Erskine Caldwell: A Biography
Book Details
Author(s)Paula Whiteside
PublisherHyperink Celebrity Bios
ISBN / ASINB007GQIAEY
ISBN-13978B007GQIAE5
Sales Rank1,298,882
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
ABOUT THE BOOK
Many modern readers are unfamiliar with Southern writer Erskine Caldwell, primarily because his books have fallen out of favor in politically-correct academic circles. Just as Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn has been blacklisted in many high school classrooms across the U.S. due to objectionable language and the mistreatment or denigration of minorities, many of Caldwells works have met a similar fate in academic readership and discussion.
Surprisingly, one of his most vocal critics, Margaret Mitchell, who penned Gone With The Wind, accused him of cashing in on the seedier side of Southern mores when she could easily be charged with the same. Caldwells legacy remains in his work: an unrelenting, gritty and often comic depiction of the impoverished, both black and white, in the Southern landscape during and after the Depression.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Paula Whiteside is currently a freelance writer for several web content providers, as well as the copy editor for Wine Business Monthly, an international industry magazine located in the Sonoma Valley Wine Country.
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
The majority of Caldwells fiction was written in the 1930s, though he didnt achieve best-seller status until his work made it into paperback reprints just after World War II. These books often featured lurid covers, more reminiscent of dime-store novels than literary works; however, the novels contents werent entirely misrepresented. Caldwells subject matter dealt with extramarital sex, incest, rape, lynchings, union-busting and race relations the controversial and often-censored topics of the era. In fact, Tobacco Road, when it was adapted into a Broadway stage production in 1933, was charged with obscenity by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, as was Gods Little Acre, published that same year and also banned by New Englands censorship counterpart, Bostons Watch and Ward Society.
Although Caldwell came under the protective wing of H.L. Mencken and William Faulkner during the New York obscenity trial, by the time his paperback reprints and later novels were seriously re-evaluated, his critics were harsh and generally opprobrious, considering his characters more caricatures than believable. Indeed, according to Caldwell biographer Dan Miller, if someone accused the author of comic overtones, he would leave the room in disgust. Caldwell believed his characters depictions were describing to the best of my ability the aspirations and despair of the people I wrote about.
Buy a copy to keep reading!
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Biography of Erskine Caldwell
+ Introduction
+ Background and Upbringing
+ Major Accomplishments and Awards
+ Famous Works
+ ...and much more
Many modern readers are unfamiliar with Southern writer Erskine Caldwell, primarily because his books have fallen out of favor in politically-correct academic circles. Just as Mark Twains Huckleberry Finn has been blacklisted in many high school classrooms across the U.S. due to objectionable language and the mistreatment or denigration of minorities, many of Caldwells works have met a similar fate in academic readership and discussion.
Surprisingly, one of his most vocal critics, Margaret Mitchell, who penned Gone With The Wind, accused him of cashing in on the seedier side of Southern mores when she could easily be charged with the same. Caldwells legacy remains in his work: an unrelenting, gritty and often comic depiction of the impoverished, both black and white, in the Southern landscape during and after the Depression.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Paula Whiteside is currently a freelance writer for several web content providers, as well as the copy editor for Wine Business Monthly, an international industry magazine located in the Sonoma Valley Wine Country.
EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK
The majority of Caldwells fiction was written in the 1930s, though he didnt achieve best-seller status until his work made it into paperback reprints just after World War II. These books often featured lurid covers, more reminiscent of dime-store novels than literary works; however, the novels contents werent entirely misrepresented. Caldwells subject matter dealt with extramarital sex, incest, rape, lynchings, union-busting and race relations the controversial and often-censored topics of the era. In fact, Tobacco Road, when it was adapted into a Broadway stage production in 1933, was charged with obscenity by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, as was Gods Little Acre, published that same year and also banned by New Englands censorship counterpart, Bostons Watch and Ward Society.
Although Caldwell came under the protective wing of H.L. Mencken and William Faulkner during the New York obscenity trial, by the time his paperback reprints and later novels were seriously re-evaluated, his critics were harsh and generally opprobrious, considering his characters more caricatures than believable. Indeed, according to Caldwell biographer Dan Miller, if someone accused the author of comic overtones, he would leave the room in disgust. Caldwell believed his characters depictions were describing to the best of my ability the aspirations and despair of the people I wrote about.
Buy a copy to keep reading!
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Biography of Erskine Caldwell
+ Introduction
+ Background and Upbringing
+ Major Accomplishments and Awards
+ Famous Works
+ ...and much more
