The Tragedy of Brady Sims by Ernest J. Gaines

Published by Vintage on August 29, 2017

Brady Sims is an old man. He starts the novel by shooting a prisoner in a courtroom after the prisoner is sentenced to death. The prisoner happens to be his son. Brady tells the deputies to tell the sheriff to give him two hours before the sheriff comes for him.

Cub reporter Louis Guerin, the only black journalist on the newspaper’s newly-integrated staff, happens to be in the courtroom when the shooting occurs. Assigned to write a “human interest story” about Brady, he goes to the African-American barbershop to gather the local gossip. The rambling barbershop story he hears about Brady Sims and his son is the heart of the book. Delivered in a priceless Louisiana dialect, the barbershop tale creates an intimate sense of place and time.

Two short sections round out the novel. One is told from the perspective of a white sheriff who has lost friends because he refuses to echo their racist attitudes, and because he has befriended Brady. It falls to the sheriff to address Brady’s actions. The last section returns to the barbershop and the cub reporter’s human interest story.

The Tragedy of Brady Sims is a story about the art of storytelling. One of the men listening to the barbershop story gets in the doghouse with his woman for staying to listen instead of going home, because they “start telling you a story and they know you won’t leave ‘til you heard the end.” The end is a long time coming, because a good storyteller weaves together a bunch of other stories and doesn’t bother to filter details just because they have nothing to do with the story being told. And occasionally others with relevant knowledge (or not) chime in, making the story even longer.

This is a short novel, and it’s all the more absorbing because of its brevity. The novel has important points to make about the racial divide and the bridges that cross the divide, but the focus on the barbershop as a place where truths are told — entertaining and gossipy truths, but truths nonetheless — makes an even stronger point about the importance of community and oral history.

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