Erskine Caldwell – författare

"I'm just an ordinary writer," Erskine Caldwell once wrote. "I'm not trying to sell anything; I'm not trying to buy anything. I'm just trying to present my vision of life." Yet his vision of Southern grotesques, of slack-jawed, pellagra-ridden sharecroppers, repressed farmwives, and oversexed nymphets, elicited anything but an "ordinary" response. Hailed by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, reviled by others as a pornographer or sensationalist, Caldwell was once called "America's most popular author." Once the furor flagged, Caldwell was relegated to the "mansions of subliterature," where his reputation resides today.This book contains more than 150 previously unpublished letters, notes, telegrams, and postcards written between 1929 and 1955, at the peak of Caldwell's popularity and influence, all extensively annotated. The introduction assays Caldwell's significance in American popular culture and literary studies and establishes the importance of Caldwell's correspondence as a means of understanding the intentions of a man who was otherwise terse and unforthcoming about his work.

Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, Tobacco Road was first published in 1932. It is the story of the Lesters, a family of white sharecroppers so destitute that most of their creditors have given up on them. Debased by poverty to an elemental state of ignorance and selfishness, the Lesters are preoccupied by their hunger, sexual longings, and fear that they will someday descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.

Like Tobacco Road, this novel chronicles the final decline of a poor white family in rural Georgia. Exhorted by their patriarch Ty Ty, the Waldens ruin their land by digging it up in search of gold. Complex sexual entanglements and betrayals lead to a murder within the family that completes its dissolution. Juxtaposed against the Waldens' obsessive search is the story of Ty Ty's son-in-law, a cotton mill worker in a nearby town who is killed during a strike.First published in 1933, God's Little Acre was censured by the Georgia Literary Commission, banned in Boston, and once led the all-time best-seller list, with more than ten million copies in print.

In the middle years of the Great Depression, Erskine Caldwell and photographer Margaret Bourke-White spent eighteen months traveling across the back roads of the Deep South—from South Carolina to Arkansas—to document the living conditions of the sharecropper. Their collaboration resulted in You Have Seen Their Faces, a graphic portrayal of America's desperately poor rural underclass. First published in 1937, it is a classic comparable to Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, and James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which it preceded by more than three years.Caldwell lets the poor speak for themselves. Supported by his commentary, they tell how the tenant system exploited whites and blacks alike and fostered animosity between them. Bourke-White, who sometimes waited hours for the right moment, captures her subjects in the shacks where they lived, the depleted fields where they plowed, and the churches where they worshipped.

This collection of ninety-six stories was first published in 1953 and presents the best of Erskine Caldwell's short fiction from his most productive period of work. Included is "Crown-Fire," which James Dickey praised as "the best story in the language," and such personal favorites of Caldwell as "Country Full of Swedes," "The Windfall," "Horse Thief," "Yellow Girl," and "Kneel to the Rising Sun."

In this appealing collection of fourteen interrelated stories, twelve-year-old William Stroup recounts the ludicrous predicaments and often self-imposed hardships his family endures. Playing on the tension between Martha, his hardworking, sensible mother, and Morris, his disarmingly likable but shiftless and philandering father, William tells of Pa's flirtation with a widow, his swapping match with a band of gypsies, his battle of wits with a traveling silk-tie saleswoman, and his get-rich-quick schemes based on selling Ma's old love letters and collecting scrap iron.Often caught in the middle of the Stroups' bungles is Handsome Brown, their yard hand, as well as a number of animals with all-too-human qualities: Ida, the mule; Pretty Sooky, the runaway calf; College Boy, the fighting cock; a small flock of woodpeckers that favor Handsome's head over a tree; and goats who commandeer the roof of the Stroups' house.Georgia Boy was a special book to Caldwell, and its humor is less in the service of social criticism than in other works in which he dealt with poor white southerners. Beneath Georgia Boy's folksy lightheartedness, however, lie the problems of indigence, racism, and apathy that Caldwell confronted again and again in his fiction.

