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Those theoretical discussions laid a foundation for developing interpretations of the novel that addressed problems in different fields of study. Students explored their own interests in areas such as historicism, posthumanism, critical race theory, genre theory, and gender studies. The papers they wrote at mid-term became the basis for this collaborative project. As a class, they generated a set of keywords relevant to the novel, then each writer used what they learned in their own research to author entries for those critical terms. Those keyword entries makeup the heart of this project.
Despite the on-going pandemic, we found ways to do hands-on work together at the Gaines Center, where Gaines’s papers are housed. That work led students to better understand how his sense of the novel developed over time. They found places where he changed character names, moved key lines around, and even revised the ending in significant ways. The collections covering A Lesson are especially rich in publication documents. They include typescript drafts with editorial comments and two different sets of page proofs, each with editorial and design notes. Those documents offer a glimpse of the author-editor relationship as well as the work of book production. Seeing meticulous notes regarding text alignment gives us the sense that it takes more than an author to ensure the success of a novel.
Expanding their analysis beyond an authoritative text—that is, the published version of A Lesson—contributors looked for creative ways to historicize the novel and engage with the manuscript collections. The introduction includes a playlist with brief entries on each song. This presentation of songs acknowledges the significance of music to the relationship Jefferson and Grant develop. At the same time, the playlist gives readers a deeper sense of the cultural history informing Gaines’s writing. To develop that cultural history further, we’ve included a set of images from New Roads, the town Gaines fictionalized as Bayonne. Those images illustrate Gaines’s historical point of reference and provide a more contemporary view of a small town in South Louisiana.
The effort to work beyond the ordinary processes of archival research also appear in the creative aspects of this exhibit. We grouped those creative responses under the title “Traces” to remind readers that Gaines’s fiction not only memorializes the history of his hometown but also continues to inspire new ways of seeing and writing South Louisiana. This section builds on creative work from the exhibit for A Gathering of Old Men, which contributors completed at a moment in the pandemic when we could not all work together at the Gaines Center. Although working conditions improved, the creative work stands a reminder that we continue to work in a pandemic that will forever shape how we learn, study, relate, and live with one another. This is not all bad, insofar as it has introduced a new repertoire of research techniques that we can use even as the old ways become available once again.
It is with a sense of pride that we dedicate this project to the memory Fred Prejean. Fred dedicated his life to furthering civil rights causes in Lafayette, LA, most recently as a founding member of Move the Mindset, which advocated for the removal of the Mouton statue from downtown Lafayette. That statue came down in July 2021 with Fred as witness. In A Lesson, Grant describes "a statue of a Confederate soldier" outside the courthouse where he visits Jefferson (68). In 1948, such a statue must have appeared immovable, as did the Mouton statue to many people in 2016 when Move the Mindset began its advocacy work. Thanks to the vision and hard work Fred dedicated to the cause, we know that public symbols of white supremacy are neither immovable nor inevitable. They express public will and public will can remove them.
