Erskine Caldwell Critical Essay | Critical Essay by T. K. Whipple and Malcolm Cowley

Critical Essay by T. K. Whipple and Malcolm Cowley

SOURCE: "Two Judgments of 'American Earth'," in The New Republic, Vol. LXVII, No. 863, June 17, 1931, pp. 130-32.

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, defends the little magazines: "By publishing his work, the best and the worst of it, they have encouraged him to develop something original."

Anyone who has ever spent much time where the untutored sons of these States forgather—as, for instance, in the army—must have heard, for hours on end, reminiscences poured forth in floods of anecdote—incidents pointed and pointless, significant and insignificant. In such story-telling is to be found the true popular or vulgar oral literature of America, the germ, the unformed beginning of narrative. The complaint is often made that this country has no folk tales; and while...
(read more)