Conversations with Tim Gautreaux

Tim Gautreaux

69 Tim Gautreaux Pam Kingsbury/2003 From Inner Voices, Inner Views: Conversations with Southern Writers (The Enolam Group, 2005), 48-51. © Pam Kingsbury. Used with permission of Tim Gautreaux, the Enolam Group, and Pam Kingsbury. Pam Kingsbury, author of Inner Voices, Inner Views, teaches at the University of North Alabama. Tim Gautreaux’s first novel, The Next Step in the Dance, won the 1999 Southeastern Booksellers Award. Born and reared in Louisiana, the author recently retired from his position as Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University and has spent the last few months researching his next novel. His work has been selected for inclusion in the O. Henry and Best American Short Story Annuals and has appeared in Zoetrope, GQ, Harper’s, and the Atlantic Monthly. Kingsbury: You’re from Louisiana . . . . Gautreaux: I was born in 1947 in Morgan City, a tough oil-patch town in South-Central Louisiana. My father was a tugboat captain, and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but the job was too slow for me. After twelve years in a Catholic school and four years in a regional college, I entered an accelerated Ph.D. program at the University of South Carolina where I studied under James Dickey for three years. Ph.D. in hand, I got a job teaching literature and creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, taught thirty years, and retired last December. Kingsbury: What changes have you seen in the state and local culture during your lifetime? Gautreaux: In South Louisiana, when I was a child, more people spoke French, but the number of French-speakers has declined a great deal in the past thirty years. Cajuns were shy about their culture, suspecting that it was 70 CONVERSATIONS WITH TIM GAUTREAUX kind of a joke to outlanders, and many didn’t pass on the language. I didn’t even realize I was a Cajun until I moved out of state to go to graduate school. Nobody talked about being this or that in those days. Nowadays Cajuns are pretty knowledgeable about their history, and though the language has diminished , the music, food, and folkways are thriving here in Louisiana and around the country. Louisiana has developed more of a literary presence also thanks to writers like John Biguenet, James Lee Burke, Walker Percy, Andre Dubus, Shirley Ann Grau, and a dozen others. Kingsbury: What image or character came to mind first as you were writing The Clearing? Gautreaux: The constable. I imagined his haunted expression as he looked out across the sawmill yard toward the saloon, hearing the yowls of a brawl and knowing that the only way he could save the fighters from themselves was to hurt at least one of them, even though he didn’t want to. Kingsbury: Did you do any research for the historical elements or were they part of local and/or family lore? Gautreaux: The meaningful details in The Clearing came out of my imagination , supported by thousands of bits and pieces of things I heard as a child: a reference to a long-dead relative, an old firearm in the closet purported to have killed someone, an embarrassed turn of the head, a helpless shrug, the way an uncle slowed down his voice when speaking two sentences about what he did in the war. One thing that makes a child turn into a writer is the ability to understand the importance of remembering everything. And to remember you have to listen and believe that everything you hear is interesting. When I was a kid, a lot of old relatives were still around and they talked and talked about their jobs, local murders, cops, cancer, lynchings, saw milling , how to repair steam engines, being poisoned by a pork roast, killing pigeons, praying, water-skiing, steamboat navigation, and welding. I consulted my library of antique machinery manuals and catalogs, read a book or two on saw milling history, but the guts of the story came from shutting up and listening. Kingsbury: Would you talk about “Writing about the bonds between men without succumbing to sentimentality?” Gautreaux: Avoiding sentimentality is easy to do. Use not one cliché. Use as PAM KINGSBURY / 2003 71 little exposition as possible. Focus on action and detail that in a subtle way suggests what you want to say. Kingsbury: Were you influenced by any particular writers? Gautreaux: Flannery O’Connor (who hasn’t been?), Walker Percy...