When do we get to
"A Lesson Before Dying"? Could be a while. Once like this? There's a lot of young people who are
just being introduced to literature. I don't--I didn't have any
favorite books as a child, sorry. Hello, my name is
Ernest J. Gaines, and I'm here to talk about my novel,
"A Lesson Before Dying." I think Nietzsche said,
"Without music, life would be a mistake." To me, without books
life would be a mistake. I was born on a plantation in 1933. I was taught at a small school here
on this plantation, but most of the children did not go much
farther than about the sixth grade. Well, the generation before them
didn't go to school at all. I attended school about five months
to five and a half months out of the year. The rest of the time,
I had to work in the fields. You worked there from early in the
morning until late in the afternoon. It was the hottest time
of the year. So, it was very tiring,
very hard work for a child. For anyone, but especially for a child,
it was very hard work. I used to write letters
for old people as long before I started reading,
long before I discovered books. I was about 12 years old and I could
write and read as well as anyone else on the plantation,
except for the teacher. I had to create
their letters for them. Because once they had
said something like, "Dear so and so,
how are you?" I had to create that letter. They would pay me
for writing a letter maybe a nickel,
or a small tea cake. I left Louisiana in 1948
to go to California. My folks brought me there
because I could not get the kind of education here
my folks wanted me to have. I was not allowed
to go into a library here. Libraries here were
for whites only. I had nothing here,
I didn't have any books. I didn't read a novel
until I went to California, or a short story, or poetry,
or plays, or anything like that. It was there in California that
I visited a library for the first time. I started reading,
and reading, and reading. I fell in love with books. The library there
in Vallejo, California. And the reason
why I went there was because I had gotten
beaten up in a boxing ring by a guy who really knew
how to box and I did not know. And I was too embarrassed
to go back to this YMCA where I'd gotten
beaten up, so I ended up in the library
there in Vallejo, California. I discovered in a library lives
of different people other than my own. I was looking for something
about myself. I was looking for something
about the rural life. Why they settled
in the rural South. I'd read any writer
who wrote about the South. 'Bout peasant life or any area
where people worked in the fields. And I did find those books,
especially among the 19th century Russian writers
and many 19th century French writers. I read Chekhov because I was told
that he was a great short story writer. And I was told that
by librarians. I'd like reading
Tolstoy's stories. He had these little tales,
little stories about peasant life. Later, I would read
War and Peace. I was a young man who had
just come out of military service. So much what he talked about,
I somewhat experienced some of it. I think I started reading Grapes of Wrath
before I went to college. Pushkin, I think I fell in love
with Pushkin because I heard that-- Someone told me that he's part black,
so I began to read Pushkin. What was missing from the books
that I read were that, uh, they were not talking
about my people. Should I continue talking? But I was not finding me
in the books that I was reading, because I was reading novels
by white writers, European writers,
American white writers. But they were not
about my people. I think that
I've learned so much from the great novels
and the great short stories of the white writers,
I've learned so much. However,
they taught me form, but...I had to go
somewhere else for source. They could tell me how
to write a paragraph, how to construct a chapter,
how a narrative should work. But what do
I put in there? They're showing me
how to build a house, but I have to put
the furniture in the house. I need my black poets
and preachers and blues singers to give me the furniture
that must go into the house. I remember once,
I had an interview with someone from Reader's Digest,
and he asked me, he said, "What one book influenced you most
in that library in Vallejo, California?" And I thought and thought
and thought, and he said, "Maybe it was the one that was not there
and you had to put it on the shelf." And I said, "Hey,
that maybe it was the book." It was then that I thought
I would like to be a writer. I thought, "Look at all
these books in here, that must not be hard to do,
I should be able to write a book." I didn't know how hard it was,
at that time, to write a book. I published my first short story
at San Francisco State in 1956. The only thing I could think about
was to write about the South, about the home
I'd come from. But I didn't want
to come back to the South. Jim Meredith had gone into the
University of Mississippi in 1962. This young man had to tolerate
so much hatred and hostility toward him
at that university. If he put up with that then I would
come back to spend some time here. But in order to write
the book about Louisiana, I had to come back
to Louisiana. I didn't want to write about Bohemian life
in San Francisco, I tried that. I tried to write about
my army experience. I tried to write
ghost stories. Only when I tried to
write about Louisiana that I'd really put everything I had
in my soul, everything into it. During that time
I traveled all over the state. I went into the swamps
and hunted. I fished in, in the bayous,
I went to run-down bars, I went to the restaurants,
little cafés both in Baton Rouge and well as in New Roads
and Lafayette, because I needed
that kind of experience in order to write my book
"A Lesson Before Dying." I'd met people like Jefferson
on the way. I visited a church school
where Grant would teach. I'd gone to that church school
as a child. All of this experience
would get into all of my books. It was then that I tried to
write something that I call "The Autobiography of
Miss Jane Pittman." And my intention
at that time was to try to put down
what these old people had talked about all those
days and those nights. My aunt was crippled. I was raised by a lady
who was crippled. She never walked
in her life, but she raised me,
she raised my brother, my sisters,
all my siblings. Because she couldn't travel,
the people on the plantation, you would come
to our house. They come there
and talk to her all the time. And they would talk about the past,
they would talk about the present, and things, I'm pretty sure,
they didn't know a thing about. What did they
talk about? What did they talk
about all this time? I wanted to write about
the slavery, because they
talked about it. They knew it
