{"id":10051,"date":"2022-10-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10051"},"modified":"2022-10-04T19:44:57","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T23:44:57","slug":"a-small-focus-can-yield-big-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10051","title":{"rendered":"A Small Focus Can Yield Big Insights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Most Americans may recognize Ernest J. Gaines\u2019s name\u2014he died in 2019\u2014through his most famous novels, A Lesson Before Dying<\/em>, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, In My Father\u2019s House<\/em>, and the televised version of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman<\/em>, which received eight Emmys. His awards were plentiful in both the United States and France, where Pittman<\/em>, the first neo-slave narrative, was for a time required reading in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaines tackled the problem of race relations that haunt American society through the careful exploration of his characters\u2019 interior lives. He took his time writing them\u2014A Lesson Before Dying<\/em> was written over seven summers. Summer was his writing-time, because during the rest of the year, he was teaching at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (alma mater of author James Lee Burke). Such a long gestation gave him time to reflect on his characters and develop them to the extent he desired, a practice treasured by some authors and shunned by others (you know who they are).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started early. When he was 16, around 1950, he wrote his first novel. When, to his adolescent mind it was \u201cdone,\u201d he wrapped it in brown paper, tied it with a string, and sent it to New York. \u201cIt looked more like a warehouse lunchbag than it looked like a novel manuscript,\u201d he said in a 1995 interview. He\u2019d cut his paper in half to be book-sized and written on both sides. \u201cI had done everything wrong that you possibly could do.\u201d If that book was a failure, when it reappeared fourteen years later in more conventional and complete form as Catherine Carmier<\/em>, it was a success and is still available on Amazon<\/a> as a reissue in paper, Kindle, and audio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gaines had a solid education and credited the influence of Turgenev, Hemingway, and Faulkner as influences. Mississippi\u2019s small communities and the people who lived there, in the way Faulkner described them, closely paralleled the places and people of Louisiana\u2014except for the Cajun cooking and music! Just as Faulkner confined his stories to the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Gaines too concentrated on a limited setting for his Louisiana stories, Bayonne Parish. (This is much as current best-seller Scott Turow sets all his novels in fictional Kindle County, Illinois.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Hemingway, he believed he acquired a sense of understatement and short sentences. From Turgenev, short chapters. Put it all together with a number of other classic influences and you have what became unique voice. One that could produce many memorable lines, including: \u201cEverything\u2019s been said, but it needs saying again.\u201d Applies to so much of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had to name the authors who\u2019ve influenced me, the list would be long. I\u2019d have to include Charles Dickens, who was so expert at creating distinctive characters. I also admire how he tried to write about important things (treatment of orphans, importance of family, overcoming setbacks). That\u2019s why his books really resonate 210 years after his birth. Analyzing Elmore Leonard\u2019s dialog was a revelation. He leaves out so much, all of it unncessary, because what his characters are saying is perfectly understandable. And so many others. Knowing that I do tend to sop up the style of whatever I\u2019m reading, I never read government reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good writing deserves good readers. My quarterly newsletter contains tips for reading, writing, and viewing. Sign up here<\/a> and receive three prize-winning short stories!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most Americans may recognize Ernest J. Gaines\u2019s name\u2014he died in 2019\u2014through his most famous novels, A Lesson Before Dying, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, In My Father\u2019s House, and the televised version of The Autobiography of Miss … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Gaines approached his writing with a clear-eye and a generous heart. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2C7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10053,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10051\/revisions\/10053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}