Ernest Gaines's narratives of the rural South in transition record African-American experience in the voices of its people, voices he became attuned to on the porches of the River Lake Plantation quarters in Louisiana where he lived and worked as a child. In a talk delivered in 1971, Gaines recalls listening to those voices: There were the people who used to come to our houses.... In summer they would sit out on the porch, the gallery--"the garry," we called it--and they would talk for hours.... Sometimes they would sew on quilts and mattresses while they talked; other times they would shell peas and beans while they talked. Sometimes they would just sit there smoking pipes, chewing pompee, or drinking coffee while they talked. I, being the oldest child, was made to stay close by and serve them coffee or water or whatever else they needed. In winter, they moved from the porch and sat beside the fireplace and drank coffee--and sometimes a little homemade brew--while they talked. But regardless of what time of year it was, under whatever conditions, they would find something to talk about. I did not know then that twenty or twenty-five years later I would try to put some of their talk in a book. ("Miss Jane" 24-25) It was this talk that Gaines needed to connect with again when he returned to Louisiana in 1963 and "tried listening--not only to what they had to say, but to the way they said it" ("Miss Jane" 31). He returned annually "not as an objective observer, but as someone who must come back in order to write about Louisiana. ... to be with the land ... to go into the fields ..., to listen to the language" ("This Louisiana Thing" 39). Though Gaines situates his attempt to incorporate the voices of the quarters in his perhaps best-known work, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, his return to the language, which he experimented with using in short fiction, happens in a sustained way much before he writes Miss Jane's story. This return, in all its political significance, is reenacted in Gaines's transition from the distanced, third-person narrative voice dominated by standardized English of his first novel, Catherine Carmier, to the narrative voice embodying the tensions among racial groups of his second novel, Of Love and Dust. Gaines incarnates the narrative voice in Of Love and Dust in an African-American man, Jim Kelly, who accesses the language of the landowning whites, the Cajuns aspiring to the status of plantation owners, and African Americans inhabiting a Louisiana plantation. Jim tells the story of a rebellion against white authority initiated by Marcus Payne, a young African-American man recently jailed for killing another man in a bar fight. Marshall Hebert, the white landowner, has bonded Marcus out of jail but created another kind of prison by requiring Marcus to work off his bond in Hebert's fields for years. Marcus, however, challenges the system of control by daring to love the wife of the Cajun overseer, Sidney Bonbon. Marcus dies in a confrontation with Bonbon orchestrated by Marshall Hebert, who wants to dispose of both men, but Jim Kelly, serving as the younger man's unofficial guardian, is forever changed by what he witnesses and vows to tell the story. Jim is well-situated to tell this story because, as a resident of the quarters, he has access to the talk that goes on there--often in whispers and veiled speech--among the African Americans who generally observe a code of silence outside this distinct space, and he maintains a good rappori with the whites, particularly Sidney Bonbon and Marshall Hebert, thereby providing insight into the class struggles among whites who assert power by manipulating the African Americans. During his three years on the plantation, Jim has been entrusted with such responsibilities as operating the farming machinery and reporting progress to the overseer; this trust depends partly on Jim's ostensible recognition of the power of wealthy whites, symbolized effectively in the pervasive dust that signals their presence. …

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“怀特茅斯”：欧内斯特·J·盖恩斯的过渡小说《爱与尘埃》中的叙事声音的巴赫金式阅读

欧内斯特·盖恩斯（Ernest Gaines）对转型中的南方乡村的叙述记录了非裔美国人在其人民心声中的经历，他的声音在他小时候生活和工作的路易斯安那州里弗湖人工林小区的门廊上得到了调和。在1971年的演讲中，盖因斯回想起那些声音：有些人曾经来过我们的房子……夏天，他们坐在门廊，画廊-“加里”，我们称之为它-他们会聊几个小时。...有时，他们在交谈时会缝在被子和床垫上；有时他们会在谈话时给豌豆和豆子去壳。有时，他们聊天时只会坐在那儿抽烟斗，咀嚼绒球或喝咖啡。我是大孩子 被安排在附近并为他们提供咖啡或水或其他所需的东西。冬天，他们从门廊搬来，坐在壁炉旁，边喝咖啡边聊天，有时还喝些自制啤酒。但是，无论一年中的什么时候，无论在何种条件下，他们都会发现一些要谈论的话题。那时我不知道二十或二十五年后我会尝试将他们的一些演讲写成一本书。（“简小姐” 24-25）当盖恩斯于1963年回到路易斯安那州并“试听时，不仅要听他们说的，而且要听他们说的话”，这也是他需要再次与之联系的话题。 （“简小姐” 31岁）。他每年回国“不是以客观的观察者身份，而是以一定的身份回国以便撰写有关路易斯安那州的信息。他们使用地主白人的语言，渴望获得种植园主地位的卡津人以及居住在路易斯安那州种植园的非裔美国人。吉姆（Jim）讲述了马库斯·佩恩（Marcus Payne）发起的反对白人权威的叛逆故事，他是一名年轻的非洲裔美国人，最近因在酒吧打架中杀死另一名男子而入狱。白人土地所有者马歇尔·赫伯特（Marshall Hebert）已将马库斯从监狱中羁押，但又要求马库斯在赫伯特的田地里工作多年，从而建立了另一种监狱。但是，马库斯大胆地爱着印第安监督员西德尼·邦邦（Sidney Bonbon）的妻子，对控制系统提出了挑战。马库斯（Marcus）与由马歇尔·赫伯特（Marshall Hebert）策划的邦邦（Bonbon）对抗，后者想处置这两个男人，但吉姆·凯利（Jim Kelly）则是年轻人的非官方监护人，他见证和誓言讲述的故事将永远改变。吉姆很适合讲这个故事，因为作为这些住所的居民，他可以在那里进行谈话（通常是在窃窃私语和隐蔽的讲话中），在那些通常在外面遵守沉默守则的非裔美国人中在这个独特的空间中，他与白人保持了良好的关系，特别是西德尼·邦邦（Sidney Bonbon）和马歇尔·赫伯特（Marshall Hebert），从而洞察了通过操纵非裔美国人来确立政权的白人之间的阶级斗争。在种植园的三年中，吉姆被任命为负责经营农业机械和向监督员报告进展情况的负责人。这种信任部分取决于吉姆表面上对富裕白人力量的认可，在无处不在的尘土中有效地象征着它们的存在。…