asked for advice on teaching in the quarters. Antoine simply said, "Just do the best you can. But it won't matter" (66).  Even though David is thinking about his childhood and questioning how he learned anything in a school like the one he attended, and Grant is thinking about his education and his current position, their sentiments are similar in the fact that they both see the educational opportunities in the community as extremely impoverished. Both David and Grant represent, as well, "the one," like Ned Douglass and Jimmy Aaron, who returns to educate the children. Unlike Douglass and Aaron, David and Grant question their return and whether or not they actually have any impact on the children at all.

The final aspect of the manuscript I want to briefly mention occurs in chapter 6. As Aunt Charlotte unpacks David's suitcase, she discovers a revolver. This is interesting, at least to me, because while guns appear in Gaines' work, I cannot think of instances, if any, where an African American male carries a gun, except for maybe In My Father's House and A Gathering of Old Men. While talking about the gun with David, Aunt Charlotte continually asks him what it is for. He simply replies that it is for protection and that a friend of his in California gave it to him for that very reason. The argument between Aunt Charlotte and David moves into the subject of manhood, and Aunt Charlotte says, "you think you a man, now" because you have a gun (81). David replies, "I am a man" then rattles off that Uncle Sam calls him a man at twenty-one (81). This conversation is interesting because it revolves, essentially, around the definition of manhood. Elsewhere, the topic of manhood appears with the differences between Lil'Bud (Brother in the published novel) and David. The continued struggle of how to achieve manhood, or to define it, appears in these early drafts as it does throughout Gaines' work. For a discussion of manhood in "The Sky is Gray," see the post "You a man, James" post on this blog.

These are just a few of the items I noticed in one of about five early drafts of Catherine Carmier. I have not read all of the early manuscripts, so I cannot comment on all of them. Tomorrow, Dr. John Lowe will comment on some of these drafts and explore how Gaines' first novel evolved from its earliest incarnations to the finished text it is today. Make sure to join us.

Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson before Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.

     

Make Plans to Join Us in Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Catherine Carmier

This fall, the Ernest J. Gaines Center, in conjunction with the Lafayette Public Library and the Louisiana Book Festival, will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Gaines' first novel publication Catherine Carmier. To celebrate, events will be held from September 17-November 21 in various locations from Lafayette to Baton Rouge. All events at the South Regional Library and the Jeffery Renard Allen reading will be at 6:30.  

The celebration will begin with a film series at the South Regional Library in Lafayette. Every Wednesday night between September 17 and October 8 there will be screenings of the four film adaptations of Gaines' work. The series begins tomorrow night with the short documentary An Obsession of Mine (video below is the introduction to the documentary) and The Sky is Gray. 

On October 9, Dr. Reggie Young and Dr. Marcia Gaudet will be part of the Center for Louisiana Studies' Bayou State Book Talk series. They will discuss their book This Louisiana Thing that Drives Me: The Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines.  

On October 15, the center will  host a reading by 2009 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence winner Jeffery Renard Allen. Numerous reviewers have praised Allen's new book, Song of the Shank, including the New York Times. 

On October 22, Dr. Matthew Teutsch will lead a discussion on Gaines' work and specifically on The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman at the South regional Library. 

On November 1, Dr. Keith Clark will lead a discussion with Ernest Gaines at the Louisiana Book Festival. He is the author of Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, and August Wilson.

 Make sure to get there early because the space always fills up quickly when Gaines appears at the book festival.  

On November 2, Gaines will be reading on the campus of UL Lafayette. The reading will take place in Moody 103 at 4:00. 

On November 21, the center will host Dr. John Lowe for the Second Annual Gaines Scholar Lecture. Dr. Lowe will discuss Catherine Carmier, pulling from the drafts and other materials housed within the Gaines Center's archives. He has written extensively on Gaines, and his Conversations with Ernest Gaines collects interviews with Gaines from the early 1970s through 1995. The lecture will be at 1:00. 

From September 22-December 1, patrons to the Louisiana State Library in Baton Rouge can see items from the archives that highlight Gaines' accomplishments and the numerous anniversaries

 this year. From October 9-November 9, items from the archives will be on display at the South Regional Library. 

Ernest Gaines and the Land He Writes About

When I first read Ernest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men around 2004 or 2005, I never thought I would have the opportunity, in such a short period of time, to work in the Ernest J. Gaines Center and to get to know the man and the land that he writes about. In the documentary above, John Callahan comments that all fiction contains about 99% reality from experiences, surroundings, people, etc. I could have gone my whole life reading Gaines' work without having any connection to them beyond the printed words on the page. While I would still, no doubt, find pleasure and inspiration in the texts, I would not have the opportunity to fully appreciate their importance. Walking the land that Gaines' invokes in his novels feels different than walking through the streets of New Orleans in the footsteps of Tennessee Williams, John Kenendy Toole, Kate Chopin, William Faulkner, and countless others. I do not get the same feeling walking those streets in the French Quarter as I do when I walk through the church, the cemetery, or the sugarcane fields that Gaines draws inspiration from when constructing the land around Bayonne. Millions of people walk those streets in New Orleans. How many walk those fields where Gaines grew up?
Gaines' connection to the land where he spent the first fifteen years of his life can be seen very strongly throughout his oeuvre. He tried to write about other areas; however, he always returned again and again to Louisiana. Speaking with John Lowe in 1994, Gaines said, "I've tried to write about my army experiences; I've tried to write about San Francisco, about Bohemian life and that sort of thing. But everything comes back to Louisiana" (298). Louisiana continually draws Gaines back in his writing. Earlier, talking with Marcia Guadet and Carl Wooton, Gaines said he has an attachment to the land where he grew up. He cares about the cemetery on the land where the people he knew and his ancestors are buried, some in unmarked graves. Talking about the quarters, Gaines said, "I suppose as children we loved the quarters. I mean we loved it more than the people who owned it loved it, but we were limited" because they did not own the land (75). This land draws him back because "that's where everything was for [him]" (75). 
All of this brings me back to the beginning of this post. Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to walk upon the earth that Gaines walked during his formative years. I have had the opportunity to clean the cemetery where his ancestors lay and where he wants to be buried with the inscription "To Lie With Those Who Have No Marks" on his tombstone. The place, Riverlake Plantation, provided Gaines with the material he would write about he scoured the library in California to find his people and their voices in the books collected there. He created that voice and breathed life into it, allowing those who have no mark to speak for the world to hear. Riverlake Plantation also provided me, and more importantly my family, with the opportunity to never forget the past. My daughter has been able to help clean the cemetery every October for the past few years, and my son had the opportunity this year. Even though they are not old enough to understand the importance of what they are doing or where they are walking, I know that one day they will. They will understand that they helped, in some small way, to keep the memories of Gaines and his ancestors alive.
 

For a video of the annual cemetery cleaning go to CNN's website.

Gaudet, Marcia and Carl Wooten. Porch Talk withErnest Gaines: Conversations on the Writer’s Craft. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. Print. 

Lowe, John. "An Interview with Ernest Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 297-328. Print.