MG: Do you think that is true in your writing now, especially in writing The Man Who Whipped Children [Gaines’s novel in progress]? Do you think you’re drawing from different influences at this stage?
GAINES: Yes, I think so. I think that my voice—my particular voice—is the most dull and boring thing in the world. I have to draw from other people. I have my own story to tell, but I’m constantly getting into the voices of other characters. I don’t wish to reach a point where I feel I cannot learn from others. I’m going to always try to learn from others. Like my brother, you know, who just lost his wife and less than two weeks later had to have his leg amputated. And I’d go in to cheer him up, and he was cheering me up all the time. My brother Lionel, you know, he’s funny. He was telling me the funniest stories about the hospital and some of the people in the hospital.
MG: I agree that’s one of the sources—in the oral tradition especially—the great storytellers like Lionel.
GAINES: Yes, he is a great storyteller. And he’s still telling stories. He was telling me that the doctors told him that they were afraid they would have to take his leg off. And he told the doctor, “I’d rather be up here with one leg than to be down there with two.”
MG: Down there!
DB: That’s great.
GAINES: So I told him, I said, “Man, you sure are brave.” I don’t know what I’d do. I’d have to think about that for a week.
DB: And he could just rattle it off.
MG: And just the way he phrased it.
GAINES: His wife had just died a week or so before that. I said, damn, I know he’s always been a braver man than I, but damn! What are you going to do?
MG: I love that story you told me about when he wanted to get out of the hospital—
GAINES: Right, they told him he would leave on Wednesday, and he said, “They better not crawfish on me, or they’re going to see a one-leg man on the highway in his wheelchair.” He said, “I’m getting on out of here.” He had all those nurses and those doctors in that hospital laughing. He didn’t care what he said. I wish I had his courage.
Ernest J. Gaines
MOZART AND LEADBELLY
Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements. In 1996 he was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana.
ALSO BY ERNEST J. GAINES
A Lesson Before Dying
A Gathering of Old Men
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
In My Father’s House
Bloodline
Of Love and Dust
Catherine Carmier
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2006
Copyright © 2005 by Ernest J. Gaines
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
The following were originally published in earlier versions as listed: “Miss Jane and I,” Callaloo, 1978; “Mozart and Leadbelly,” Phi Kappa Phi National Forum, 1998; “A Very Big Order: Reconstructing Identity,” Southern Review, 1990, and Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, Louisiana Cultural Vistas, 1990 (published simultaneously); “Bloodline in Ink,” CEA Critic, 1989, and Georgia Review, 1989; “Aunty and the Black Experience in Louisiana,” Louisiana Tapestry, 1982; “The Turtles,” Transfer, 1956; “Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit,” Transfer, 1957; “Mary Louise,” Stanford Short Stories, 1960; “My Grandpa and the Haint,” New Mexico Quarterly, 1966; “Oyster/Shrimp Po’boys, Chardonnay, and Conversation with Ernest Gaines,” Interdisciplinary Humanities, 2002, published as “The Influence of Multi-Art Forms on the Artist.”
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–
Mozart and Leadbelly: stories and essays / Ernest J. Gaines. —1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Louisiana—Social life and customs—Fiction. 2. Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–
—Childhood and youth. 3. Authors, American—20th century—Biography.
4. African American authors—Biography. 5. African Americans—Fiction.
6. California—Biography. 7. Louisiana—Biography. I. Title.
PS3557.A355M697 2005
818’.5409—dc22
2004063264
www.vintagebooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42695-6
v3.0
Ernest J. Gaines, Mozart and Leadbelly
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