An Interview with Tim Gautreaux: "Cartographer of Louisiana Back Roads"
Margaret D. Bauer, East Carolina University
Essay Sections:
Notes:
1. James H. Dorman, The
People Called Cajuns: An Introduction to an Ethnohistory (Lafayette:
Center for Louisiana Studies, 1983), 36.
2. Suzanne Berne, "Swamped," New York Times Book Review (22 Sept. 1996): 16. Kirkus Reviews 11 (Sept. 1996): 991; Rand Richards Cooper, "Local Color," Commonweal 8 (November 1996): 25; Perry Glasser, "True Dirt," North American Review (March.-April 1997): 45.
3. Andy Solomon, "Books in Brief: Fiction," New York Times Book Review (14 June 1998): 21; John Tait, rev. of The Next Step in the Dance by Tim Gautreaux, Missouri Review 21.2 (1998): 212; Susan Larson, "The Writer Next Door," New Orleans Times-Picayune (15 Mar. 1998): E1.
4. Liam Callanan, "La. Stories," New York Times Book Review (3 Oct. 1999): 31; Susan Balée, "Maximalist Fiction," Hudson Review 53.3 (2000): 520, 519, emphasis added; Alan Heathcock, "Book Reviews," Mid-American Review 20 (2000): 249-50.
5. Bob Minzesheimer, "Clearing Is a Cut Above," USA Today (31 July 2003); "The Critics: Briefly Noted," New Yorker (30 June 2003): 101; "PW Forecasts: Fiction," Publishers Weekly (26 May 2003): 49.
6. Portions of my introduction are adapted from Chapter 1 of Understanding Tim Gautreaux (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, forthcoming).
7. See the Recommended Resources, in which I list all of the interviews with Gautreaux that I have found.
8. Marcia Gaudet, "The Image of the Cajun in Literature," Journal of Popular Culture 23.1 (1989): 77-88.
9. See Gautreaux's essay "Left-Handed Love," in A Few Thousand Words about Love, ed. Mickey Pearlman (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), 139.
10. In California to try to mend his relationship with his estranged wife, Louisiana native Paul Thibodeaux orders the only thing he recognizes on the menu, gumbo, and the waiter brings him "a small cauldron of bitter juice so hot with Tabasco that after the third spoonful, Paul broke into a sweat." When asked how it tastes, Paul remarks that was too hot and is told, "It takes time to develop a true Cajun palate," to which Paul responds, "it sure don’t take much time to ruin one" (The Next Step in the Dance [New York: Picador, 1998], 81).
11. The University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Vermilionville is a "Cajun/Creole heritage and folklife park [that recreates life in the Acadiana area between 1765 and 1890" (http://www.vermilionville.org) and Cajun Village is comprised of "[h]istoric Acadian buildings, restored to house unique specialty shops" (http://www.thecajunvillage.com).
12. See Chapter 7, "Don't Just Sit There; Do Something: Frustration with Faulkner from Glasgow to Gautreaux," in William Faulkner's Legacy: "what shadow, what stain, what mark" (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005).
13. Collected Stories of William Faulkner (New York: Vintage, 1977), 126.
14. Gaines made this remark when guest-speaking at a class I took at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in the spring of 1986. Gaines also refers to a similar, if not the same, episode in an interview with John Lowe: "Someone asked me when I wrote The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, was I thinking about Dilsey in Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury. And I said, 'No, I did not have Dilsey in mind.' And by the way, the difference between Dilsey and Miss Jane Pittman is that Faulkner gets Dilsey talking her story from his kitchen; the young schoolteacher in my book gets Miss Jane's story from Miss Jane's kitchen. And it makes a difference" (John Lowe, "An Interview with Ernest Gaines," Conversations with Ernest Gaines, ed. Lowe, Literary Conversations Series [Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995], 313).
2. Suzanne Berne, "Swamped," New York Times Book Review (22 Sept. 1996): 16. Kirkus Reviews 11 (Sept. 1996): 991; Rand Richards Cooper, "Local Color," Commonweal 8 (November 1996): 25; Perry Glasser, "True Dirt," North American Review (March.-April 1997): 45.
3. Andy Solomon, "Books in Brief: Fiction," New York Times Book Review (14 June 1998): 21; John Tait, rev. of The Next Step in the Dance by Tim Gautreaux, Missouri Review 21.2 (1998): 212; Susan Larson, "The Writer Next Door," New Orleans Times-Picayune (15 Mar. 1998): E1.
4. Liam Callanan, "La. Stories," New York Times Book Review (3 Oct. 1999): 31; Susan Balée, "Maximalist Fiction," Hudson Review 53.3 (2000): 520, 519, emphasis added; Alan Heathcock, "Book Reviews," Mid-American Review 20 (2000): 249-50.
5. Bob Minzesheimer, "Clearing Is a Cut Above," USA Today (31 July 2003); "The Critics: Briefly Noted," New Yorker (30 June 2003): 101; "PW Forecasts: Fiction," Publishers Weekly (26 May 2003): 49.
6. Portions of my introduction are adapted from Chapter 1 of Understanding Tim Gautreaux (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, forthcoming).
7. See the Recommended Resources, in which I list all of the interviews with Gautreaux that I have found.
8. Marcia Gaudet, "The Image of the Cajun in Literature," Journal of Popular Culture 23.1 (1989): 77-88.
9. See Gautreaux's essay "Left-Handed Love," in A Few Thousand Words about Love, ed. Mickey Pearlman (New York: St. Martin's, 1998), 139.
10. In California to try to mend his relationship with his estranged wife, Louisiana native Paul Thibodeaux orders the only thing he recognizes on the menu, gumbo, and the waiter brings him "a small cauldron of bitter juice so hot with Tabasco that after the third spoonful, Paul broke into a sweat." When asked how it tastes, Paul remarks that was too hot and is told, "It takes time to develop a true Cajun palate," to which Paul responds, "it sure don’t take much time to ruin one" (The Next Step in the Dance [New York: Picador, 1998], 81).
11. The University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Vermilionville is a "Cajun/Creole heritage and folklife park [that recreates life in the Acadiana area between 1765 and 1890" (http://www.vermilionville.org) and Cajun Village is comprised of "[h]istoric Acadian buildings, restored to house unique specialty shops" (http://www.thecajunvillage.com).
12. See Chapter 7, "Don't Just Sit There; Do Something: Frustration with Faulkner from Glasgow to Gautreaux," in William Faulkner's Legacy: "what shadow, what stain, what mark" (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2005).
13. Collected Stories of William Faulkner (New York: Vintage, 1977), 126.
14. Gaines made this remark when guest-speaking at a class I took at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in the spring of 1986. Gaines also refers to a similar, if not the same, episode in an interview with John Lowe: "Someone asked me when I wrote The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, was I thinking about Dilsey in Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury. And I said, 'No, I did not have Dilsey in mind.' And by the way, the difference between Dilsey and Miss Jane Pittman is that Faulkner gets Dilsey talking her story from his kitchen; the young schoolteacher in my book gets Miss Jane's story from Miss Jane's kitchen. And it makes a difference" (John Lowe, "An Interview with Ernest Gaines," Conversations with Ernest Gaines, ed. Lowe, Literary Conversations Series [Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1995], 313).
Essay Sections:
