Erskine Caldwell Summary

Caldwell, Erskine (1903-1987) Although Erskine Caldwell gradually descended into obscurity, during his heyday in the 1930s and 1940s his books were perennial best-sellers. Notorious for the explicit s... Read more

The American writer Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987) was one of the best-selling authors of all time. His novels and stories are distinguished by their brutally realistic depiction of the rural South; his... Read more

The son of Ira S. Caldwell, a Presbyterian minister, and Caroline Preston Bell, a school-teacher, Erskine Caldwell was born in White Oak, Georgia, and because of the expediencies of his father's pro... Read more

In the following, Whipple generally praises the stories in American Earth but bemoans what he perceives to be the elitist influence of small literary journals on Caldwell. Cowley, on the other hand, d... Read more

Canby was an American educator, critic, biographer, and the co-founder and first editor of the Saturday Review. In the following essay, which was first published in 1944 as Canby's introduction... Read more

Bode was an American critic, educator, and poet. In the excerpt below, he disparages Caldwell's artistry generally but judges his short stories superior to his novels: "the sagging archi... Read more

Collins was an American critic, educator, and editor, In the essay below, he accounts for Caldwell's great popularity by pointing to the sexual content of his stories, their element of social p... Read more

In the following essay, MacDonald details Caldwell's use of repetition in his characters ' speeches, in descriptions of settings and events, and in the structures of his short stories. ... Read more

Burnett was an American critic, journalist, and editor. In the following review of We Are the Living, he greatly admires Caldwell's ability to "push through to the core of feeling"... Read more

Peden is an American poet, novelist, and educator. In the following essay, he extols Caldwell's short stories as "important sociological documents, bleak testimony to the devastating eff... Read more

In the following excerpt from his book-length study of Caldwell, Devlin assesses the language, imagery, themes, and other facets of the author's short fiction. From the late twenties until a... Read more

In the excerpt below, Cook surveys the themes of Gulf Coast Stories and Certain Women, detecting a narrowing of the range of issues and concerns from Caldwell's earlier collections of stories. ... Read more

Burke is one of the foremost American scholars—and perhaps the most controversial literary figure—of the twentieth century. His approach to literature combines pragmatism with aesthetics... Read more

In the following review of The Sacrilege of Alan Kent, written at the time of the work's publication as a separate volume, Strauss finds it an interesting but "youthful and unsuccessful&... Read more

In the review of Southways below, Ferguson asserts that this collection of short stories is less imaginative but more mature than Caldwell's earlier efforts. If you have any interest in the ... Read more

Critical Essay by Malcolm Cowley Mr. Caldwell is a literary child of the "occult" magazines…. What I dissent from in Mr. Whipple's review [see excerpt above] is that he at... Read more

Critical Essay by Scott Macdonald In many of his stories Caldwell's style is so spare and so completely unadorned that the reader learns just how few of the traditional literary devices a writ... Read more

In the following interview, originally published in 1984, Caldwell discusses his life in the South, his early literary influences, and his opinions about censorship and racism. On the evening of Ju... Read more

In the following essay, Mixon argues that Caldwell's later works were less successful than his early writing because he failed to recognize major social changes in the American South. In the... Read more