Customer Reviews

Erskine Caldwell: The Journey from Tobacco Road

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In the thirties critics acclaimed Erskine Caldwell as one of the most influential writers of his time. His books sold in the millions and his play, Tobacco Road (based on the novel), had an unprecedented record run across the nation. By the time the sixties emerged, Caldwell falls into obscurity, disdained by the critics and forgotten in the canon of southern literature.

Caldwell's Icarus-like rise to fame and descent into obscurity is the catalyst which inspired Dan Miller to explore one of the south's most prolific writers. What was behind the man who was so passionate in his work yet ended up destroying his professional career, his marriages and his relationships with his children.

The Journey from Tobacco Road takes a microscopic look at the forces which shaped and made Caldwell the writer that he is. Born of educated parents who were members of a fundamentalist presbyterian sect, we find a man full of contradictions. His parents had formal education. Their son never graduated from high school (or any school for that matter) and was a poor writer and reader. Their denomination, The Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church, was highly fundamental yet Caldwell's father had a great passion to confront the injustice of poor and Black people. His passion was transferred over to his son who became the extentsion of his cause for justice.

You will come across layers of complexities of Erskine who was controlling in all of his relationships with his wives and daughters. His obsessive need for control extended itself into the lives of his children to the point of abuse. Yet despite these tendancies Caldwell reached the hearts and minds of his readers in his depiction of the southern poor.

Miller has given the reader a revealing portrait of a man who was at the top of his literary popularity only to fall in obscurity. We are shown the elements of why this happened and can see that the same trap is set for writers who become popular but are spurned by the academic literary community. Caldwell's journey is an interesting one as he goes through the school of hard knocks only to rise a winner. Miller's biography is clear and concise. He doesn't put Caldwell on a pedestle but he reminds us this is an author who shouldn't be ignored. You will enjoy this biography.

Miller's concern about Caldwell's obscurity is not to be ignored. Recently I sat on a class in southern literature. When I read the syllabus, I saw the conspicuous absence of Caldwell's name. On approaching the teacher, I asked why and she immediately became embarassed and said she that Caldwell's name had mistakenly been dropped while editing the syllabus. Miller's book is certainly one we need to remind us of the life and contributions of this man of southern literature.

For some time, I wondered why such an important chronicler of the uderprivileged people of the South ,who was recognized and read as comparable to Steinbeck,should be pushed aside to the point he is almost forgotten today.By the early 1960,s,between anthologies,novels,travelogues,and other nonfiction monographs,he had published thirty-eight books,and his domestic sales had reached 55 million copies.His works were translated into dozens of languages.He was among the world,s best selling authors.So,what happened?
Miller,s book shows how he was really not part of the "system" .It was the millions of readers who liked his work;thc critics couldn't stand him.
The critics and literary establishment won out and have pushed his work into obscurity...for now,anyway.
I am surprised that the author Miller, is so young. One day with the help of people like him,Caldwell may well become known again.
An excellent book if you want to know the whole story.

Dr. Miller tells the interesting truth behind one of the best selling authors of all time. Caldwell's life growing up poor in the deep south set the tone for what his work will become in the upcoming years. Miller, a student of David Donald (2 time pulitzer prize winner, "Look Homeward Angel:Bio of Thomas Wolfe", and official Lincoln biographer) at Harvard University, gives the reader a complete picture of an author who has been forgotten in time. Caldwell's gritty, often pornographic style has been belittled by todays critics, but Miller shows Caldwell was more than a pulp writer, he was a complex man, with a simple style.
A must read.

Mark Twain once wrote, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." Dan B. Miller (Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University) has written a biography, Erskine Caldwell: The Journey from Tobacco Road)concerning which Twain's aphorism is a propos. As I read Professor Miller's volume, I was greatly impressed that he continually chooses "the right word" to paint his convincing portrait of Erskine Caldwell. Of the many biographies I have read, his work is one of the best I've ever discovered.

Portraying Caldwell as a complex and complicated man, Miller provides an even-handed and fair picture of his subject, warts and all, a man of ingratiating strengths and infuriating weaknesses, a man who could often sink into sullen, moody silence or erupt in angry outbursts, but who could also be generous and unselfish--neither saint nor devil. Caldwell strikes one as being similar to Jemima in Longfellow's poem: "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was horrid."

