Erskine Caldwell Book order

Erskine Caldwell's work captures the stark realities of Southern life, depicting characters like impoverished sharecroppers and repressed farmwives with unflinching honesty. His unique vision sparked intense reactions, earning him both acclaim from literary figures such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and criticism for his provocative themes. Despite being labeled a sensationalist, Caldwell was once celebrated as "America's most popular author." Today, however, his reputation has faded, leaving him in the shadows of literary history.

Focusing on his journey as a writer, the memoir highlights Erskine Caldwell's intense dedication and the challenges he faced during his early career. It delves into his struggles to discover his unique voice, alongside his diverse experiences from arduous labor to prestigious roles in radio, film, and journalism. Caldwell's narrative provides a vivid account of his formative years, emphasizing the perseverance required to become one of the most prominent and controversial authors of his era.

In 1965, more than five decades after his forced estrangement from his black boyhood friend Bisco, Erskine Caldwell set out across the South to find him. On the journey, which took him from South Carolina to Arkansas, Caldwell spoke to many people on the pretense of asking Bisco's a black college professor in Atlanta, Georgia; a white real estate salesman in Demopolis, Alabama; a black sharecropper in the Yazoo Basin of the Mississippi Delta; a transplanted white New England housewife in Bastrop, Louisiana; and others. Eighteen of those conversations, with Caldwell's commentary, make up this book.Caldwell made his journey at the zenith of the civil rights movement. Bisco, whom Caldwell never found, becomes a symbol for the South's race problem, to which he sought an answer in the emotions, experiences, and attitudes of those he encountered.

A semi-autobiography of the childhood of Alan Kent, from early manhood to artist. The text includes brief, graphic sketches which illustrate the struggle against various hardening effects of a brutal and seemingly indifferent world.