68 Caldwell, Erskine
(1903–1987) novelist, short story writer Erskine Caldwell, known as the “master of rural rib-aldry,” was a prolific southern writer whose themes centered on poverty, class, ignorance, racism, and the tenant farming system. Caldwell was one of the most widely read authors of the 20th century; 80 million of his books were sold to readers in 43 dif-ferent languages. He wrote 25 novels, 150 short stories, and 12 nonfiction books. Caldwell’s most famous novels were Tobacco Road (1932) and God’s Little Acre (1933). His stories combined social real-ism with sex and violence, making him one of the most censored writers of his time.
Erskine Caldwell was born on December 17, 1903, in White Oak, Georgia, the son of a Presbyterian minister who moved the family nearly every six months. It was during these years that Caldwell became well acquainted with the lives of the impoverished sharecroppers he often encoun-tered. At age 18 he went on a gun-running boat to South America. Caldwell briefly attended Erskine College in South Carolina and the universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania. He held a variety of jobs, including working as a mill hand and cotton picker. He also worked briefly as a reporter on the Atlanta Journal. In the 1920s Caldwell moved to Maine to devote himself to writing. The story
“Country Full of Swedes” was published in the Yale Review and won Caldwell a $1,000 award in 1933.
During his five years in Maine, Caldwell wrote Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre. The novels
were criticized as obscene and were banned from many libraries. But Caldwell was also seen as a soci-ologist who painted a realistic picture of rural poverty. Tobacco Road was about a family of white sharecroppers driven to desperation by the oppres-sion of a changing economic system. In 1998, the Modern Library named it one of the 100 best nov-els of the 20th century. God’s Little Acre was cen-sored by the Georgia Literary Commission and was banned in Boston. When the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice tried to ban God’s Little Acre, Caldwell took the case to court. With testi-mony from H.L.MENCKENand SHERWOOD ANDER
-SON, he won his case and it became a landmark in First Amendment litigation. The Saturday Review of Literature called the book “one of the finest studies of the southern poor white which has ever come into our literature.”
In 1936, Caldwell met the photographer Margaret Bourke-White, with whom he traveled for the next six years. They collaborated on four books and produced a documentary account of poverty in the American South. A similar book combining photographs and text appeared just before the outbreak of World War II depicting Czechoslovakia. During World War II, Caldwell worked as a newspaper correspondent in the Soviet Union, witnessing the German invasion in 1941.
Caldwell worked as a scriptwriter in Hollywood for several years and was editor of American Folkways, a series of regional books. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984. WILLIAM FAULKNER thought
Caldwell was one of America’s five greatest novelists, and as late as 1960, Caldwell was under consideration for the Nobel Prize. As one of the first authors to be published in mass-market paperback editions, he is a key figure in the history of American publishing. Sales of his books in Signet and Gold Medal editions established NAL (New American Library) as one of the dominant paper-back houses in the world. Caldwell continued publishing novels into the 1970s, but they were often considered semipornographic. Caldwell was married four times; his first three marriages ended in divorce. He died of inoperable cancer in Paradise Valley, California, on April 11, 1987.
Further Reading
Devlin, James E. Erskine Caldwell. Boston: Twayne, 1984.
Klevar, Harvey L. Erskine Caldwell: A Biography.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.
Miller, Dan B.Erskine Caldwell: The Journey from Tobacco Road. New York: Knopf, 1995.
Capote, Truman
(Truman Streckfus Persons)
(1924–1984) novelist, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, journalist, playwright, poet Truman Capote was a Southern Gothic novelist, short story writer, playwright, journalist, and cele-brated man-about-town. His early works include his novel of alienated youth, Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948); the gothic short story collection, A Tree of Night (1949); and the lighter novel The Grass Harp (1951). The novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) introduced the charming, self-indulgent Holly Golightly as a heroine. Childhood reflections formed the basis for two short stories that were adapted for television: “A Christmas Memory” (1956) and “The Thanksgiving Visitor”
(1968). Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood (1966) was based on a six-year study of the murder of a rural Kansas family by two young drifters.
