Caldwell, Erskine - Harold Strauss (essay date 1933)

Harold Strauss (essay date 1933)

SOURCE: A review of We Are the living, in The New York Times Book Review, October 1, 1933, p. 6.

[In the review below, Strauss praises the authenticity of the pieces in We Are the living, declaring that "Caldwell's stories are as indigenous to the American soil as a corncob pipe or a Ford car. "]

We have come to think, through the blithe dichotomy of some old Greek, of tragedy and comedy as two absolute moods. The reviewers of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road called it a novel of terse tragic power; and these same gentry hailed its very similar successor, God's little Acre, as the work of a leading American humorist. We now have the advantage of glimpsing, however briefly, the varied aspects of Caldwell's genius. It is only in this volume of short stories [We Are the living] that we see that his work is not to be labeled comedy or tragedy, or even short story or novel. We...

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