Product Description

This collection of 96 stories was first published in 1953 and presents the best of Erskine Caldwell's short fiction from his most productive period of work. "No fictionist has written more strikingly of the modern South's problems."--Chicago Sunday Times.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #423584 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 664 pages

Customer Reviews

sharp and concise
Caldwell's stories are very sharp, concise and pointed. No word is wasted in his deceptively simple way of adressing Southern life in America. This anthology of short stories makes it pretty obvious that Caldwell ought to be read for years to come. Far more than a vulgar comedian; he is one of the very few writers that really manage to satirize the crudest, meanest, lowliest people you ever saw, and still come across as a story-teller who loves his characters.

Rachel
Despite the fact that I wasted a lot of time one summer searching high and low for a book called "Tobacco Road", which had been forbidden me as a read "unfit for children", Erskine Caldwell turned out not to be one of my favorite writers after all. For some reason, his style didn't fit my psyche.

Tobacco Road was a bust to me, but there is a collection of his short stories that I read later and found one story among them called "Rachel" that I have remembered all these years because of it's depiction of grim hopelessness regarding a tragic human condition known as "dire poverty". Rachel came out of an alley each night to meet the teller of her tale, and would not let him take her back to her home when the "date" was over. The conclusion in the final page is shocking; and the reader is taken into a realm unknown to most of us when the realization of what has happened sets in.

There are several stories among the collection that merit recognition, and although I couldn't get into much of Mr. Caldwell's themes, it's surely worth a look for the book enthusiast that wants to round out the experience by an older set of writings and concepts.