Caldwell, Erskine - William Soskin (essay date 1938)

William Soskin (essay date 1938)

SOURCE: "Caldwell Has Seen Their Faces," in New York Herald Tribune Books, June 19, 1938, p. 5.

[In this review of Southways, Soskin detects a change in these stories from Caldwell's earlier work, observing a greater brevity and intensity: "he writes the bare, bedrock story hammered into an immediate situation as though he could not bear to write at greater length. "]

One of the least profitable of industries is that of classifying and cataloguing Erskine Caldwell. Ever since American Earth and Tobacco Road appeared, and even when a lesser known and privately circulated novel called The Bastard made Mr. Caldwell's talents apparent, reviewers and readers have been arguing the questions of whether he is primarily a comic satirist, an amoral sensationalist, a social propaganda writer, a plain realist, or—since his home ground in Georgia lends itself to all these categories—just...

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