A New Erskine Caldwell Collection
1983; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-1461
Autores Tópico(s)Short Stories in Global Literature
ResumoErskine Caldwell's reputation as a short story writer in 1930s bore frequent and not unfavorable comparison with some of those most accomplished in genre--Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Porter, Wright, Hemingway, and Steinbeck. His work merited critical acclaim, literary prizes, and regular inclusion in anthologies and yearbooks of best. Now, almost fifty years later, while all these other writers' stories are widely available in paperback editions, Caldwell, who was ironically one of pioneers in mass market paperback, is almost completely excluded from anthologies, neglected in literary histories, and until present edition by Edward Lathem has had no collection of his short stories in print. It is conventional to explain Caldwell's disappearance from literary canon by bewailing decline in quality of his work after 1940, although most of writers mentioned above had also written their best stories by that time. Perhaps changing tastes, critical revaluation, even luridly sensational marketing of his novels aided in his demise, but whatever reason, Lathem's new selection of stories bears burden of re-introducing an almost unknown body of writing to con temporary readers. In choosing these thirty-two stories, Lathem has selected about one fifth of Caldwell's total accomplishment with a view to suggesting both the diversity and of stories and also offering the cream of Caldwell's crop. The collection displays a fine sampling of Caldwell's variety, though it includes some that are certainly below level of cream; in fact, to use some of Caldwell's own critical terminology for art of story-telling, though real humdingers are here, godawful are not wholly excluded either. Of criteria governing Lathem's selection of stories, few people will quarrel with his decision to concentrate on those written during 1930s. Although this eliminates some good ones from Georgia Boy (1943) and one or two from Gulf Coast Stories (1956), it is generally true that later stories are increasingly banal and conventional while Caldwell's anecdotal whimsy has gone instead into non-fiction books like In Search of Bisco (1965) and Deep (1968). The other criterion implied in collection's title, North & South is more troublesome. It recognizes Caldwell's power of evoking regional societies and their folkways but it induces inclusion of a larger number of New England stories than seems justified by their range or merit relative to Southern tales. Two of these, Over Green Mountains and Balm of Gilead are comic accounts of parsimonious Yankees willing to split any number of legalistic hairs to avoid parting with their money, but although they suggest regional oddities of behavior and language, they lack density of social vision that underlies even briefest Southern story. A Small Day, for example, tale of a Southern landlord's lust for hellcat daughter of one of his tenants, reveals a variety of details about class and race relationships in a stagnating cotton economy that complement slender plot and comic imagery. Governor Gil's efforts to woo Daisy are as futile as his continual assaults with his walking stick on weeds in his cotton. Daisy, in her slimsy gingham jumper with nothing underneath (Caldwell's favorite sartorial detail), is as resilient as weeds. Her father, who has encouraged match as an escape for Daisy from a life of field labor--tomorrow and every day as long as cotton grows--nevertheless enjoys his landlord's violent rejection. The final exchange in story is an impotent threat by Governor to cut off his tenant's head; however, fact that it is delivered by a nervous black houseboy, apprehensive of carrying an insult from one white to another, hints at even more tangled loyalties in this society than those between landlord and tenant. The social texture of Maine stories seems thin by comparison with this and their comedy derives more narrowly from tall-tale incidents: a bull-headed salmon towing George Hopkins' corpse down a lake like a speed-boat, or Carl Abbott setting fire to his wooden leg in a stubborn effort to burn over his hayfield. …
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