Going Home: the transcript (3 of 4)

How does that make you feel?

Well, I feel the way that Rhett Butler felt at the end of Gone With The Wind. "Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn." I’ve written the book. The book is out there. I’m sorry if I insulted you but I cannot rewrite the book. This is what I felt at the time.

I remember I was at Lewis & Clark about 15 or 20 years ago. A group of students got onto me about the book, the African students, because one of the characters in the book says, "We’re not Africans. We’re Americans. We’re not anything else but Americans." And these guys said, "What do you mean you’re not an African? You are an African." I said, "Well, I think I’m an American." They kept arguing. I said, "You can go to hell. This is what I am, and this how I feel."

Gaines laughs during one of his advanced writing classes. photo by Terri Fensel

So they told this friend of mine who had invited me to Lewis & Clark that I had to apologize to the African students there. John Callahan was so great. I saw John last weekend. I told him that I would not apologize. He said, "I don’t know what I’m going to do with those people. They’ve taken this to the president." I said, "It’s too damn bad, John. I’m not going to apologize. I am an American. I’m not an African. I’ll repeat it, and I’ll tell it to the president if he invites me to his office. They can go to hell. This is what I am, and this is what I wrote."John and I were talking about this last week. I was in Portland. John is still at Lewis & Clark. John said, "Ernie, you remember those guys you had the argument with?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Did you ever go to Africa?" I said, "Hell, no. One of those guys could be a ruler of one of those countries. I’m not going there!" (Laughs)

You just said words to the effect of "I’m sorry that I insulted you. I wrote the book. It’s over with." You also said earlier that you can only write what you know. What is the writer’s obligation?

The writer’s obligation is, first, to entertain. The writer is supposed to tell a story. We started out by me being unable to tell stories. But I think the writer’s duty is to tell a story. Somewhere, Mark Twain once said, that in comedy, you should not aim to preach and teach, but the end result of your book should do both. I still feel that about the novel or the short story.

It is not there to get up there and to espouse all kinds of political and social ideas in page after page after page. But through those characters, those things must come through. They must happen if the story is worth reading. Something has to come through.

Many years ago, you said you had no intentions of getting married. You said the laws of marriage were antiquated and yet, now, you’re a married man.

Did I saw the laws of marriage were antiquated?

That’s what I have here. What changed your mind?

I got old and got more intelligent.

I once said that you should never say anything that can be quoted. I really mean that. Use the simplest words and answer the simplest questions, but don’t ever use a word or phrase. Don’t ever say anything.

How did you meet Mrs. Gaines (Dianne Saulney)?

We met in Miami at a book fair, the Miami International Book Fair. She was in the audience. She had read a couple of my books. I was there for a panel discussion on the black male in contemporary American literature. After the panel discussion, there was a group of people talking, and she was one of those people. I found out that she was from Louisiana, and we just started talking. She said that one of her sons was attending Hampton University in Virginia, and at that time they were studying A Gathering of Old Men and she asked me would I mind autographing a book for him. I said, "Oh, by the way, I’m going to Hampton." She said, "Yes, I know." I think he had told her. I autographed her book for her.

I saw her again that evening. She and I and a couple of other people went out to a jazz place. The party that the people who had invited us there for this discussion, that was the dullest party in the world. We had to find someplace else to go. This buddy of mine was sitting there talking at a bar. Dianne and a friend of hers came by, and they recognized us. They were on their way to the party. I said, "That’s one of the dullest parties you could ever go to. That’s the worst party you can go to. Is there anything else going on in Miami?" They said, "I don’t know. What do you mean?" I said, "I love jazz." She and her friend looked at each other and said, "Well, we know a jazz place." They discussed it, and we went to this jazz place. I said, "I’m sure you’ll appreciate it much more than that party over there."

So we went to this place and just sat there and talked and talked and talked. Talking about New Orleans, where she had gone to school and just general talk. We didn’t see each other again for about 18 months. That was in November ’88 and I didn’t see her again until May.

When did y’all marry?