Although the number of Capote’s works is not extensive, the painstaking impeccability and patience with which he wrote are elements that solidly distinguish him as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
Truman Streckfus Persons was born on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of a salesman and a 16-year-old beauty queen. His father worked as a clerk for a steamboat company for a period of time but was unable to hold onto this and other jobs for very long. As a result, his father frequently left home in search of new opportunities. His parents’ unhappy marriage gradually disintegrated and the two divorced when he was just four. The boy then moved to Monroeville, Alabama, where he was raised by his cousins and elderly aunts (one of whom became the model for the loving, elderly spinster in sever-al of his novels, stories, and plays). As a child he lived a rather lonely existence and turned to writ-ing for solace. Of his early days, Capote related, “I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day and I would write for about three hours.
I was obsessed by it.”
When his mother married again, this time to well-to-do businessman Joseph Garcia Capote, Truman moved to New York and adopted his step-father’s surname. While in New York, he attended the Trinity School and St. John’s Academy, as well as the public schools of Greenwich, Connecticut.
Then, at the age of 17, due to difficulty adjusting to his new life in the city, Capote dropped out of high school and began work as an office boy at the New Yorker until he was fired for angering ROBERT FROST at one of his readings. In 1945, Capote’s stories began to appear in magazines, and were immediately well received by readers. Among his first books was Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), a novel about an adolescent boy in a run-down southern mansion. The protagonist falls into a relationship with a decadent transvestite. Other Voices, Other Rooms gained wide public success, partly due to the controversy it created as a result of its treatment of homosexuality.
In 1949, Capote went to Europe, where he wrote both fiction and nonfiction. Among his major works was a profile of Marlon Brando that was published in the New Yorker. Capote’s travels accompanying a tour of Porgy and Bess in the Soviet Union produced The Muses Are Heard, which
Capote, Truman 69
subtly mocked the whole presentation of the play.
His European years also marked the beginning of his work with theater and films. In 1949 A Tree of Night appeared, a compilation of short stories that had been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and other magazines. In the 1950s, Capote wrote The House of Flowers, a musical set in a West Indies bordello. His lighter novel The Grass Harp (1951), the story of a young man and his cousin who rebel against the conventions and materialism of society, was adapted into a television movie in 1996, starring Piper Laurie, Sissy Spacek, and Walter Matthau. Capote’s first important film work, though, was a collaboration with John Huston on Beat the Devil (1954).
Capote’s literary success led to increasing social recognition. He was praised by high society and seen regularly at the best parties, clubs, and restaurants. His short novel, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958), was heavily inspired by these experiences, and with the publication of the novel and the sub-sequent hit film (not written by Capote) starring Audrey Hepburn, his reputation among society’s elite was assured. He soon developed a different ambition, though—to revolutionize the field of journalism. In 1959, Capote set about creating a new literary genre that he dubbed the nonfiction novel. In Cold Blood (1966), the book that most consider his masterpiece, is the story of the 1959 murder of the four members of a Kansas farming family, the Clutters. Capote stationed himself in Holcomb, Kansas, to delve into the small-town life and record the process by which the town coped with its loss. During his stay, the two murderers were caught, and Capote began an involved inter-view with both. For six years, he became enmeshed in the lives of both the killers and the townspeople, taking thousands of pages of notes. Of In Cold Blood, Capote said, “This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry.” In Cold Blood sold out instantly and became one of the most talked-about books of its time.
After the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote planned to write a novel called Answered Prayers, but problems with drink and drugs, and disputes with other writers, such as Gore Vidal, exhausted Capote’s creative energies, and he never completed the work. Capote died in Los Angeles, California, on August 26, 1984, of liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxications. His other works include The Dogs Bark: Public People and Private Places (1973) and Answered Prayers, his unfinished novel, which was published posthu-mously in 1987.
Further Reading
Brinnin, J. M. Sextet: T. S. Eliot and Truman Capote and Others. New York: Delacorte Press, 1981.
Bryer, Jackson R., and Irving Malin, eds. Truman Capote’s
“In Cold Blood”: A Critical Handbook. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1968.
Clarke, Gerald. Truman Capote: A Biography. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Moates, Marianne M., and Jennings Faulk Carter.
Truman Capote’s Southern Years. Birmingham:
University of Alabama Press, 1996.
Nance, William L. The Worlds of Truman Capote. New York: Stein and Day, 1970.
Carver, Raymond (Raymond Carver, Jr.)
(1938–1988) short story writer, poet
Frequently set in the Pacific Northwest of his birth and peopled by working-class characters, Raymond Carver’s stories are known for their realist style. He was a significant force in the revitalization of the short story, and his work is often placed in the same tradition as that of STEPHEN CRANE and ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Carver’s early death from cancer, just a decade after his recovery from alcoholism, cut short a career of outstanding literary achievement and left his readers mourning the loss of the stories Carver never had the chance to write.
Raymond Carver, Jr., was born on May 25, 1938, in Clatskanie, Oregon. His father, Clevie Raymond Carver, was a sawmill worker and a vio-lent alcoholic. Carver’s mother, Ella Beatrice Casey, sometimes worked as a waitress or retail clerk. The 70 Carver, Raymond
Carver family moved to Yakima, Washington, shortly after Raymond’s birth, and he attended school there until he graduated from high school in 1956. In 1957, the same year that Carver’s father suffered a physical breakdown, the 19-year-old Carver married his high school sweetheart, 16-year-old Maryann Burk, who was pregnant. Their daughter, Christine LaRae, was born on December 2, 1957. That same year, Carver had also enrolled part time in a community college and worked at various low-paying jobs—as a janitor, a gas station attendant, and a deliveryman for a pharmacy. The couple had a second child, Vance Lindsay, by the time Maryann was 18. Following the birth of his son, Carver began taking creative writing classes at school, and it was in these classes that he found the inspiration to be a writer. He eventually transferred to Humboldt State College, where he graduated with a B.A. degree in 1963. It was during his time at Humboldt that Carver’s work was first published.
From Humboldt, Carver moved to Iowa City, Iowa, to study at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He received his M.F.A. degree in creative writing in 1966. In 1967, the Carvers filed for bankruptcy.
That same year, Carver’s father died. It was during these years of struggling to make ends meet, to write, and to raise children that Carver started to drink heavily. His work was gaining more recogni-tion, but his personal life was beginning to spin out of control. In 1967, his story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” was chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories, edited by Martha Foley. In 1968, his collection Near Klamath was published, and in 1970 Winter Insomnia was published.
In 1971, when Carver was 33, he was appoint-ed a visiting lecturer in creative writing at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He held several other teaching positions during the early 1970s but was sometimes unable to fulfill his teaching responsibilities as a result of alcoholism.
During these years, he was hospitalized four sepa-rate times for acute alcoholism. In 1973, he and
JOHN CHEEVER were both visiting teachers in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Carver’s collection of short stories Put Yourself in My Shoes came out in 1974. It was followed two years later by Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, the book that firmly estab-lished Carver’s reputation as a writer of great
sig-nificance. It was nominated for a National Book Award. By the mid-1970s, however, the Carvers’
marriage was in a shambles and they had filed for a second bankruptcy.
The turning point came on June 2, 1977, when Carver stopped drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. His first marriage ended in 1977, although the couple did not legally divorce until 1980. Carver began to live with his longtime companion, poet Tess Gallagher, whom he had met years earlier at a writers’ conference in Dallas. The couple moved around the country, taking teaching positions in different universities and working on poems and stories. Carver wrote and published much of his work during this productive period.
Some of the works that appeared during these years are Cathedral (1983), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985); and Where I’m Calling From (1989).
