Announced on September 22, 1997
About the Book
A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused of murder. At the trial, the essence of the defense is that the accused, a lowly form of existence lacking even a modicum of intelligence, is incapable of premeditated murder. His lawyer argues: "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." But Jefferson is condemned to death.
Grant Wiggins, who left his small rural black community to go to university, has returned to the plantation school to teach children whose lives promise to be not much better than Jefferson's. But he wonders whether he has the will to take off north or west like so many before him who knew it was the only way to climb out of a centuries-old rut. He is grappling with his own situation when Jefferson's godmother and Grant's aunt persuade Grant to impart something of himself, of his learning and pride, to Jefferson before his death-to prove the lawyer wrong.
A Lesson Before Dying tells the story of these two men who, through no choice of their own, come together and form a bond in the realization that sometimes simply choosing to resist the expected is an act of heroism. Ernest Gaines brings to the novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, widely praised novels.
About the Author
Ernest Gaines says, "We all know-at least intellectually-that we're going [to die]. The difference is being told, 'Okay, it's tomorrow at 10 a.m. 'How do you react to that? How do you face it? That, it seems to me, is the ultimate test of life.
"When I speak to black students about Hemingway, they often ask me what I expect them to learn from 'that white man.' I tell them: 'All Hemingway wrote about was grace under pressure. And he way talking about you. Can you tell me a better example of grace under pressure than our people for the past three hundred years? Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation."
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 on the River Lake plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, the setting for most of his fiction; he was the fifth generation in his family to be born there. At the age of nine he was picking cotton in the plantation fields; the black quarter's school held classes only five or six months a year.
When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to California to join his parents, who had left Louisiana during World War II. There he attended San Francisco State University and later won a writing fellowship to Stanford University. Gaines published his first short story in 1956. Since then he has written eight books of fiction, including Catherine Carmier, Of Love and Dust, Bloodline, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Long Day in November, In My Father's House, and A Gathering of Old Men, most of which are available in Vintage paperback editions. A Lesson Before Dying, his most recent novel, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant, for writings of "rare historical resonance." Gaines divides his time between San Francisco and Lafayette, Louisiana, where he is writer in residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He is married to the lawyer Dianne Saulney.
Book Reviews
"This majestic, moving, novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives."
— Chicago Tribune
'A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer."
— Boston Globe
"Enormously moving ... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes."
— Newsday
"A quietly moving novel (that) takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living."
— San Francisco Chronicle
"The lesson is valuable and apt, presented in the modest but forceful terms that we have come to expect from Ernest J. Gaines."
— Washington Post
"Gaines has a gift for evoking the tenor of life in a bygone era and making it seem vivid and immediate as something that happened only yesterday."
— Christian Science Monitor
Get more resources on A Lesson Before Dying, an Oprah's Book Club selection.
View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused of murder. At the trial, the essence of the defense is that the accused, a lowly form of existence lacking even a modicum of intelligence, is incapable of premeditated murder. His lawyer argues: "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." But Jefferson is condemned to death.
Grant Wiggins, who left his small rural black community to go to university, has returned to the plantation school to teach children whose lives promise to be not much better than Jefferson's. But he wonders whether he has the will to take off north or west like so many before him who knew it was the only way to climb out of a centuries-old rut. He is grappling with his own situation when Jefferson's godmother and Grant's aunt persuade Grant to impart something of himself, of his learning and pride, to Jefferson before his death-to prove the lawyer wrong.
A Lesson Before Dying tells the story of these two men who, through no choice of their own, come together and form a bond in the realization that sometimes simply choosing to resist the expected is an act of heroism. Ernest Gaines brings to the novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed his previous, widely praised novels.
About the Author
Ernest Gaines says, "We all know-at least intellectually-that we're going [to die]. The difference is being told, 'Okay, it's tomorrow at 10 a.m. 'How do you react to that? How do you face it? That, it seems to me, is the ultimate test of life.
"When I speak to black students about Hemingway, they often ask me what I expect them to learn from 'that white man.' I tell them: 'All Hemingway wrote about was grace under pressure. And he way talking about you. Can you tell me a better example of grace under pressure than our people for the past three hundred years? Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation."
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 on the River Lake plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana, the setting for most of his fiction; he was the fifth generation in his family to be born there. At the age of nine he was picking cotton in the plantation fields; the black quarter's school held classes only five or six months a year.
When he was fifteen, Gaines moved to California to join his parents, who had left Louisiana during World War II. There he attended San Francisco State University and later won a writing fellowship to Stanford University. Gaines published his first short story in 1956. Since then he has written eight books of fiction, including Catherine Carmier, Of Love and Dust, Bloodline, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, A Long Day in November, In My Father's House, and A Gathering of Old Men, most of which are available in Vintage paperback editions. A Lesson Before Dying, his most recent novel, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant, for writings of "rare historical resonance." Gaines divides his time between San Francisco and Lafayette, Louisiana, where he is writer in residence at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He is married to the lawyer Dianne Saulney.
Book Reviews
"This majestic, moving, novel is an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives."
— Chicago Tribune
'A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer."
— Boston Globe
"Enormously moving ... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes."
— Newsday
"A quietly moving novel (that) takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living."
— San Francisco Chronicle
"The lesson is valuable and apt, presented in the modest but forceful terms that we have come to expect from Ernest J. Gaines."
— Washington Post
"Gaines has a gift for evoking the tenor of life in a bygone era and making it seem vivid and immediate as something that happened only yesterday."
— Christian Science Monitor
Get more resources on A Lesson Before Dying, an Oprah's Book Club selection.View the Complete Oprah's Book Club List.
Published 09/22/1997
