The autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
"This is a novel in the guise of the tape-recorded recollections of a black woman who has lived 110 years, who has been both a slave and a witness to the black militancy of the 1960's. In this woman Ernest Gaines has created a legendary figure, a woman equipped to stand beside William Faulkner's Dilsey in The Sound And The Fury." Miss Jane Pittman, like Dilsey, has 'endured,' has seen almost everything and foretold the rest. Gaines' novel brings to mind other great works The Odyssey for the way his heroine's travels manage to summarize the American history of her race, and Huckleberry Finn for the clarity of her voice, for her rare capacity to sort through the mess of years and things to find the one true story in it all." -- Geoffrey Wolff, Newsweek.
"Stunning. I know of no black novel about the South that excludes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry. And I can recall no more memorable female character in Southern fiction since Lena of Faulkner's Light In August than Miss Jane Pittman." -- Josh Greenfeld, Life
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I wish I had liked this more. I loved A Lesson Before Dying, and so I was predisposed to like Gaines' (fictional) Autobiography too, but alas. The premise is awesome! The story of a woman born into slavery who lives through 110 years of history, including some of the Civil War, Emancipation and its aftermath, a whole bunch of wars that are mentioned but not in-depth, and the start of the Civil Rights movement.
So it pains me to say that it should be good stuff, because that would be a fascinating life! The first half was excellent and interesting. But I felt like after the first, say, 50 years of Miss Jane's life, there was not enough focus to make it compelling - especially since she lived in the same town of Samson, “Luzana” for the entirety of the next 60 years. The last half of the book dragged; she continued to work on the land or in the house of the white people. Other people who worked there over the years are mentioned a time or two, then never again. The last part with the boy chosen to be “The One” to save them bothered me a lot, mostly because he had all this expectation on him, but no one ever communicated their expectations of this kid, and were just disappointed with him all the time for not living up to what they thought he should be.
Otherwise, Jane just lives on her little slice of land and farms her little garden and listens to baseball on the radio, which sorry, is dull.
I'm bummed that I am not more enthused. Hopefully this will make for a good book discussion next week.
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