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| Tim Gautreaux |
Tim Gautreaux Same Place, Same Things
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Same Place, Same Things A
Waiting for The Evening
News A
Died and Gone to Vegas D
The Courtship of Merlin
LeBlanc A+
Navigators of Thought C
People on the Empty Road A+
Little Frogs in a Ditch C
License to Steal B
Floyd’s Girl A+
Returnings A+
Deputy Sid’s Gift A
Dead and Gone to Vegas
Tim Gautreaux is amazing
at mixing in uneducated language and dialect from the characters with more
eloquent diction most commonly reserved for the narrator. In his story, Dead and Gone to Vegas,
Gautreaux has the characters tell stories over a poker game. This is interesting because it is multiple
stories within the story that resides in a collection of stories. The stories did not connect to the bigger story
until the very end, so the reader would be left quite confused until then, for
there did not seem to be much of a point to the story until about the last page
or so. Even though the story focused on
other people inside the sub-stories, the characters telling the stories were
still given their own personalities and backgrounds. Gautreaux does this by giving certain
characters specific accents, speech patterns, or reactions to the other
characters’ behaviors.
Gautreaux, as his name suggests, is from Louisiana, and
he uses his roots as basis for the language and dialects of his
characters. As is common in Louisiana,
the characters in this story are on a boat, brought together by it for one
reason or another. Even though these
characters seem like a unit, they are really a bunch of strangers brought
together by a common lifestyle. None of
the characters are known in great detail, but the main character Raynelle is
the closest to the reader. Raynelle also
shows up in one of Gautreaux’s collection’s other stories.
Much of this story was told in dialogue since all of the
characters were telling their own stories.
The stories flowed, with occasional interruptions from other characters,
and while the language may have changed slightly with each character, the
overall story flowed smoothly as well.
Despite so many different characters speaking for extended periods of
time in this story, Gautreaux still told a fluid story with a solid ending that
connected the stories and brought about closure.
The Courtship of Merlin LeBlanc
The
story of Merlin LeBlanc heavily focused on the main character of Merlin, and
the other characters were only described in relation to Merlin. Gautreaux uses a no-nonsense approach to the
story in regard to how he writes the character of Merlin. He captures the character of Merlin by
writing more to the point and using less description than other stories. The way Gautreaux writes in the story is
indicative of the type of person Merlin is.
Merlin is known for being emotionally detached and not loquacious, and
this is how Gautreaux writes the story.
Merlin’s
father and grandfather offer some plot advancing advice and comic relief in the
sad story, but they do not have much depth to their characters. Much of what they say in dialogue is all
about Merlin, and Gautreaux describes them just enough so that the audience can
put a face to the words, but that’s about it.
The story is all about Merlin, and it is a short story, so Gautreaux
does not waste his readers’ time with fluff or extra information on any of the other
characters unless the information is relevant to Merlin and his story.
Floyd’s Girl and Deputy
Sid’s Gift
Floyd’s Girl is written
uniquely in different third-person perspectives, and it is the only story in
this collection written this way. The story
begins with the focus on T-Jean, but it is actually Floyd’s story. Each different perspective is used to advance
the story instead of having one narrator.
The perspective is not first person, however, the third-person narrator’s
focus shifts from character to character rather than the first-person perspective
of each character. Even though almost
all of these stories are set in Louisiana, this story contained the most French
language in it, especially in the dialogue.
The characters are still extremely country Southern, but their use of
French is heavy.
Deputy
Sid’s Gift is also told in a unique perspective-unique to this collection
of short stories. Gautreaux uses first
person for the first time in the last story of the collection. The collection concludes with a story told in
first-person without any dialogue.
Although this story contains no dialogue, it is written the same way as
the other stories in that it seems as though it is just missing quotation
marks. The character talking is assumed
to be Floyd from the previous story, but this character is not named. Gautreaux’s writing style, setting, language,
and dialect are all consistent with the rest of the collection.
Links:
Amazon has his stories and collections.
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