Caldwell, Erskine - Otis Ferguson (essay date 1938)

Otis Ferguson (essay date 1938)

SOURCE: "Caldwell's Stories," in The New Republic, Vol. XCV, No. 1231, July 6, 1938, p. 258.

[In the review of Southways below, Ferguson asserts that this collection of short stories is less imaginative but more mature than Caldwell's earlier efforts.]

If you have any interest in the way the quick turn of a short story can give you glimpses of people living their lives, you couldn't do much better today than Erskine Caldwell's new collection [Southways].

Caldwell is getting closer than ever to bringing two ways of seeing and feeling into a single way of writing. In most of the early stuff you could (many did) trace a social meaning if it pleased you, but it hadn't been consciously put there: it was a mere necessary adjunct to a writer's delight in his material and his craft. But ideas were afoot and Caldwell knew a writer just couldn't sit around and be delighted. So he began to impose...

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