Review of Same Place, Same Things by Tim Gautreaux
by
The Disgruntled Graduate Student
I don’t often lavish unconditional praise on anything or anybody. But considering all the crap I have to put up with at LSU, I’m really grateful for the positive aspects of living in south Louisiana. The roads suck; the police are incompetent; and our flagship university is run by boobs. On the positive side, we have Cajun cuisine, New Orleans, and writers like Tim Gautreaux.
Gautreaux’s short story collection Same Place, Same Things is a gem. Set in south Louisiana, each story examines characters who live, love, and grow old in the French-speaking, gumbo-eating richness that is Creole country.
Gautreaux opens this collection with the title story, about a Depression-era pump repairman who encounters a backwoods woman with a secret and a burning desire to leave the everyday dreariness of her existence. The tone here is dark, almost foreboding, and Gautreaux fills us with a sense of inevitability nearly as hopeless as the drab landscape he evokes. Equally cynical is “Waiting for the Evening News,” about a railroad engineer whose life spins out of control when he is unjustly blamed for a train wreck. Though this story is, in many ways, bleak, it also Gautreaux’s humor; we laugh at hapless Jesse McNeil even as we empathize with how the media and his own boneheaded decisions derail his life as suddenly as the literal train wreck.
Other stories examine lonely men whose lives have grown beyond their ability to understand or control them. “The Courtship of Merlin LeBlanc” is ostensibly about the title character’s desire to find a wife to help him raise his suddenly orphaned grandchild; yet the story is also about Merlin’s own sense of detachment from those who know him and try to love him. Similar in tone is “License to Steal,” which examines a man whose love of alcohol and the laid-back atmosphere of the region leads to his ruination.
Other stories reveal Gautreaux’s love of his home state and its people. “Floyd’s Girl” traces a father’s determined love for his young daughter and how members of his community work in concert to keep them together. “Returnings” is a tale of the Vietnam era that suggests southern hospitality really exists, at least Gautreaux’s imagination. And “Deputy Sid’s Gift” is a heartrending tale of racism, selfishness, generosity, and self-reflection that is Faulknerian in its tone, subject matter, and honesty. “Died and Gone to Vegas” uproots the oral tradition of storytelling and replants it firmly in different soil, here a card game in the bowels of a steamship on the Mississippi; “Little Frogs in a Ditch” examines human nature, family ties, and the connection each person has to everyone else.
Not every tale is equally strong; “The Bug Man” and “People on the Empty Road” are good stories but not quite as engaging as the rest of the collection. I’m not really sure why I levy this criticism at these particular tales; other readers may find them fascinating and pure. In any case, even these “less than” tales don’t dilute the power of this collection.
I asked our own Brendan West-Moreland—he of the near-constant creative work that he’s too busy writing to publish—about Gautreaux’s effects on his own work. Brendan says, “Tim Gautreaux writes short fiction that anyone can understand and enjoy; his stories are simple in nature but complex in terms of how we can read and respond to them. The result is one that any fiction writer could envy—accessible, engaging fiction filled with strong ideas.”
Buy this collection now. Reading it is like making a good roux; you stir in the ingredients slowly until it all thickens, its scent a precursor for your later joyous reflections. Here’s hoping Gautreaux will return to his kitchen and whip up more literary gumbo this tasty.
A-