Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Gaines, Ernest J. (Vol. 181) - Keith Clark (essay date winter 1999)


Gaines, Ernest J. (Vol. 181) - Keith Clark (essay date winter 1999)

Keith Clark (essay date winter 1999)

SOURCE: Clark, Keith. “Re-(W)righting Black Male Subjectivity: The Communal Poetics of Ernest Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men.” Callaloo 22, no. 1 (winter 1999): 195-207.

[In the following essay, Clark illustrates how A Gathering of Old Men re-inscribes notions of African American masculinity in order to create a revised representation of black literary subjectivity.]

When I think of Gaines, I think of voice and story. … I think of a person talking to me. I think of men and women talking to me. I think of voices that carry through time. I think of history and personal life memory.

—Gayl Jones, Interview with Michael Harper

It's not between the character and the writer. It's the voice, not the person himself, but the voice. … When I come to the omniscient point of view and I create a character, a narrator who's much like myself,...

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