Back in the old days, most people’s downtime included time spent reading books, and even with the advent of motion pictures and radio, reading remained a popular pastime. Authors were the rock stars of their time, and one such star hailed from Augusta: Erskine Caldwell.
During his lifetime, Calwell wrote 25 novels, 12 nonfiction books as well as 150 short stories, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
In the late 19th century, “penny serials” and mystery novels were popular. During the 1920s, people tore through books by writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald that detailed the lives of the rich and glamorous; however, with the onset of the Great Depression, books about human suffering and abject poverty flew off the book shelves.
Perhaps, at the time, reading about other people’s misery made life a bit less, well, miserable.
Caldwell’s 1932 novel Tobacco Road set a new benchmark for wallowing in anxiety, anguish and death. Even though the book was an international best seller, not everyone was happy with its portrayal of Southern life.
Tobacco Road is set on the outskirts of Augusta and chronicles the tormented lives of a family of sharecroppers, the Lesters. Most of the characters are portrayed as pretty much despicable people and some of the characters are described as physically deformed.
The book describes in painstaking detail rural life during the Great Depression and does not end in some great denouement where the protagonist, Jeeter Lester, is released from bondage to the land and ends up living happily ever after.
Rather, Jeeter and his wife are killed when the hovel they live in burns down around them. The tone and finale of the book portray life as an endless cycle of poverty, need and affliction.
Tobacco Road is rated 91 on the list of 100 best English language novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library, and the book propelled Caldwell to literary fame, but Southerners, particularly those from Caldwell’s hometown took offense at his portrayal of Dixie.
In fact, in Augusta, Caldwell was pretty much a pariah.
Dorothy Lehman Sumerau, in her book A Saga of the Authors Club of Augusta, GA, published the minutes from the 1933 meeting of the club where Tobacco Road was described as a “travesty” that held Augusta up to “ridicule, jest, pity and scorn.”
“He has gained himself the unanimous criticism of the whole club,” the minutes read.
The book was banned from some libraries.
According to retired Augusta University professor Jim Garvey, Augusta was a tourist city and was poised for even greater notoriety with the building of the Augusta National Golf Course, and the people of the time felt the same way Augustans feel today when national sports writers equate the world-famous golf course to the Eiffel Tower being constructed in the middle of a trailer park.
“The people of Augusta felt insulted and betrayed. They thought it was a devastating portrayal of society in Augusta,” Garvey said.
Caldwell was accused of being a corrupter of morals, a traitor and even a Communist, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
However, Caldwell was no shrinking violet. When Gov. Lester Maddox denounced his work in 1967, Caldwell fired off a letter telling the governor, “I like to think I am as much a Georgian as Brer Rabbit.”
Caldwell died in 1987 and was finally given his due in 2000 when he was inducted as a charter member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
…And that is something you may not have known.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
