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Title: Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell, Buck Schirner ISBN: 1-56100-279-8 Publisher: Brilliance Audio Pub. Date: October, 1995 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 6 List Price(USD): $57.25 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.97 (34 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Tobacco Road
Comment: In Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell tells the humorous yet incredibly detestable tale of an extremely poor southern family during the Great Depression. Their amazingly ignorant, destructive, and immoral behavior is almost painful to read about at times but is somehow strangely amusing.
The story begins with Jeeter Lester stealing a sack of turnips from his son-in-law who has walked all day to buy them. After hearing the description of the family's living conditions, however, the reader almost feels he is justified in taking them to feed his starving children, wife, and mother. Any sympathy quickly vanishes when Jeeter runs off into the woods to stuff himself with turnips before he returns to give the little that is left to his family. It should come as no surprise that nearly all of his children ran away from home as soon as they could and never return home to visit. One of his two children that is still at home when the book begins is Dude, Jeeter's sixteen-year-old son. Soon Dude gets married to a traveling preacher woman named Bessie who was born without a nose. Bessie lures Dude into the marriage with the promise of a new car for Dude despite the fact that they are twenty-five years apart in age. After running over and killing a black man, an event which does not bother any of the Lesters, and other such calamities, the car is quickly rendered into a piece of junk by the destructive hands of Dude and Jeeter. When Bessie complains about their rough treatment of the car, Jeeter kicks her off his land and starts hitting her with sticks. In her rush to get away, Bessie runs over Jeeter's mother, but she does not even stop to see if she is alright. The amazing thing is that Jeeter does not go check on her either, and his mother suffers a slow, agonizing death as she attempts to crawl to the house.
The characters in the book are not developed much beyond the fact that they are incredibly ignorant and immoral, but the reader gets the impression that that is because there is really not much more to the Lester family than those qualities. Any potential redeeming qualities are quickly obscured by a flood of more and more horrendous characteristics. An example of this is Jeeter's love of the land, which could be seen as a positive attribute. Quickly, however, the reader realizes that this love of the land is the root of the Lesters' poverty, because Jeeter cannot afford seeds to plant but will not leave the land to work in the city. This also serves to display the theme of the book which is man's often irrational refusal to accept changes in life.
The style of the book, although plain, contains very well written dialog and the setting is excellently portrayed as well. If there is one problem in the book, it is the extremity to which the depravity of the characters is taken. This can make it nearly impossible to relate to or sympathize with the characters in any way. Although this can detract slightly from the story, overall the book was very entertaining.
Rating: 5
Summary: THE UNDERBELLY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE
Comment: Written during the depression era, this southern classic uncovers the ugly side of southern culture steeped in poverty. Come along on Tobacco Road and view Jeeter Lester and his dysfunctional family. Jeeter, the patriarch of this poor excuse of humanity brings out the worst qualities that a man can possess. His ignorance, selfishness and stupidity are magnified to the highest degrees as he attempts to survive in a world that has long gone.
Erskine Caldwell has introduced us to a life of absurdity in the backwoods of the south. His characters are stereotypical charactures of poor southern whites. Some of them are grotesque in their appearance, greedy, selfish and totally shiftless. As much as you would want to sympathize with them, you can't. They are people who won't take responsibility for themselves and will put the blame on others. Jeeter and his son Dude are great examples of this mentality.
How then can this book be so good if it describes people so bad? In telling the story of Tobacco Road, we see another side of southern culture exposed. It is not pretty, genteel or noble. You see the ugly for what it is and affirm that this too is a part of life when people are reduced to extreme poverty. There is also humor in the story. The characters are not totally one dimensional but their naivite draws you to tears of laughter and maybe sorrow. Look into this world of southern culture where people cling to dreams long dead and allow themselves to remain stagnate on Tobacco Road. This is an excellent southern classic of a people long forgotten.
Rating: 3
Summary: What Is This, Exactly?
Comment: If you were to ask me if I liked "Tobacco Road," my answer would be "I guess so.....I think."
It's hard to decide whether or not I liked this book because it's hard to decide what exactly this book is. It's a wisp of a thing really, about 150 pages of nothing happening. Yet it's not boring. There are parts of it that I found funny, but they are so grotesque that I'm not sure they're supposed to be funny. I wanted to sympathize with these poor, pathetic people living like animals, yet I didn't, because they so frustratingly refuse to do anything to help themselves.
Erskine Caldwell's story involves a couple of days in the life of a dismally poor one-time sharecropper and those members of his family who haven't yet left home, scraping a living out of the dust in Depression-era Georgia. Like I said, not a lot happens in the way of plot until the hurried ending, which feels tacked on by Caldwell at the last minute as if to justify to his readers why they spent their time reading his book.
If you thought the Joads of "The Grapes of Wrath" had it bad, wait until you get a load of the Lesters. This family has none of the dignity displayed by Steinbeck's characters, and it's this difference that ultimately makes the Lesters not worth caring about. Jeeter, the family's patriarch, stubborly refuses to leave his land, even though other poor families are finding opportunities and means for providing for their own families in the nearby mill towns. Jeeter justifies his refusal to leave by taking on a martyred air and feigning a noble attachment to the land, but in reality he's victim to an intensely lazy malaise that will prevent him from ever doing anything to help himself. He thinks the children who have left home never to return or even communicate with their parents have acted selfishly and callously (mostly because they refuse to send money home), but who can blame them? I wouldn't ever return home either.
I think this book is supposed to be funny; the back cover of the book compares Caldwell to Mark Twain. However, if that's the case, then this book borders on the appalling. Caldwell's tone throughout is snide and nasty--he invites us to laugh at the Lesters and their stupidity. And if we're supposed to be laughing, then one wonders what Caldwell's purpose was in writing this. If we're meant to simply read this book as a comedy, then I'm repelled at the pointlessness of the whole enterprise. I don't truly believe this was Caldwell's sole purpose, yet the book also fails as an indictment of the social institutions responsible for reducing families to this state of destitution.
"Tobacco Road" falls into that category of books that you might as well read, since it's held in high esteem by the literary establishment and will take virtually no time to finish. I think you'll be moderately entertained, but I also wouldn't be surprised if you have the the urge to scratch your head when it's all over and wonder what in the world you just sat through.
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