In 1965, more than five decades after his forced estrangement from his black boyhood friend Bisco, Erskine Caldwell set out across the South to find him. On the journey, which took him from South Carolina to Arkansas, Caldwell spoke to many people on the pretense of asking Bisco's whereabouts: a black college professor in Atlanta, Georgia; a white real estate salesman in Demopolis, Alabama; a black sharecropper in the Yazoo Basin of the Mississippi Delta; a transplanted white New England housewife in Bastrop, Louisiana; and others. Eighteen of those conversations, with Caldwell's commentary, make up this book.Caldwell made his journey at the zenith of the civil rights movement. Bisco, whom Caldwell never found, becomes a symbol for the South's race problem, to which he sought an answer in the emotions, experiences, and attitudes of those he encountered.

This memoir presents an engaging self-portrait of Erskine Caldwell's first thirty years as a writer, with special emphasis on his long and hard apprenticeship before he emerged as one of the most widely read and controversial authors of his time. While conveying the enormous amount of drive and dedication with which he pursued the writer's life, Caldwell tells of his struggles to find his own voice, his travels, and his various jobs, which ranged from back-breaking common labor to much sought-after positions in radio, film, and journalism.Such literary personages as Nathanael West, Maxwell Perkins, and Margaret Mitchell appear in Call It Experience, as does Margaret Bourke-White, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects and whom he also married. Including a self-interview, Call It Experience offers a wealth of insights into Caldwell's imagination, his sources of inspiration, and his writing habits, as well as his views on critics and reviewers, publishers, and booksellers. It is a source of both information and inspiration to aspiring writers.

In the middle years of the Great Depression, Erskine Caldwell and photographer Margaret Bourke-White spent eighteen months traveling across the back roads of the Deep South—from South Carolina to Arkansas—to document the living conditions of the sharecropper. Their collaboration resulted in You Have Seen Their Faces, a graphic portrayal of America's desperately poor rural underclass. First published in 1937, it is a classic comparable to Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives, and James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which it preceded by more than three years.Caldwell lets the poor speak for themselves. Supported by his commentary, they tell how the tenant system exploited whites and blacks alike and fostered animosity between them. Bourke-White, who sometimes waited hours for the right moment, captures her subjects in the shacks where they lived, the depleted fields where they plowed, and the churches where they worshipped.

The classic novel of a Georgia family undone by the Great Depression: “[A] story of force and beauty” (New York Post). Even before the Great Depression struck, Jeeter Lester and his family were desperately poor sharecroppers. But when hard times begin to affect the families that once helped support them, the Lesters slip completely into the abyss. Rather than hold on to each other for support, Jeeter, his wife Ada, and their twelve children are overcome by the fractured and violent society around them. Banned and burned when first released in 1932, Tobacco Road is a brutal examination of poverty’s dehumanizing influence by one of America’s great masters of political fiction. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

In the Depression-era Deep South, a destitute farmer struggles to raise a family on his own: The bestselling classic by the author of Tobacco Road.   Single father and poor Southern farmer Ty Ty Walden has a plan to save his farm and his family: He will tear his fields apart until he finds gold. While Ty Ty obsesses over his fool’s quest, his sons and daughters search in vain for their own dreams of instant happiness—whether from money, violence, or sex. God’s Little Acre is a classic dark comedy, a satire that lampoons a broken South while holding a light to the toll that poverty takes on the hopes and dreams of the poor themselves. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

The classic American novel of a philandering, murderous preacher from the national bestselling author of God’s Little Acre.   When preacher Semon Dye moves into the tiny Georgia town of Rocky Comfort, many of its citizens welcome him. After all, the only church in town is being used to store fertilizer. But sermons aren’t the first thing on the mind of the tall, magnetic, and utterly dissolute man. Other callings take priority: women, whiskey, gambling, and hiding from the law. Even as he seduces wives, cheats at cards, and provokes old feuds, Dye manages to cast a dark spell over all the people in Rocky Comfort.  Journeyman is a wicked send-up of religious fervor by an American master of dark political satire. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

