This Goodly Land

Charles Gaines (January 6, 1942–present)

Other Names Used

• Charles Latham Gaines, Jr.: full name

Alabama Connections

• Birmingham, Jefferson County: childhood residence, education, adult residence

Selected Works

• Gaines, Charles. Stay Hungry. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1972.
• Gaines, Charles. Pumping Iron. Illus. George Butler. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.
• Gaines, Charles. Dangler. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980.
• Gaines, Charles, and Charles P. Roman. Yours in Perfect Manhood, Charles Atlas: The Most Effective Fitness Program Ever Devised. Illus. George Butler. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
• Gaines, Charles. Pumping Iron II: The Unprecedented Woman. Illus. George Butler. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.
• Gaines, Charles. A Family Place: A Man Returns to the Center of His Life. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994. Rpt. as A Family Place: A Man Discovers a New Center to His Life in Canada. New York: Berkley, 1995.
• Gaines, Charles. Survival Games. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997.
• Gaines, Charles. The Next Valley Over: An Angler's Progress. New York: Crown Publishers, 2000.

Biographical Information

Charles Gaines was born in Jacksonville, Fla. He moved with his family to Birmingham, Ala., when he was around ten. Gaines had a turbulent adolescence but found some stability when he began bodybuilding in his late teens. He enrolled in Washington and Lee University in 1960 but left the school to travel around the country. Gaines then enrolled in Birmingham-Southern College from which he graduated with a BA in 1963. After graduation, he spent two years living in Ireland where he wrote and his wife painted. In 1967, Gaines earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He spent two years in Green Bay, Wisc., as the director of a federal program to introduce arts into public schools. Gaines and his family then moved to New Hampshire where he taught creative writing at New England College from 1970 to 1976.

In 1972, Gaines published his first novel, Stay Hungry, which was about the bodybuilding culture. Gaines co-wrote the screenplay for the movie version (released in 1976). In the 1970s and early 1980s, he published two nonfiction books about bodybuilding (Pumping Iron and its sequel), another novel, an exercise book, and a book about fitness guru Charles Atlas. Gaines co-wrote screenplays for the movie versions of his two Pumping Iron books. He also wrote for the telvision series, The American Sportsman, and adapted an Edith Wharton story, “Summer,” for the PBS series Great Performances. In the mid-1980s, Gaines started a survival game company and a sporting travel company and stopped writing to concentrate on his businesses. In the early 1990s, he sold the companies and returned to writing, co-authoring several fitness books for children with actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, he has written another novel, two memoirs, and numerous magazine articles. Gaines divides his time between homes in Birmingham and Nova Scotia.

Interests and Themes

Charles Gaines writes fiction and nonfiction about the psychology and practice of sports and games and is especially interested in the sport of bodybuilding. His two memoirs focus on his home in Nova Scotia and his lifelong interest in fly-fishing.

For More Information

Please check your local library for these materials. If items are not available locally, your librarian can help you borrow them through the InterLibrary Loan program. Your librarian can also help you find other information about this author.

There may be more information available through the databases in the Alabama Virtual Library. If you are an Alabama citizen, AVL can be used at your public library or school library media center. You can also get a username and password from your librarian to use AVL at home.

Reference Book Chapters and Encyclopedia Entries

• Gaines, Charles. "Growing Up in Alabama: A Meal in Four Courses, Beginning with Dessert"; The Remembered Gate: Memoirs by Alabama Authors. Ed. Jay Lamar and Jeanie Thompson. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, . 220-229.

Location of Papers

• Birmingham Public Library

Photo by Michael Marzelli; courtesy of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University.

Last updated on May 30, 2008.