May 15, 1993. This May will be ten years.

We met again in 1990. Her daughter had just graduated from Notre Dame, and they were coming back. They were going to be driving through Louisiana on their way to Florida. A buddy of mine was getting married in New Orleans. We had exchanged letters, and I told her that I was going to be in New Orleans at the same time. She was coming through New Orleans to visit her mother and her sisters. So we got a chance to sit and talk. From then on, we exchanged letters just about every week, and we courted for a couple of years.

Do you still have homes in Miami and San Francisco?

photo by Terri Fensel

No.

Are you building a house out on False River?

We’re going to start maybe later this month or next month.

How long should that take?

I don’t know. The guy said he could give us a window of about 10 months or something like that. He might be able to go faster maybe, depending on that Louisiana weather. You can never tell what the hell’s going to happen around here.

How did having A Lesson Before Dying selected as part of Oprah’s Book Club affect the sale of the book? And what was it like being in that spotlight?

Well, it shot the book up to the New York Times best sellers list.

How many years after publication?

Published in 1993 and this was in 1997. It wasn’t anywhere near there before Oprah. Then we had the film. The film came out around ’98 or ’99. All of that kept the book selling. Now, so many cities are reading the book. As a matter of fact, we got a call this morning from a guy in New York who called to tell us that the city of Miami has just chosen the book A Lesson Before Dying as the book to read sometime in the future. The entire city of Miami. This is the thing that’s really keeping that book out there.

Who’s behind that? The National Writing Project?

No, no, no. There’s different cities. It started in Seattle about three years ago. The library got together with colleges and high schools and book clubs and with city hall. All of these people came together to promote one book to read this one year for the entire city. Seattle started it. We’ve had now about eight cities. Rochester did it. Syracuse did it. Grand Rapids. Cincinnati. Peoria, Illinois. Houston. Lafayette here did it. Richmond, Virginia. I’m sure I’ve missed some of them. Portland just recently, last week.

So that’s also kept the book selling?

Yes, and the book is being read by freshmen going into college all over the country. It’s required reading for freshmen.

The writing life is a solitary confinement, with hours spent alone, living inside of another reality. Is it difficult for you to adjust when you’re in the spotlight or when you’re receiving a medal from the president of the United States? Does the attention bother you or not?

It gets to me in that it keeps me from writing. It gets in the way of writing. But other than that, if I were a younger man, I would love it because I could get around much better. Now this arthritis keeps slowing me down. I wish I didn’t have to move around as much.

But whenever they take that book for the city to read, they expect you to be there with them. They would easily substitute it for another if you did not show up. They want this book, but they want you there… That gets in the way of writing.

I’m not writing now. I’m not writing at all right now because of this problem here (arthritis) as well as moving around so much.

In 1975, you told the San Francisco Bay Guardian "I’d like to have a home with a half acre, an acre of ground, and I could just get out there and dig, plant a row of flowers, beans. Many of your Southern writers, they always say they’re gentlemen farmers and all that kind of bull. I’d like to have a little piece of ground where I could just plant something sometime." Thirty years after making that statement, does it still hold true?

Yes, if I could get out there and do the work. We just did an MRI yesterday at the hospital.

How did that go?

I don’t know. It takes a couple of days before the doctor reads the x-rays and all that sort of thing. So I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I’m able to get out there with a hoe, a shovel and a little plow, damn right I’d like to get out there and plant roses and plant little things like that. I’d love that. I’d like to do things like that.

I’m retiring at the end of this year, at the end of this fall semester, and I would like to spend a lot of time out there with my wife, my dog out there on the river and fish and work around the yard. I’d like to do that.

When you say retire, are you referring to your writer-in-residence position?

Yeah.

Could you ever retire from writing?

No. I can’t retire. I can have writer’s block for a while, but hell, all you want to do is to be able to get back to the writing. That’s all you want you to do, is to get back to the writing. If you’re a writer, you want to get back to your writing.

The main road through The Quarter where Gaines was raised. Photo by Terri Fensel