Ernest J. Gaines - Catherine Carmier

Rookie Season: Debuts | Week 46º

Jun 06, 2024

Extra seasoning for your everyday food for thought

“No one writes about mainstream, ordinary Black life as well as Gaines does.”

— Ishmael Reed

Genre: Romance, Family Life, Domestic Fiction, Classics

“Just as in any race of people, when a young man leaves an area to go to a more enlightened area it is hard for him to come back to his home. Thomas Wolfe said it, and it's been said since the beginning of time. Once I left the South, which I did when I was fifteen years old, it was hard for me to go back and act the same way with my friends and people. Oh, I could drink and talk with them, but when it came down to accepting certain things as they did, it was just about impossible for me to do.”
— Ernest J. Gaines

Back Cover (Vintage Books):

“After living in San Francisco for ten years, Jackson returns home to his benefactor, Aunt Charlotte. Surrounded by family and old friends, he discovers that his bonds to them have been irreparably rent by his absence. In the midst of his alienation from those around him, he falls in love with Catherine Carmier, setting the stage for conflicts and confrontations which are complex, tortuous, and universal in their implications.”

Catherine Carmier, the 1964 debut novel by American author Ernest J. Gaines, tells a haunting and heart-wrenching story set between two star-crossed lovers in a “deceptively bucolic” Louisiana countryside, where unconventional love can never be and populations of Black folk, Cajuns, and whites maintain an uneasy order.

Protagonist, Jackson Bradley, returns home to his benefactor, Aunt Charlotte, who believes that Jackson has come back to teach at the local school and marry his high-school sweetheart, Mary Louise. However, unbeknownst to his family, Jackson isn’t looking for a place to stay as much as a purpose as he feels suddenly alienated by his hometown and the people in it. Why are things no longer the way they used to be?1 Are they guilty of changing—or am I?

However, by complete mistake and in the midst of his alienation, Jackson finds his feelings have changed with another part of his past, Catherine Carmier.

“He had other things to do. Love was for those who were ready to settle down, to accept what was handed out. He was not.”
– Ernest J. Gaines, Catherine Carmier

Did You Know?

Did you know that “Love” and “Approval” are two very different things? As Tara Johnson, author of All Through the Night, writes, “Approval is a stamp that says, ‘You meet my expectations.’ Love says, ‘You are a mess but I’m crazy about you anyway.’”2

Tell Me More . . .

Consider this:

Over the years, Ernest J. Gaines’s writings have earned the seal of approval from various longstanding and respectable institutions, including (but limited to):

The National Endowment for the Humanities — tasked with awarding The National Humanities Medal (inaugurated in 1997, the medal honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and broadened citizen engagement with history, literature, languages, and philosophy). Ernest J. Gaines3 was presented the National Humanities Medal by US President Bill Clinton in 2000. Nine other notable recipients of the National Humanities Medal (you may know), include:

Henry Lours Gates, Jr — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 1998
August Wilson — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 1999
Steven Spielberg — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 1999
David C. Driskell — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 2000
Quincy Jones — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 2000
Toni Morrison — presented by US President Bill Clinton in 2000
James McBride — presented by US President Barack Obama in 2015
Isabel Wilkerson — presented by US President Barack Obama in 2015
Colson Whitehead — presented by US President Joe Biden in 2021

And More . . .

Ernest J. Gaines was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship4 (typically referred to as the “Genius Grant”) in 1993

The Ernest J. Gaines Center5 was established in 2008, located on the 3rd floor of Edith Garland Dupré Library at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette campus, a public research university in Lafayette, Louisiana (which boasts the second-largest enrollment in the state, behind Louisiana State University)

And, finally, the appropriately titled Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence6 established in 2007 and presented annually by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, now in its 17th year, has become nationally recognized and serves to inspire and recognize rising African-American fiction writers of excellence at a national level

Some Food For Thought:

Ernest J. Gaines was born on January 15, 1933, on River Lake Plantation in the small south town of Oscar, Louisiana. He was the son of Adrian Jefferson and Manuel Gaines, fifth generation sharecroppers born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. His parents worked on that plantation, and he grew up in the plantation quarter.

After Gaines left the South (again, at age fifteen) and after gaining all the approvals, accomplishments, accolades, etc. that one can dream during a lifetime, Gaines chose to return to Oscar, Louisiana, during his later stages, where he and his wife built a home on a portion of the old plantation where he grew up, giving weight to the age old adage, “It’s never too late.”

Ernest J. Gaines died from natural causes at this place—his home—on November 5, 2019. He was 86 years old.