A small Southern town lynches a falsely accused man in “some of the most . . . human and terrifying pages Caldwell has written” (Richard Wright, author of Native Son).   When word spreads through Julie County that Sonny Clark, a black man, has assaulted Katy Barlow, a white woman, the man’s fate is sealed. With frightening speed, authorities and an outraged mob align to apprehend Clark and condemn him without trial. By the time Barlow confesses that no crime occurred, it is too late. Told from the multiple perspectives of victim and victimizers as well as passive onlookers, Trouble in July depicts in harrowing detail the tragic ignorance of individuals who fail to understand their roles in a hateful miscarriage of justice. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

Fourteen stories that follow a young boy coming of age in a dysfunctional family in the rural South Meet William Stroop, a young son of the South whose charming voice and mordant observations of family and culture make him one of American literature’s most memorable narrators. In these fourteen interwoven stories, William details the high (and low) points of his family history, focusing particularly on his lazy, scheming father, Morris, his put-upon mother, Martha, and his confidante, Handsome Brown, a young black farmhand. As Morris matches wits with strangers and neighbors alike in constant pursuit of get-rich-quick plans, Martha tries to hold the family together without the aid of any discernable income. Told with the polish and moral resonance of fables, Georgia Boy captures the beauty and tragedy of life in the rural South during the twentieth century. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

A searing portrait of racism and violence in a small Southern town from thenational-bestselling author of God’s Little Acre.  When mixed-race brother and sister Ganus and Kathyanne Bazemore move to Estherville, a small Southern town, they’re looking for a fresh start. They don’t know anyone and nobody knows them, but they are two bright, attractive young people looking for work. It doesn’t take long, however, before the two kids are subjected to the worst of the town’s lust, brutality, and bigotry. A gripping story of the pre–civil rights era South, Place Called Estherville offers a candid glimpse of one of America’s most troubling legacies. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

Short stories about the twentieth-century South by the national bestselling author of Tobacco Road.   Author of some of the most widely banned fiction of the twentieth century, Erskine Caldwell had a talent for striking a nerve. In this collection of nearly one hundred stories, the full depth and scope of his talent is on display, including his trademark biting satire as well as his skill at rendering deeply moving portraits of his native South. In a career that spanned over six decades, Caldwell produced stories that serve to document a changing society, from the dehumanizing trials of the Great Depression through the transformative battle to desegregate the South. Taken together, his short fiction reveals a voice that remains essential for readers hoping to understand the American experience.   This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

In this travelogue and memoir, groundbreaking novelist Erskine Caldwell looks back at a life lived in the troubled South Five decades removed from his own Southern childhood, novelist Erskine Caldwell sets out on a journey to find an old friend—a friend lost to him through the culture of segregation. As Caldwell follows a trail through Georgia, South Carolina, and much of the Deep South in search of his black childhood friend Bisco, his interviews with white and black Americans expose a range of attitudes that are tragic, if not surprising. Published first in the mid-1960s just as the South was undergoing a radical transformation by freedom marches and sit-ins, In Search of Bisco offers a heartfelt account of the civil rights movement by one of the region’s fiercest critics and most prominent sons. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.

Three powerful novels of racism, lust, and poverty in the rural South by a controversial national bestselling author. Bigotry, poverty, social injustice, and sexual squalor in the Deep South—hallmarks of one of the most daring and phenomenally popular bestselling novelists of the twentieth-century. Here, in one volume, are three of his best-known works. “None of [his] characters would be caught dead in a novel by John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers, or Eudora Welty” (The Daily Beast).  Tobacco Road: The Great Depression compromises the morals of a poor farming family in Georgia. This classic, a Modern Library 100 Best Novels selection, was adapted for the stage in 1933 and made into a 1941 film directed by John Ford.  God’s Little Acre: Desperation takes its toll on a deluded Southern farmer obsessed with sex, violence, and the promise of gold. Banned in Boston, censored in Georgia, and prosecuted by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, this international bestseller was adapted into a film in 1958.  A Place Called Estherville: In the pre-civil-rights-era South, a biracial brother and sister move to a small segregated town to care for their aunt, only to be subjected to systematic racism, sexual violence, and prejudice.   “What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records,” said the Chicago Tribune of the author who earned his reputation by writing about sex, racism, and religious hypocrisy when no one else was. Caldwell remains one of the most widely translated American authors of all time.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erskine Caldwell including rare photos and never-before-seen documents courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library.