Picked this up in a little independent bookstore while visiting Chapel Hill, NC, to have a little southern memento in the form of a little old (but well preserved) Signet pocket sized paperback. I think I payed $3 in cash. A strange little tale of the south (Augusta Georgia) where Ty Ty (the elder) digs hole after hole in vain trying to find gold. He harangues and bullies and tricks his adult children into his pitiful endeavor. This book has all the strangeness of O’Conner or McCuthers yet is written in a simple, childish style with mature themes. Published in 1939, it is hard to image these simpletons exist (of course they did, and do), but they have a native, cunning sexual intelligence. It is about farmers and working men, and their love/hatred of labor control and capitalism. But the obsession is the primacy of 0/sex, as when Ty Ty opines unabashedly and openly about his daughter in law:p. 78. “I ain’t ashamed of nothing”, Ty Ty said heatedly. “I reckon Griselda is just about the prettiest girl I ever did see. There ain’t a man alive who’ve ever seen a finer looking pair of rising beauties as she’s got. Why? Man alive! They’re that pretty it makes me feel sometimes like getting right down on my hands and knees like these old hound dogs you see chasing after a flowing bitch. You just ache to get down and lick something. That’s the way, and its God’s own truth as he would tell it himself if he could talk like the rest of us. You don’t mean to sit there and say you’ve seen them, do you?” Will asked, winking at Griselda and Rosamond. “Seen them? Why, man alive! I spend all my spare time trying to slip up on her when she ain’t looking to see them more. Seen them? Man alive! Just like a rabbit likes clover! When you’ve seen them once, that’s the only start. You can’t sit calm and peaceful and think of nothing else until you see them again. And every time you see them it makes you feel just a little bit more like that old hound dog I was talking about. You’re sitting out there in the yard somewhere all calm and pleased and all of a sudden you’ll get a notion in your head. You sit there, telling it to go away and let you rest, and all the time there’s something getting up inside of you. You can’t stop it. Because you can’t put your hands on it, you can’t talk to it, because you can’t make it here.The women are equally base, and sensual, as when the beautiful Griselda enjoys the strangeness of life in town, and feels the pulse of humanity and its crawling essence:p. 132. Through the open windows the soft summer night floated into the room. It was a soft night, and it was warm, but with the evening air there was something else that excited Griselda. She could hear sounds, voices, murmurs, that were like none she had ever heard before. A woman’s laughter, a child’s excited cry, and the faint gurgle of a waterfall somewhere below all came into the room together. There was a feeling in the air of living people just like herself, and this she had never felt before. The new knowledge that all those people out there, all those sounds, were as real as she herself was made her heart beat faster. Never had the noises of Augusta sounded like these, in the city there were other sounds of another race of people. It was gorillas.The men revere the raw power of women, and fear them for their secret knowledge and power. The hapless Pluto observes the powerful Will, as he indulges his passion with purposeful ignorance of the consequences… he follows his desire like a wild animal, oblivious to bystanders: p. 140. Beside her, Pluto was bewildered. He had not felt the things she had. She knew no man would. Pluto was speechless with wonder at Will and Griselda, but he was unmoved. Darling Jill had felt the surge of their lives pass through the room while Will stood before them tearing Griselda’s clothes to shreds, and Rosamond had. But Pluto was a man, and he would never understand how they felt. Even Will, who brought it, had acted only with the guidance of his want with Griselda. She was stunning, standing in the windowsill naked.A strange aspect of this book was the exact repetition of passages, for example the masses of young ladies in the mill, over and over…p. 149. It looked as if everything would come true. Here in the millyard now were the mild eyed valley girls with erect breasts behind the mill windows they would look like morning glories. The fear of urban life, represented by Pluto’s terror, as he hopes to return to the country:p. 156. He had become afraid of the man beside him, he was afraid the man would suddenly turn with a knife in his hand and cut his throat from ear to ear. He knew then that he was out of place in a cotton mill town. The country, back at home in Marion, was the place for him to go as quickly as possible. He promised himself he would never again leave it if only he could get back safely this time.The alpha males rule in this tale, as the beautiful Griselda feels the