The Gar Diaries - Louis Bourgeois

Certain images will sit with you for a while after reading, their impact deeply felt and difficult to get rid of.

pp.263

Published: The Other Publishing Company, 2014

(This book was given to me for free in exchange for an honest review)

A gar is a fish commonly found in the waters of Eastern North America. It is a fish that has great significance for Louis Bourgeois in its frequent appearances throughout his childhood, particularly in the one-page story ‘Epilepsy Has a Cause’, which attributes his recurrent epileptic seizures to his very first sighting of a garfish. In The Gar Diaries, Bourgeois offers a series of quick glimpses into the world of his youth, a world of poverty, class separation, brutality, abuse and loss.

Some of the pieces in this collection will disturb the reader. Certain images will sit with you for a while after reading, their impact deeply felt and difficult to get rid of. The south-eastern Louisiana setting provides a rich backdrop for some very strange and vivid occurrences.    

One thing concerning me about this book is not an aspect the author can have any control over. But one critical comment on the cover attests to the poetic nature of the prose inside. What struck me, conversely, is the book’s lack of poesy, considering it is written by a poet. The prose is distinctly clear, simple and lacking in frills. The narrator’s voice is intensely sober and laser-sharp. It is disappointing in this sense, however the content often takes over any concerns about language or form, and one is taken away with the plot. There is one identifiable purpose in the author’s no-nonsense attempt to illuminate his youth, and it is just that – to set before us, without judgement on his behalf, his youthful days as he remembers them.

There are stories that will have you sympathising with Lucas, the narrator, and stories that will have you hating him. Yet the two extremes fuse well in this array of short pieces. Sometimes nostalgic, often cold and indecipherable, the author does not try to redeem or uplift. He does not try hard to find beauty or ugliness, but only portrays what is there. And this is another aspect where Bourgeois lacks poesy, and not in the bad sense. He does not try to be poetic, but unequivocally honest. His earnestness and integrity are striking.

Aside from the occasional puerile and ridiculous opinion, such as the idea that people who have children are ‘not courageous to face life alone’ or that they lack ‘the discipline to keep their pants on when they should be concerned with doing great things in the world’, this is a very reasonable book in its depiction of the author’s childhood. At times it suffers from an inflated sense of ego as Bourgeois purports to be placing its characters into the annals of history merely by mentioning them. I don’t think this book will be wide-reaching or significant enough to warrant such noble opinions of itself, but nevertheless it is well worth a read. The very short stories inside that build up a picture of the American Deep South are unrelated yet they complement each other well.

A common thread running through these stories is the author’s keen sense of class separation. He has an affinity with working class people as he grew up amongst them. In the story ‘Party’, for example, a four year old Lucas ruins a lawn party by defecating in his pants and then staring at a war veteran’s fingerless hands. The closing line of the piece is one of sorrow for the working class partygoers – ‘Poor working class people, I didn’t mean to do this to you.’ As the book progresses, Lucas’ hatred for the middle classes borders on brutality, and seems wildly unjust in its indiscriminate nature.

A book of great characterisation, fascinating events and horrendously honest narration. Brief moments of egotism and even juvenility on the part of the author often destroy the illusion of narrative aloofness but nevertheless this remains an interesting group of stories.