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| Tobacco Road | 
| Author: Erskine Caldwell
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy Used: $3.99
You Save: $14.96 (79%)
New (41) from $7.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  47 reviews
Sales Rank: 138146
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 082031661X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780820316611
ASIN: 082031661X
Publication Date: January 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, this is the story of the Lesters, a family of destitute white sharecroppers. Debased by their poverty, they fear they will descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 This South Should Never Rise Again April 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a son of the south, reading another child of the south is always an interesting adventure, and "Tobacco Road" was one of the great forbidden books of my childhood, along with "To Kill A Mockingbird," and forms a fairly neat flipside for that enduring and endearing tale of justice and innocence. "Tobacco Road" is that story from the Boo Radley house, plus some.
Caldwell's grotesques (you can hardly call them characters) are clearly cartoons and yet speak to a sad Southern truth that those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 60s knows always dwells there right below the surface ... that maddening ability to hear at astounding and intricate length grand designs for success while the shingles fall off the house, as well as the tendency to blame every misfortune on everything short of one's own rotten front door. The sultry sexuality, which Caldwell no doubt used to move mountains of books, is about as natural and animalistic as it comes, while also having an odd whiff of indifference and inconsequent confusion to it. Caldwell takes his particular variety of stereotypes (that die-hard defenders of the South yowl long and hard about) down the same steamy, dusty, bloody road that such other great Southern writers as William Faulkner and especially Flannery O'Conner do, but at a wholly different kind of remove that lets you know this is the wellhead for this school of writing. It's lean, taut writing (imagine Hemingway reborn into the Piedmont) counterbalanced by a keening repetitiveness when the characters run up against the same old fences that they have day-in and day-out for years. Menace always hangs slightly above the ground like spring-burning smoke, and that is a genuine Southern thing. It doesn't play the same in the North or the West. Caldwell finds that distinct Southern nerve, and hits it with a ballpeen hammer.
You may love it, you may hate it, but you cannot deny that with "Tobacco Road" you're at the very start of something lean, mean, and cruel in its unvarnished honesty. Mayberry be damned, this is the real South.
Debasing, but not necessarily limited to Southerners... September 25, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I find it rather humorous to note that not only do the majority of the people getting offended by this work of literary brilliance hail from south of the Mason-Dixon, but also that no one seems to have a clue of Caldwell's primary intention. His always-controversial characters, particularly the men, represent not a backwards view of the South or an attept to persist a stereotype, but the abstraction that humans are little more than hairless animals. Caldwell reminds us that man is capable of regressing to a feral state when pushed to the very brink of survival. As we all have differing breaking points, so does each Lester, and each is depicted in varying states of "mental regression."
If you're interested in a book that you can read at face value and take a story and then go on to another book, look elsewhere. Someone else said it earlier: if you want a read that is basically a compendium of the post-depression South, read Steinbeck. If you want to take a look at the true, ugly, primal nature of man, pick this book up, especially if you're writing a paper...lots of material here!
 Depressing, Disappointing, and Depraved June 15, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Don't waste your time on this book!
While I certainly didn't expect it to be cheerful, given its look at the life of subsistance farmers in the depression in the deep south, I was unprepared for the utter lack of redeeming quality in any of the characters, the plot, the themes, or the writing.
The characters in this book are utterly selfish, coarse, and debased. They are barely human beings, seeking only to satisfy animal needs. They kill and maim and destroy thoughtlessly. While out on a joy ride, two of the characters kill a man; they later kill a family member. There is no remorse. The characters repeatedly make fun of physical deformities. They revel in destruction of property. They're racist and ignorant.
This could be thought of as a type of satire, a hyper-exaggeration to produce comedy (as others reviewers have suggested) except that there is a problem with that. The writing, 99% of the time, isn't funny. Humor comes from the same word as "human" and with such grim material, there's little there to recommend it.
Still trying to purge this from my memory (sadly hard to do) and I'd suggest you pass this one by. Literature is suppose to uplift, or if it cannot uplift, it should educate, or illuminate. This just debases. Read Steinbeck instead.
 Tobacco Road June 14, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I'm not easily offended, but found Tobacco Road obscene. Not for the sex, for the protrayal of poor, white Southerners without compassion, or, in my opinion, any real understanding. Is making the same joke about physical deformities again and again and again satire or even good dark comedy? Not in my book. In well-drawn humor we are able to see our own wekanesses reflected and recognize the human link between ourselves and the most foolish. But Caldwell's characters are so devoid of humanity that poking fun of them just seems juvenile and cruel. Additionally, I found whole passages of the book poorly written and repetitious. I confess to being a Southerner and from poor stock and perhaps that colors my view. But I love Faulkner and O'Conner. I think Caldwell is best forgotten.
Tobacco Road, a Must-Read June 13, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Note: Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks
My comments are only a recommendation, but I promise you will be well-rewarded. Jeeter Lester with his dirtwater family of 17 kids sets
near the throne of southern literature.
It's been a lot of years since I read "Tobacco Road," but I thoroughly enjoyed it. "This Very Earth" and "God's Little Acre" are two other great reads. These are all short novels about down-and-out families, or those living at the edge of society in the South.
You'll love Erskine Caldwell--very rewarding.
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