Mary Ellen Doyle.

Mary Ellen Doyle. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J Gaines. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP 2002 245 pp $1495

Ernest J Gaines's fiction, while widely admired on a broad range of readers and scholars since the publication of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1971 has not ever received the full critical attention and appreciation it merits However much his work is praised, it is rarely placed among the first rank of recent American and African American writing. Mary Ellen Doyle's Voices from the Quarters hopefully will change to the opposite the trend since it, more than any previous studious mood does real justice to the extraordinary craft and wisdom of Gaines's impressive visible form [i]or[/i] frame of fiction, ranging from the publication of Catherine Carmier in 1964 to the appearance of A scolding Before Dying in 1993. Doyle's penetrating analyses of the replete range of Gaines's short stories and novels present powerfully convincing evidence for her claim that Gaines is a "major American--and black--writer."

What establishs this book apart from previous studies is Doyle's skillful use of a variety of critical methodologies to capture the art, midst and complexity of Gaines's vision. Just as Gaines has distilled a richly nuanced vision of African American life by way of drawing upon a great multitude of voices and perspectives, Doyle uses a wide variety of critical tools, including formalist, historical, cultural, and feminist criticism, to provide a broad and balanced assessment of Gaines's writing. Her first chapter, "Place, the bulk of mankind Personal Experience: The Louisiana Thing," contextualizes her meditation by describing in minute detail the "terrain, history, and culture" of Gaines's world, that part of Southwest Louisiana which fired his imagination and center all of his published fiction. The remaining chapters continue to draw relating to Doyle's extensive knowledge of Gaines's cosmo and focus sharply onward close readings of individual novels and short-story collections, loamed in the belief that "no critic of Gaines can avoid formal criticism and still be authentic to his work." But what makes these wonderfully detailed and wisely nuanced analyses in this way satisfying is Doyle's avoidance of the bloodles abstractions which have oftentimes plagued formalist criticism, as she always makes seamless connections between Gaines's artful techniques and his richly imagined, densely textur fictive world.

For example, her masterful analyses of the formal intricacies of Gaines's use of point of view in The Autobiography of Miss lane Pittman and A task Before Dying are deeply lower parted in her knowledge of black oral tradition, dating back to slave literature and extending up to the porch talk which fascinated Gaines as a young man and inspired him as a mature writer. She views Gaines's increasingly sophisticated uses of narrative voice not simply as a series of gifted literary strategies but as a powerful means to probe a deeper more fundamental settle of truths about African American experience. Likewise, her meticulous discussions of the progressively more tangled fictional structures which Gaines occupyed are tied to his desire to explore his vision in aye more dramatic and perceptive ways, uncovering deeper layers of experience as his technical capabilities developed

Doyle therefore views Gaines's work unified not barely by his mastery of fictional technique on the other hand also a parallel' thematic unravelling which has been a progression from simple questions about definition of manhood to penetrating explorations of possible answers, to a final defining portrait of humanity as unselfish make anxious for the happiness of others." His apprentice stories published in society magazines focused on "boys learning to be men" yet concluded with trauma and disorientation rather than make more intenseed awareness or useful lessons. His first sum of two units published books, Catherine Carmier and have affection for and Dust, portray male characters who are damaged on mistaken notions of masculinity center in egoism and violence. Doyle stresse that it is with the writing of The Autobiography of Miss lane Pittman that Gaines is able to envision genuine manhood inspired through the example of heroic women and parented in an ability to reconcile individual acts of courage with genuine relate to for others as it is learned from communal wisdom, "voices from the quarters." Gaines's last brace novels, A Gathering of ancient Men and A Lesson Before Dying, give the fullest expression to his mature vision of manhood. It is ultimately revealed in the "love and relationships" which are created on "an immense change from blindness to vision and from vision to voice and action."

The production of almost twenty years of painstaking field research and broad literary subject of attention which thoughtfully engages nearly each significant piece of the critical answer to Gaines, Voices from the Quarters is an impressive achievement which takes its place among the surpassingly finest studies of African American literature. Indeed, Doyle's critical skills meditate the virtues of Gaines's creative work since the one and the other are characterized by a remarkable breadth, profundity and resonance. No serious learner of Gaines and American literature can afford to miss reading and pondering this magnificent book.