Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th
Century
by
Annette Ferran
Tobacco
Road
A
recent New Yorker article about
paperback book publishing reminded me about Erskine Caldwell’s entry on the
Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th century, number 91, Tobacco Road, as well as his other well-known work, God’s Little Acre, which is more
memorable in my experience.
Caldwell’s writing straddles that thin line between literary writing and
pulp fiction. It is possible that Tobacco Road makes the list while God’s Little Acre doesn’t because Tobacco Road is somehow less pulpy,
somehow more elevated.
Like
many novels on this list, Tobacco Road
was considered obscene when it was published because of its depictions of sex
and sexuality, in particular. Also
like many of the list’s novels, it remains shocking in some of its scenes and
themes, though not always the same ones that earned it obscenity charges originally. It is the story of an abjectly poor
white family in Georgia in the era of the Great Depression. They are
share-croppers growing increasingly poverty-stricken while adhering stubbornly
to their notion that they are independent and can fend for themselves. The
story includes weird physical afflictions, weird romances, weird phobias and
obsessions, and a starkly realistic style with no romantic overlay to give
these people any nobility in their down-trodden state. There is something
almost clumsy about the writing at times.
Caldwell is said to have meant his writing to be a form of
social and political protest. He
wrote what he knew of his own Southern American society to bring attention to
the terrible circumstances in which people were living. Steinbeck did the same thing, but with
a desire to ennoble his characters that Caldwell doesn’t seem to capture. Or perhaps Caldwell didn’t have the
same kind of starry-eyed faith in humanity that comes through as a Steinbeck
characteristic. Both write with a
style that is somewhat raw and anti-lyrical. Caldwell’s is more brutish, even, like the German
expressionists’ paintings.
Another
comparison Caldwell has to endure is with his fellow Southerner, William
Faulkner. “Southern gothic” is the
label commonly applied, an unfairness to each of them (and countless other
writers) that betrays the prejudice and bias still present in the American
literary world. Unfortunately, Tobacco Road is built on a premise that
is hard to reconcile with open-minded reading: that the protagonist family is
especially pitiable because they are white, not black, but are living at a
level “worse than” or “lower than” the black families around them. This is supposed to be an added
injustice to this family, as if being white alone entitled them to a better
standard of living. Putting this
offensive premise aside (with difficulty), the depiction of this family is
refreshingly unflinching. They are
not nice people; they are not innocent victims of
circumstance. Through their ignorance, they make things worse for themselves. They
are ridiculous and frustrating to an onlooker. Yet this picture of a sector of America is appalling, and
Caldwell’s writing style makes it impossible to look away.
Where Faulkner also
depicts blacks and whites living side-by-side in a broken society, where
Steinbeck also depicts people brought lower than low by poverty, they both do
so with empathy and with careful story construction, which allow their
characters to have humanity.
Caldwell goes for luridness. This work is more similar to The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, a
muck-raking call-to-arms-against-injustice, which is apparently what it was
meant to be. It is more similar to
pulp fiction than to literary fiction or even to intentioned protest fiction
because of the luridness and the feeling that comes across that the story is
meant to titillate and engross rather than reveal and edify. However, Tobacco Road does all of these
things. (Likewise God’s Little Acre, with a bit more tawdriness.)
There are, in the end, multiple ways to take this
novel. Caldwell doesn’t have the power
and skill that the other writers mentioned do, but he gets the job done. This novel leaves a gritty taste in the
mouth, or maybe more aptly, an irritation in the consciousness.
Annette
Ferran lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and
works in Philadelphia as an editor for a medical publisher. She is also the Associate Editor
for 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, a
Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of dubious practical
use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and lover of lists.
She has had a few short stories published, most recently in RE:AL.