from their parents. I wanted to write about
Reconstruction period, because they
talked about that. I wanted to write about The Great Flood
of 1912 and 1927. I know they
talked about that. I wanted to write about Huey P. Long,
the governor of Louisiana. They thought Long was
the greatest man in the world. And I wanted to write about
the Civil Rights Movement. Through my writing I began
to grow, I began to think. San Quentin is just across the bay
from San Francisco. I was horrified by executions
at San Quentin. They'd always happen on a Tuesday
at 10 o'clock in the morning. I used to just leave the house--
my apartment--and walk to the ocean, I lived about four, four and a half
miles from the ocean. And so I'd go to the ocean,
just to get away from everything. I didn't want to see anybody,
talk to anybody, until I'm sure that
the execution was over. And then I would come back home
and just sit there all day. And I think this is what drove me
to writing "A Lesson Before Dying," because of these nightmares
and nightmares about execution. What did a person go through
that week before, the day before, the night before,
he was to die? What was
in his mind? What I tried to do in
"A Lesson Before Dying" was to show the growth
of two people. Both a student
as well as a teacher. This was the main theme
of the book. Grant is someone
who hates teaching. He teaches in a small school
plantation church, and he hates it,
he wishes to run away. Run away to what,
he doesn't know. Jefferson, from the time he was
sent to be executed, was five months. I wanted to parallel
those five months with the five months
that he'd gone to school. Within those five months,
he had to grow. Some way or another,
Grant the teacher had to teach him. A man has to go to the electric chair,
but he was a man. Whether you live two months,
two weeks, or whether you live 40 years,
you have a certain responsibility to yourself
and to others around you. So it is Grant who
must convince him, during those five months,
to have him die properly. At the very end, when Jefferson
really, really needed him to walk to the chair,
he failed. And I wanted to show
in a way that the minister, Ambrose,
was stronger than Grant. I wanted to show that the minister,
because he believed in God, he had some faith in something
that he could do-- He could be there,
that's what I was trying to do. Because of what happened,
Grant will become a better teacher and he will remain
there to teach, to marry Vivian,
and he will teach the children. I think without Jefferson's death,
none of this could've happened. I don't think it would've changed--
Grant wouldn't've changed. When he walks back into the church,
that little church back there, and turned around
to face those kids, and they're standing tall,
their shoulders back, their head high,
waiting for some answers, and he looks back at 'em
and he starts crying. And I think that meant he, uh,
"Okay, this is it." "I'm gonna be here with ya,
I'm gonna do whatever I can." He did that and that made him...
made him a man. The book was published in 1983. It won the
National Critics Award. That same year I received a
MacArthur Award for all of my work. That same year,
I got married. Not long after that Oprah chose
the book as one of her books. Of course, after Oprah pick up a book
you know, the book, it--it sells. It went up to the
best sellers list on New York Times best sellers list;
for six weeks it was there. They were number one. I have six words of advice
to any writer: to read, read, read,
write, write, write. You must read
in order to be a writer. And you must have
a love for literature. You must be ready to sacrifice
everything if you want to be that writer. I try to create characters,
with character, to help improve
my own character, and maybe the character
of the person who might read me. And I just hope that my--
that book has helped me become a better person,
and anyone else who's read it might become a little bit better
than he was before they read the book. And that's what
I tried to do. Some people have
compared me to Grant, I don't think I'm
quite like Grant. A few of us had
chances to get away and do things
with our lives. I was one of those
fortunate person. Not all African-American male
are like Grant or like Jefferson. There are many who are,
but there are many who are not. These men came out whole,
they came out strong, they came out like
Martin Luther King did. They stood their ground,
did not go away. They stayed here
and raised their families. I should wish the black youth
of the South to read my book, because--to show him that
characters in a book are no better and no worse
than he is. I wish the white youth
of the South to read my book. To let him know that unless he knows
his neighbor of the past 300 years, he knows only half
of his own history. I think what made me a man
was that I didn't want to leave here because I loved my aunt,
I still love my memories of her, more than anyone else
who's ever lived. I didn't want to leave her,
but she also knew that I had to go, because nobody in our family,
no male in our family, had gone beyond
high school. So, I had to go,
but I had this love of the place. Oh, and I think about the fields,
sometimes it's good memories, other times, you know, hard,
tough remembrance of these fields. I look out of my office,
I can see all of that. Trees are in all
of my books. I can see these trees
from the office window all the way back
to the cemetery. Most of the people buried back there
in that cemetery have no marks. Such as my aunt,
who raised me. There is no stone,
nothing. I don't even know the exact place
where she's buried, because we were too poor
to put up anything. We've already picked out our place
to be buried back there, both Di and I. My epitaph, I've already written it out:
"To lie with those who have no marks." I wanna be with those who are
too poor to have a marking place. That's where
I want to be. I read every day,
I have to read something every day. Books have been
the history of man, his life, his dreams,
his hopes, his mistakes. Shows us his courage,
also shows us his cowardice. Someone asked me once,
"Do you read all these books?" I said, "Once." I was wondering where
my aunt is buried, I know approximately
where she's at, but I don't know exactly,
because there's no marker for a grave. And this butterfly
kept coming back to the place where we were,
where we were standing. Another butterfly would chase it away
but it would come back again. This other butterfly came up
at the end of the story, because I wanted something to show
Jefferson's soul going into the quarters, to the people,
lying in the quarters. "If I were a book
which book would I be?" Maybe "Don Quixote",
maybe "Don Quixote." A bit crazy anyhow so I might as well
go with a book about a crazy guy.
