Since the 1930s, Erskine Caldwell's writings have provoked laughter and pathos, curiosity and disbelief. His perplexing characters, comically motivated only by their instincts for survival, allowed Caldwell to illustrate the duality of human nature as he explored the social issues of his times in such celebrated novels as Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre. Behind Caldwell's social protest and his comic characters lay a man whose life imitated art. A rural southerner who later moved among the movie industry's famous and powerful, Caldwell led a life as compelling as any of his fiction. As Harvey Klevar weaves the threads of this life into the cultural tapestry of the times, he explores the myriad of personal forces and world events that contributed in the 1930s to Caldwell's popular acclaim and later to his descent from literary grace. A recluse in both his personal life and in his public writing, Caldwell offered little direction to those seeking clues to his literary intentions. Klevar argues that Caldwell should have shared more in the accolades heaped upon his contemporaries Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck; but ultimately his personal idiosyncrasies encouraged his underestimation by the literary establishment. Proving that a careful reappraisal of Caldwell's life lends critical insight into his writings and career, Klevar's work unveils an inventive artist who skillfully combined social phenomena with personal experience to offer unique insights into the telling of the human story.

Erskine Caldwell has been compared to literary giants like Faulkner and Hemingway, yet he has also been reviled as peddler of pop trash. Was he a genius, or just a shooting star whose brilliance faded long before he stopped writing? Caldwell began his career in the late 1920s and gained fame for revealing the gritty backwoods South in novels such as his seminal Tobacco Road. He wrote prolifically, sometimes as much as a book a year. As the editor of this book maintains, perhaps anyone who wrote so much would inevitably stumble. These 12 essays explore a variety of issues. They discuss Caldwell as humorist, social commentator, modernist, and revolutionary novelist. They examine his themes and tropes (political images, social injustice, the environment, ideological struggles) and his use of artistic devices (short stories, cubist strategies, repetition). A generous bibliography includes not only books on Caldwell but also chapters and forewords, journal articles, essays, news items and obituaries. The reader is encouraged to look at Caldwell with fresh eyes, to press beyond his controversial image, and to compare his works, especially his early ones, to those of any of the top names in literature.

This collection of ninety-six stories was first published in 1953 and presents the best of Erskine Caldwell's short fiction from his most productive period of work. Included is "Crown-Fire," which James Dickey praised as "the best story in the language," and such personal favorites of Caldwell as "Country Full of Swedes," "The Windfall," "Horse Thief," "Yellow Girl," and "Kneel to the Rising Sun."

Most critics have considered Caldwell to be only a minor southern writer, often associating him with his worst writing. Yet Saul Bellow suggested he deserved the Nobel Prize, and William Faulkner once characterized him as one of the five best writers of his time, alongside himself, Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos.