Talk:Erskine Caldwell

Chronological Rearrangement Necessary?

The article would be improved if the section on Works were rearranged according to the first year they were published. As it stands, God's Little Acre may have earned him the greatest fame or notoriety, but it was far from the first book of his that was published.

It appears that some of his publishers reassembled works from earlier years, and reprinted them as new works. For instance, the book When You Think of Me is a compendium of short stories and character sketches dating back, variously, to years 1936, 1941, 1944, and 1933 and 1959 - series of copyrights for every other section in the book. The first section, for instance, has the following short stories: The Light, A Visit to Mingus County, The Story of Mahlon, and a Message for Genevieve. These appear to have been copyrighted in 1936, though the last may have been copyrighted in 1944. The second section of the book contains the following character sketches: The Barber of the Northwest, After Eighty Years, Grandpa in the Bathtub, The Man Under the Mountain, A Short Sleep in Louisiana, and A Country that Moves. All copyrighted in 1941. The third section of the book contains the following "Czechoslovakian" sketches: Bread in Uzok, Wine of Surany, and The Dogs of Ceske Budejovice. Those were copyrighted in 1933, 1935, and 1939 by Erskine Caldwell himself. The book, as a whole, takes its name after the fourth part, When You Think of Me. - copyrighted in 1959.

Since Erskine Caldwell had a lucrative time re-packaging and selling stories previously assigned to other publishers, presumably after their assignments expired, it makes it difficult rearranging the list of works chronologically. It makes a lot of sense to arrange them according to their significance, or according to their impact on society. With that in mind, the two works that he is most famous for, are Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre.

Another way the mass of his works can be organized, is according to publisher. Although Caldwell's fortune came chiefly from paperbacks (such as those sold by Signet), many of his hottest sellers were soon made available in hardback form through Little, Brown and Company.

Enlisted by the Soviets?

His first (or maybe second) marriage came to an end in 1942 when he traveled to the Soviet Union as a foreign journalist to cover the Soviet war effort in central Asia. His three or four page long short story Message to Genevieve is probably fictitious, but appears to recount the execution of a notorious Mata Hari type female journalist known only as Genevieve. Day after day, month after month, the journalists in the story reside at the Majestic Hotel but then, one day, Genevieve is missing. Word gets out that she was rounded up, interrogated, and shot for espionage.

Was this story based partially on a personal experience that Erskine Caldwell actually had, or is it completely fictitious? What years did this story find publication before 1959? Did Erskine's relationship with a mysterious Genevieve have anything to do with Erskine's 1942 divorce?