power in the aging Ty Ty, and nostalgically connects to him:p. 162. I would have stayed with Will the rest of my life. Because when a man does that to a woman, Pa, it makes love so strong nothing in the world can stop it. It must be God in people to do that. It’s something, anyway, I have it now. Ty Ty patted her hand. He could think of nothing to say, because there beside him sat a woman who knew as he did a secret of living. After awhile he breathed deeply, and lifted his head from her shoulder. “He’ll never learn, Pa, Buck just isn’t like you and Will. A man has to be born that way at the start.”Truthfully, I’ve never read so much misogyny and crudity – an uncivilized ragtag family with no scruples or education. They remind me of why we need the constraints of religion – to elevate the baseness of such people. But the book is told seductively, in a kind of secret code that I just could not seem to unravel. It was entertaining, and the mystery of these people (who are inexplicably never described in terms of age or physical appearance). I’ll read Caldwell again, and I’ll see what others have to say about God’s little acre (a metaphor for tithing, and how man tries to trick and cheat the almighty to line his own pockets).
What William Faulkner implies, Erskine Caldwell records. -- Chicago TribuneCaldwell writes with a full-blooded gutsy vitality that makes him akin to the truly great. -- San Francisco ChronicleAt one time, and maybe even today, God's Little Acre (1932) was the most popular novel ever published, selling a reported fourteen million copies. But in the process, the book ignited a firestorm of controversy, leading to numerous efforts to suppress it.A year earlier, Caldwell's Tobacco Road was published. It became a runaway best-seller after it was adapted as a stage play. When the play ended its long run years later, it was the longest-running play in Broadway's history. The play spurred book sales and eventually ten million copies were sold.Caldwell's portrayal of poor white southern tenant farmers who had been exploited by their landlords outraged many southerners and received mixed reviews from critics. There were also charges that its explicit sexual scenes constituted obscenity and it was banned from many libraries, including in his hometown, and efforts were made to suppress it elsewhere.That was only the beginning. God's Little Acre was even more controversial.Once again Caldwell wrote about the dire straits of poor white rural people who when faced with choices rarely chose the right one. But it also focuses on southern textile mill hands who are exploited by their employers. At one plant the workers strike for higher wages and a shorter work week, but because they are deprived of union protection the owners lock them out and shut down the mill. There is no doubt that Caldwell was influenced by several strikes by southern textile workers that occurred in the late '20's and early '30's, strikes that were in response to the fact that they were the lowest paid textile workers in the nation. While Caldwell again presented his story as a curious combination of black humor and tragedy, a combination that confuses critics -- not to mention readers -- God's Little Acre became very serious -- deadly serious -- when it turned from the humorous efforts of Ty Ty Walden and his sons to find gold on their farm to an attempt by Ty Ty's son-in-law to forcibly re-open the textile plant that has kept him and his co-workers unemployed for a year and a half. The sexual scenes in God's Little Acre are even more explicit than in Tobacco Road. And while they are relatively mild by today's standards, they were not mild by the standards of that day.In 1933, Caldwell and his publisher, Viking Press, were hauled into court on a charge of disseminating pornography. It was reported that more than sixty writers, editors, and literary critics rallied to his support. Caldwell's defense was that if his book was obscene it was because the truth was obscene. The judge ruled in his favor, declaring that the book was literature and not pornography. However, that did not deter other efforts to suppress the book. But what would-be book banners never seem to learn is that all that publicity spurs sales and the novel became not only Caldwell's biggest seller, but one of the biggest ever.The book was still very controversial many, many years later and that is why I tucked my copy inside my lit book during my sophomore year in high school. I knew that it was going to be a lot more interesting than my assigned reading. Well, I must confess that it wasn't just the controversy. It was also the lurid cover featuring a scantily-clad, well-endowed young lady on the cover of the paperback re-issue that I possessed. But that's another story. You probably already know the meaning of the book's title by now, but if not, I don't wish to be a spoiler. I'll let the publisher's blurb describing the book do that.
