It’s the birthday of Ernest James Gaines (b. 1933), whose novels are set in a fictional plantation area in rural Louisiana and who is best known for the highly-acclaimed novels The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971) and A Lesson Before Dying (1993).

(NB: This post contains no description of disembowelment and no mention whatsoever of decapitation, except for this one right here. You’re welcome.)

Gaines was born in Oscar, Louisiana, in the River Lake plantation area where his ancestors had been slaves and grew up in the expanded former slave quarters of the plantation. His parents separated when he was eight, and he and his siblings were raised by an aunt who had been crippled from birth. Because his aunt and grandmother had never gone to school, Gaines used to write letters for them in exchange for teacakes. Gaines moved to California at 15 with his mother and stepfather, and there he studied literature at San Francisco State College (now University), then went to graduate school at Stanford University, where his mentor was Wallace Stegner. (All hail the great Wallace Stegner.)

Gaines’ novels include Catherine Carmier (1964), which he began working on as a teenager; Of Love and Dust (1967); In My Father’s House (1978); A Gathering of Old Men (1983); and more. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman tells the story of a woman born in slavery who lives to see the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. A Lesson Before Dying, which is about a teacher who visits an intellectually disabled inmate in prison, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club in 1997. After the book and Gaines became famous, he began receiving letters from white middle-aged males for the first time ever: “Bill Gates said A Lesson Before Dying was one of his favorite books, along with The Catcher in the Rye. That’s good to hear, but he never sent me any computer stuff” (“An Interview with Ernest Gaines,” The Missouri Review, Dec. 1, 1999). (Come on, Bill: pony up.)

Gaines was writer-in-residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana from 1981 – 2004. About his teaching, he says he uses the Socratic Method and mostly facilitates discussion. He also says, “I don’t assign books for [my students] to read because they should read everything. I always recommend books—the Bible, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.” As for the influences on his own writing, Gaines says, “I saw Rashomon many years ago, and it has had some effect on me, as have Faulkner, Joyce and whoever else’s work I’ve read. They say if you steal from one person you are plagiarizing, but if you steal from a hundred people you are a genius.”

Gaines and his wife, retired lawyer Dianne Saulney Gaines, have bought land on the old plantation where he grew up and built a house there. (See some great pics here.)

Have a fine and dandy Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.