Angola to Zydeco: Louisiana Lives

The Man behind Dave Robicheaux

68 The Man behind Dave Robicheaux James Lee Burke talks about violence, writing, littering, alcoholism, liberalism, and bestsellers. june 5, 2002 J ames Lee Burke has seen and heard enough to fill a book. Actually, make that twenty-two books. Burke is best known for his novels featuring Dave Robicheaux , an Iberia Parish detective who sees the world in black and white, a man who is haunted at times by his own alcoholism and his desire to do right in a world ruled by insanity . At sixty-five years old, Burke is a demure man with small, penetrating eyes and a disarming smile. His laughter sounds as if it’s rattling itself free from his bones. There are times he laughs so hard it ends in a coughing fit. He writes about man’s depravity and his grace, his beauty and his vulgarity. His novels have engaged millions of readers all over the world, propelling him to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. But for the man who lives in New Iberia, with a second home in Missoula, Montana, life hasn’t always been a gravy train. The ride to the top has been riddled with detours and unexpected delays. 69 • The Man behind Dave Robicheaux Burke was recently at his home along the banks of Bayou Teche, preparing for a national book tour in support of his latest Robicheaux novel, Jolie Blon’s Bounce. In his office, bathed in sunlight filtered through an oak tree outside of his bay window, he gave some insight into the man behind Dave Robicheaux . Before drawing any comparisons between Robicheaux and himself, Burke points out the differences between the two men. “The character defects are mine, none of the qualities,” he says. He laughs so hard he’s headed for a coughing fit. Burke was born in Houston in 1936. His mother was a secretary and his father was a natural gas engineer. At the age of eighteen, Burke’s father died in a car accident in Anahuac, Texas. Although he was raised in Houston, Burke spent a good deal of his childhood in New Iberia. “I’ve always considered this area my home,” he says. “My family has lived in New Iberia since 1836.” In 1955 Burke enrolled at Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, where he studied Homer, William Faulkner, Samuel Coleridge, Francis Bacon, and John Stuart Mill. He also met one of the most influential people in his life, Lyle Williams , his freshman English professor. After receiving countless D minuses on his papers, he approached his professor, certain he would receive an apology for the mistake of the low grades on his paper. Instead, according to Burke, Williams told him, “Your penmanship, Mr. Burke, is like an assault upon the eyeballs. Your spelling makes me wish the Phoenicians had not invented the alphabet, but you write with such heart, I couldn’t give you an F.” For the rest of the semester, Burke revised his papers every Saturday under Williams’s supervision and managed to The Man behind Dave Robicheaux • 70 squeeze a B out of the class. “Had it not been for Lyle Williams , I probably would not be a writer today,” he says. While at SLI, Burke published his first short story, “Terminus,” in the school’s literary journal. In his junior year, Burke transferred to the University of Missouri in Columbia to study journalism. He hoped that a career in journalism would lead to a literary career. Instead of studying journalism, he studied creative writing and met his future wife, Pearl. In 1960, he graduated with honors. Before he mastered the bestseller, Burke was a jack of all trades—a land man for Sinclair Oil Company, a truck driver for the U.S. Forest Service, a teacher in the Job Corps, a reporter for the Daily Advertiser, a social worker in Los Angeles’s skid row, and a professor at four universities and a community college. The best job he ever had for his writing was as a land surveyor for pipelines in Texas and Colorado. “You don’t use your mind in the sense that you don’t use up creative energy,” he says. “It’s a real good life. You’re outdoors. You’re rolling all the time. You’re never in the same place two days in a row. The pay’s good, and there are great guys to work...