What do You think about God's Little Acre (1995)?
A story of a poor southern white family in the 1930s or 40s. Told with a somewhat dark humor and sardonic wit. I thought the main premise of the novel, God's little acre, was actually very clever. God's little acre is a portion of the family's land that Ty Ty, the patriarch, has set aside for God. His idea is that any money earned from raising crop on this land would be donated directly to the church. A noble sentiment, seemingly, until it is revealed that Ty Ty hasn't raised any crop for a number of years on account of his obsession with digging for gold, instead. Furthermore, out of a fear of eventually finding the gold on God's little acre, and thus having to honor his word by turning it over to the church, he digs around it and eventually even resorts to "moving" it to other unusable parts of his land.The message here, after putting it together with the other events of the novel, is about staying the course of a righteous life and not compromising your virtues for the short path to success. Ty Ty and his family are always looking to get something for nothing, and it ends up costing them more than if they had just done what they were supposed to do from the beginning. I'm not going to write a thesis here, I just want to point out the fact that there are some redeeming qualities of this novel before I get to the negative.The first problem with this book is the repetitive dialog. The characters continue to say the same things over and over again and, in fact, continually repeat their thoughts and actions, as well. Secondly, though there were some characters that were humorous, there was never a single character that was actually likable (humorous because you laugh AT them, not WITH them). I feel like every good book should have at least one character that the reader can identify with. And finally, though as I mentioned the main premise was good, there were other side plots that were actually sort of weird. For these reasons, I can't really say this novel was a success. The potential was there, but the execution fell short.
—Scott
Much of this is shocking today, I can't imagine what it was eighty years ago!Fascinating book. What starts out as a farce devolves into terrible tragedy over just a couple of hundred pages. Caldwell's use of language changes to match that shift, which is interesting to see and it hints at something deeper going on in the story. There's not much to admire about anyone, or anything, in the story, as Caldwell clearly intended with the one faint glimmer of "God's Little Acre" itself.A New York court case wherein Caldwell and his publisher were accused of (and acquitted of) distributing pornography remains an important precedent in the establishment of artists' First Amendment rights in freedom of expression. For that we can all be thankful.
—Bill
God's Little Acre is a great exposition on man's relationship with God. We make promises to God--Dedicate our little acre to him--and then move it and change our promise when things don't work out the way we planned. However, this review is an excuse to tell of my meeting Erskine Caldwell. It was in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in the Waldorf Bar and Grill and pool hall. I was probably about 14 years old. Roger Owens and I used to save a couple of dollars and then hitchhike into Klamath Falls to shoot pool at the Waldorf. I met many interesting characters there; enough to write many novels just describing their lives. One day I was engaged in a conversation with a down and out drunk who had obviously been on a several day binge. After talking for a few minutes, we introduced ourselves. The drunk said, and I am paraphrasing the best to my memory, "I'm Erskine Caldwell. I'm a writer. Maybe you've heard of me. I wrote God's Little Acre and a bunch of shit like that."I had read God's Little Acre, so I smiled and said my name is Tom Sanders. Glad to meet you. I patronised this poor delusional drunk, and told the story to my friends later that day. Then, a couple of days later, I read in The Herald and News that Erskine Caldwell had been to Klamath Falls for a book talk and signing. They had a picture of him, and sure enough it was the down-and-out drunk I had talked to for over and hour. I guess Erskine had a bit of a problem with alcohol, and used to disappear for weeks at a time, ending up on skid row. So it goes. Oh--another interesting bit of trivia: Erskine Caldwell was a heavy smoker and died of emphysema. He is is buried in Scenic Hills Memorial Park in Ashland, Oregon. Since he died in Arizona, I don't know why they brought his body to Ashland. Perhaps it was the wish of his fourth and final wife.
—Tom
