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A Spicy Cajun Stew |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / FEATURED BOOK: Tim Gautreaux's The Clearing |
| Author: Tom Pilkington |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/2004 |
| Size: 2,959 Words, 17,761 Characters |
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Though he was no spring chicken when he began his publishing career--he was forty-eight when his first book, Same Place, Same Things, a collection of short stories, appeared seven years ago--Tim Gautreaux has established himself as one of the brightest stars in the firmament of southern literature. A well-received novel, The Next Step in the Dance (1998), followed, and shortly thereafter another highly praised story collection, Welding with Children (1999), was published. His excellent new novel, The Clearing, will only enhance his solid reputation.
Gautreaux, a native of Morgan City, Louisiana, holds a doctorate in English and creative writing from the University of South Carolina, where he studied under poet and novelist James Dickey. He taught for many years at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond and is currently writer-in-residence at that university.
Gautreaux claims to be uncomfortable with the label "southern writer," or even "Louisiana writer." He thinks of himself as a frontier writer. Mark Twain was a more important influence on him, he says, than William Faulkner, and frontier humor--that is, the tall tale--supplied much of his early reading matter. Still, he is a Louisianan--more specifically, a south Louisianan--through and through.
South Louisiana, especially in the rural areas and small towns, is a strange and special place, with its clamshell roads and moss-laden cypress swamps. Its climate for much of the year is tropical, which means hot and humid. It harbors zillions of buzzing, stinging mosquitoes, as well as sinister water moccasins and alligators. It is also Cajun country.
In his short stories, most of Gautreaux's characters are working-class Cajuns (descendants of the French-speaking Acadians, who were ...
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...is not a heavy, ponderous novel. It is fast-moving and even funny on occasion. But it is also thought-provoking, unobtrusively raising many moral questions, while providing no definitive answers. Its characters and events--and the language by which they are conveyed--linger in memory long after the last page is turned. Tim Gautreaux is a writer's writer. Long may he practice his art and craft.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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