Product Details
Erskine Caldwell: Selected Letters, 1929-1955

Erskine Caldwell: Selected Letters, 1929-1955
By Erskine Caldwell, Robert L. McDonald

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Product Description

"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." His ostensibly unsolicitous vision of Southern grotesques, of the slack-jawed, pellagra-ridden sharecroppers, repressed farmwives, and oversexed nymphets, elicited, however, 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 This book contains more than 150 previously unpublished letters, notes, telegrams, and postcards written between 1929 and 1955, at the peak of Caldwell's popularity and influence, all extensively annotated.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.


Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #2559605 in Books
  • Published on: 1999-03
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 249 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
"includes a brief chronology of significant events in Caldwells life. ...provides an extensive annotation to the over 150 letters, notes, telegrams, and postcards written between 1929 and 1955.... These annotations are one of the best features of the collection in that they give a depth of understanding...edited with both professional concern and honest admiration for Caldwell and his work. It is certainly a collection that ought to be in every college and university library"--Popular Culture Association

About the Author
Associate professor of English Robert L. McDonald, director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the Virginia Military Institute, is on the executive committee for the Popular/American Culture Association in the South. He lives in Lexington, Virginia.