Although he was probably best known for his stories, Carver’s poems—narratives written in the vernacular tradition of WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS— were quite accomplished as well. His last two collections of poetry, Where Water Comes Together with Other Water (1985) and Ultramarine (1986), won the 1985 Levinson Prize. His numerous other awards included a National Endowment for the Arts award in fiction (1980) and a Guggenheim fellowship (1979–80). In 1983, he was a recipient of the “Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings,” an award conferred by a special panel of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Short Cuts, a film by Robert Altman released in 1993, uses material from Carver’s short stories in a postmodern indictment of contemporary life.
During their last years together, Carver and Gallagher traveled the globe, visiting South America, Ireland, Germany, England, Scotland, and Italy. It was shortly after returning from these travels that Carver’s lung cancer was diagnosed, when he began to suffer pulmonary hemorrhages.
Doctors removed two-thirds of his left lung at this time, and later he underwent radiation treatment when the cancer reappeared. The radiation was ultimately unsuccessful. Carver and Gallagher mar-ried in Reno, Nevada, on June 17, 1988; returned Carver, Raymond 71
to Port Angeles, Washington; and bought a new house. Their final trip was to Alaska to fish. Carver died at home on August 2, 1988.
Further Reading
Gentry, Marshall B., and William Stull, eds. Conversations with Raymond Carver. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990.
Hallett, Cynthia W. Minimalism and the Short Story:
Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and Mary Robison.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.
Halpert, Sam, ed. . . . When We Talk about Raymond Carver. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, 1991.
Horn, Nicholas. “Seeing Double: The Two Lives of Raymond Carver.” A–B: Auto-Biography Studies 13, no. 2 (fall 1998): 271–97.
Runyon, Randolph. Reading Raymond Carver. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992.
Stull, William L., and Maureen P. Carroll. Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra, 1993.
Cather, Willa
(Wilella Sibert Cather)
(1873–1947) novelist, short story writer Willa Cather, best known for her depiction of pio-neer life, brought American regions to life through her loving portrayals of individuals within local cul-tures. Drawing from her childhood in Nebraska, Cather brought to national consciousness the beau-ty and vastness of the western plains, a region she described as the “happiness and curse” of her life.
She was able to evoke a strong sense of place for other regions as well, including the Southwest, Virginia, France, and Quebec. Devoted to values such as the importance of family and the need for human courage and dignity, she created strong female characters whose sort of strength and deter-mination had previously been attributed only to men. Her novels express her deep love of the land and her distaste for the materialism and conformi-ty of modern life. Of her 12 novels, My Ántonia (1918) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) are considered among the finest. She won a Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), about a soldier during World War I.
Wilella Sibert Cather (she later answered to
“Willa”) was born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek, Virginia, to James and Mary Virginia Cather.
Ten years later she and her family moved to Catherton, Nebraska. In 1885 the family resettled in Red Cloud. Cather was captivated by the land-scape of her new home, as well as the customs and languages of the diverse immigrant population of Webster County. She spent a great deal of time with the older immigrant women, visiting them and lis-tening to their stories. Cather moved to Lincoln in 1890 to continue her education at the University of Nebraska, initially planning to pursue her child-hood dream of becoming a physician. But her aspi-rations changed after a professor submitted an essay she wrote on the British writer Thomas Carlyle to the Lincoln newspaper for publication. Cather later recalled that seeing her name in print had a “hyp-notic effect” on her and she decided to become a writer. She became managing editor of the school newspaper, the author of short stories, and a the-ater critic and columnist for the Nebraska State Journal as well as for the Lincoln Courier. She pro-duced four columns per week while attending school full time. Cather’s classmates remembered her as one of the most colorful personalities on campus: intelligent, outspoken, talented, and mas-culine in dress.
One year after graduation, in 1896, Cather accepted a job as managing editor for the Home Monthly, a women’s magazine published in Pittsburgh. At the same time, she wrote theater reviews for the Pittsburgh Leader and the Nebraska
One year after graduation, in 1896, Cather accepted a job as managing editor for the Home Monthly, a women’s magazine published in Pittsburgh. At the same time, she wrote theater reviews for the Pittsburgh Leader and the Nebraska