William Faulkner (no mean writer himself) one opined that Erskine Caldwell was one of the five greatest writers of his (Faulkner's) generation. Of Caldwell's 25 published novels, at least two of them deserve to be placed in the first rank in the canon of American literature: Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933). A third novel is almost as good: Trouble in July (1940). Caldwell also wrote 150 short stories, "Kneel to the Rising Sun" being perhaps the best among them. Although most of his poetry is amateurish, his poem "Face Beneath the Sky," which tells of a lynched man, whose lifeless body still twists in the wind, is powerful.

What kind of writer was Erskine Caldwell. Was he a comic satirist? an amoral sensationalist? a social propaganda writer? a plain realist? Miller writes, "He was, of course, all these things--a politically conscious writer, with no interest in political dogma, a social realist with a strong taste for the surreal and grotesque, an instinctive and uncalculating artist well versed in current American literature and literary theory" (page 259).

Critics often disparaged Caldwell's novels, because of their steamy sex and gratuitous violence, as being "obscene," "pornographic," and "low-class," and his works were often banned in various cities. Perhaps so, but the best of his works are never boring, and his "comedy" has an undercurrent of tragedy, including vivid descriptions of racial intolerance and violence, the bigotry of religious fundamentalism, the sufferings of the poor, and a strong concern for social justice, the latter bred into him by his beloved and respected minister father, who was his chief muse.

Miller describes Caldwell's four marriages (to Helen Lannigan, the famous photo-journalist Margaret Bourke-White, June Johnson, and Virginia Moffett Fletcher, to latter being a woman to whom he was married for thirty years ) and his four children: "Pixie" (Erskine Caldwell, Jr., Dabney, Janet and Jay,) and his get-rich schemes, many of which ended in financial disaster. Caldwell also had awesome financial success as the leading figure in "the paperback revolution" and the record-setting run of "Tobacco Road," adapted as a play on Broadway.

If I have a quibble with this book (and it's just that, a quibble), it is that more than 300 pages are devoted to the first half of Caldwell's life, and that the last half of his life (he lived to be 83) are given short shrift. Of course, there's a good reason for this: Although Caldwell was a lifelong workaholic--for many months of the year he wrote on his trusty typewriter from nine o'clock until noon, then eating lunch, and working again from one o'clock until five o'clock--his later works descended into mediocrity and commercialism. In short, the last half of his life did not deserve the attention of his early years, when he was at the peak of his artistic and creative powers.

I wish I could convey adequately what an excellent, informative, and satisfying biography this is. It's evident that a lot of research went into this work, and the style and word choice is remarkable. I recommend this book highly. Kudos to the author! Bravo, Dan B. Miller!

This biography is important in helping understand Caldwell. He really was a bad man. That's what I came away with from reading this.

And I came away thinking that he was at his best ONLY when he was pushing against a woman -- his first wife who was apparently responsible for the high quality of his early work - this biography shows that she was his most important editor, and in spite of the abuse and neglect he heaped upon her, she remained his better half) -- or striving to impress some woman, such as Margaret Bourke-White, his second wife (who was never a person he could control).

By the time he hitched up with his third wife, he was famous and rich, but a drunk; and his writing took second place to a desire to maintain his reputation as the author of 'scandalous' novels such as God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road.

I don't know that he should be 'remembered' -- except for his short story, Kneel to the Rising Sun. That's a keeper.

But I think only people who study American literature should read him. The Sacrilege of Alan Kent is an interesting prose poem that is typical of the juvenile work of his time. Country Full of Swedes is hilariously broad comedy. Most of the stories in Georgia Boy are good. But I don't think he should be pushed on the average reader, when we have works by such contemporaries as Faulkner or Hurston that should be read first.

I forced myself to read Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre; and then I tried his later books -- most recently Love & Money, which I bought on and then put up for sale again on eBay. These later novels are not even novels; they're simply collections of disjointed scenarios. To really get a sense of how cynical he'd become, try picking up one of his old ones. You'll find them on Amazon or eBay or Alibris or wherever. With more than 50 million of his paperbacks sold, they're a dime a dozen. The covers on the old paperbacks are the only interesting things, with their prurient paintings of oversexed femme fatale fantasies.

If you like American literature and literary figures, I strongly recommend this book. It is a well crafted, well researched biography. Caldwell lived in interesting times and was associated with some very interesting people. For a short while, he shone. Then his star quickly faded.

Too bad all that living was wasted on him.