Tobacco Road

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Bauman, Sam (October 23, 1963). "I write for myself,' says Erskine Caldwell". Stars and Stripes . Retrieved October 1, 2022. Tobacco Road is set in rural Georgia during the worst years of the Great Depression. It depicts a family of poor white tenant farmers, the Lesters, as some of the many small Southern cotton farmers made redundant by the industrialization of production and the migration into cities. The main character of the novel is Jeeter Lester, an ignorant and sinful man who is redeemed by his love of the land and his faith in the fertility and promise of the soil. Caldwell, Virginia Moffett Fletcher". Social Networks and Archival Context . Retrieved October 2, 2022. Caldwell's mother, a former teacher, tutored her son at home. [3] Caldwell was 14 when he first attended a school. [3]

I have underlined what I question. Does poverty do that to the extent that it is drawn in this book? I do not equate poverty with stupidity. The Lesters had seventeen kids. Five died. When the novel begins only two (Dude and Ellie May, an eighteen-year-old with an extremely ugly cleft lip) remain still at home with mom (Ada), dad (Jeeter) and grandma. The son Dude who is sixteen gets married to a women preacher named Bessie Rice. She is thirty-nine. She has a deformed face. These six individuals and a few others are drawn as imbeciles, as animals, as depraved, crude human beings. Religion is used as an excuse - for laziness, for doing nothing, for accepting fate. The only sign of hope are the ten children who have left. Little is known or said about them. The little Caldwell was born on December 17, 1903, in the small town of White Oak, Coweta County, Georgia. He was the only child of Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church minister Ira Sylvester Caldwell and his wife Caroline Preston (née Bell) Caldwell, a schoolteacher. Rev. Caldwell's ministry required moving the family often, to places including Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina. When he was 15 years old, his family settled in Wrens, Georgia. [11] His mother Caroline was from Virginia. Her ancestry included English nobility which held large land grants in eastern Virginia. Both her English ancestors and Scots-Irish ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Ira Caldwell's ancestors were Scots-Irish and had also been in America since before the revolution and had fought in it. [12] The audiobook narration by John MacDonald is good. The intonation matches the language of these uneducated, poor, depraved souls. Of course the dialog is filled with grammatical errors. Caldwell, Erskine. "The stories of Erskine Caldwell". District of Columbia Public Library. Archived from the original on October 6, 2022 . Retrieved October 1, 2022.

With that said, it bothers me to hear comments that readers didn’t like the book because it was depressing, sad, dark, and inhumane. Even the word ‘ignorance’ came up; the ignorance of the characters. I have underlined what I question. Does poverty do that to the extent that it is drawn in this book? I do not equate poverty with stupidity. The Lesters had seventeen kids. Five died. When the novel begins only two (Dude and Ellie May, an eighteen-year-old with an extremely ugly cleft lip) remain still at home with mom (Ada), dad (Jeeter) and grandma. The son Dude who is sixteen gets married to a women preacher named Bessie Rice. She is thirty-nine. She has a deformed face. These six individuals and a few others are drawn as imbeciles, as animals, as depraved, crude human beings. Religion is used as an excuse - for laziness, for doing nothing, for accepting fate. The only sign of hope are the ten children who have left. Little is known or said about them. The little that is said draws them too as unforgiving, cruel and uncompassionate individuals. Daddy’s great grandfather (can't recall how many greats) in the early 1700’s came to America from Lancashire, England, a farming area in northwest U. K. Most readers, and I include myself, struggle with Caldwell's depiction of the Lesters as being "ignorant, selfish, crude, sexually promiscuous, indecent, but also comic figures." Caldwell seems to simultaneously sympathize with his characters while at the same time maintaining a disdainful attitude toward them. The book is a call for social action to combat poverty, but one that provides no solutions.

Daddy said he never had a 'real' toothbrush until he joined the service when he was 17. (He made them from a twig of a specific tree branch by flaring and separating one end to act as bristles. He showed us how he did it on one visit to see Grandma.) The author clearly was way ahead in his thinking and wrote his stories for many generations later to appreciate and understand. During his own lifetime he was not appreciated. "His first two books, Tobacco Road (1932) and God’s Little Acre (1933), made Caldwell famous, but this was not initially due to their literary merit. Both novels depict the South as beset by racism, ignorance, cruelty, and deep social inequalities. They also contain scenes of sex and violence that were graphic for the time. Both books were banned from public libraries and other venues, especially in the South. Caldwell was prosecuted for obscenity, though exonerated." Sumner Defeated in Fight on a Book: Magistrate Greenspan Finds Novel by Erskine Caldwell Is Not Obscene". The New York Times. May 24, 1933. p.19. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt had the same effect on me than this book. I laughed and cried simultaneously. Nobody or nothing in the book endeared me to the situation. Yet, I could not help but keep on reading, hoping that something good will happen for the family. I felt I needed to "fill in" my gaps in Southern Fiction, but I think it will go unfilled for a little while longer. Not for me.I loved Caldwell's writing and will read more books written by him. It was all I expected and more. Years ago I was visiting Daddy's birthplace (at home) on a cotton farm in southwestern North Carolina, between Hayesville, North Carolina and Hiwassee, Georgia. I was sitting on the steps of Philadelphia Church with my cousin Rex and I asked him why Grandma and Grandpa moved around so much? He laughed asking me “you don’t know?” No, I didn't know. Rex said they were itinerant sharecroppers and they had to move where land was more fertile, where their crops would grow to feed the family. (I’m from a small (pop. 13,900) Florida city in north Florida, not a farmer for sure, so this came as news to me, the why of their moving frequently.) Caldwell, Erskine (16 May 2017). Three Novels: Tobacco Road, God's Little Acre, and Place Called Estherville. Open Road Media. ISBN 978-1-5040-4547-6– via google books.

With cumulative sales of 10 million [9] and 14 million copies, [10] respectively, Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre rank as two of the best-selling American novels, all-time, with the former being adapted into a 1933 play that set a Broadway record for consecutive performances, since surpassed. Grandma and Grandpa, Mary Jane Gibson Ledford and Mark Ledford ---Hard working people, maybe in early 40's?

Caldwell, Virginia Moffett, b. 1919". Dartmouth Library Archives & Manuscripts. dartmouth.edu . Retrieved October 2, 2022. Caldwell, Jay E. (2016). Erskine Caldwell, Margaret Bourke-White, and the popular Front: Photojournalism in Russia. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820350226.