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dreesreads's review against another edition
3.0
This short novel looks at the Lester family--parents Jeeter and Ada; their youngest children Dude, Pearl, and Ellie May; Pearl's husband Lov; grandma; and female preacher Sister Bessie.
The Lesters' oldest kids--and there are quite a lot, though Jeeter can't remember all their names--have left the Tobacco Road to move to Augusta to find jobs in the mills or elsewhere. Jeeter has not farmed in years, as he can no longer get credit for seed cotton or guano. Some of them have pellagra--though I imagine they all would, given they are starving and grandma eats barks and grass.
Jeeter is stuck. Unable to farm, old car with tires that won't hold air, and always saying "tomorrow", he rarely does anything. All the land around him was once owned by his family (grandfather?), but it has all been sold, and now he is allowed to live for free by the last man who gave him credit. Captain John, who owns the land, has gone to Augusta himself. Everyone left is dirt poor.
I found this an interesting look at cotton farming, malnutrition, hunger, and the changing face of farming in the south. But once Sister Bessie appears, and then the car, it turns into more of a farce. Is he mocking the poor and their sloppiness? Their lack of care and planning? Or is it meant to show how nothing ever goes right for Jeeter? Pellagra symptoms include weakness, confusion, rashes, aggression, and more--is it supposed to show how the Lesters are doomed, since they are too sick to recover?
Unclear if he is mocking the malnourished poor or trying to show why they need help. Whatever he was trying to do, I didn't get it.
The Lesters' oldest kids--and there are quite a lot, though Jeeter can't remember all their names--have left the Tobacco Road to move to Augusta to find jobs in the mills or elsewhere. Jeeter has not farmed in years, as he can no longer get credit for seed cotton or guano. Some of them have pellagra--though I imagine they all would, given they are starving and grandma eats barks and grass.
Jeeter is stuck. Unable to farm, old car with tires that won't hold air, and always saying "tomorrow", he rarely does anything. All the land around him was once owned by his family (grandfather?), but it has all been sold, and now he is allowed to live for free by the last man who gave him credit. Captain John, who owns the land, has gone to Augusta himself. Everyone left is dirt poor.
I found this an interesting look at cotton farming, malnutrition, hunger, and the changing face of farming in the south. But once Sister Bessie appears, and then the car, it turns into more of a farce. Is he mocking the poor and their sloppiness? Their lack of care and planning? Or is it meant to show how nothing ever goes right for Jeeter? Pellagra symptoms include weakness, confusion, rashes, aggression, and more--is it supposed to show how the Lesters are doomed, since they are too sick to recover?
Unclear if he is mocking the malnourished poor or trying to show why they need help. Whatever he was trying to do, I didn't get it.
ruthiella's review against another edition
4.0
I found that Tobacco Road was slightly similar thematically to The Grapes of Wrath in its indictment of society’s treatment white sharecroppers during the Depression. But Caldwell does not instill his sharecroppers with noble, homespun virtue the way Steinbeck did. The characters are grotesques and are stuck in a constant loop of exploitation and ignorance. The story is easy to read, very repetitive in parts (so much so I was occasionally reminded of Waiting for Godot), but very disturbing.
briarlian's review against another edition
4.0
A quick but upsetting read.
I read this as a kind of sympathetic portrayal of generational poverty in rural America (relatively sympathetic), but then read that apparently Caldwell was a big supporter of eugenics and sterilization of the uneducated poor?? I don't want to officially throw stones, because I didn't read further on the topic, but if so, that's highly disturbing.
Anyway, a quick read in terms of language, and depressing in all other aspects. If you read a bit about the psychological effects of long-term poverty you can see pretty much all of them on display here, and it's so crushingly sad, and it is not difficult to see these patterns persisting and shaping our world today to a terrifying degree.
I read this as a kind of sympathetic portrayal of generational poverty in rural America (relatively sympathetic), but then read that apparently Caldwell was a big supporter of eugenics and sterilization of the uneducated poor?? I don't want to officially throw stones, because I didn't read further on the topic, but if so, that's highly disturbing.
Anyway, a quick read in terms of language, and depressing in all other aspects. If you read a bit about the psychological effects of long-term poverty you can see pretty much all of them on display here, and it's so crushingly sad, and it is not difficult to see these patterns persisting and shaping our world today to a terrifying degree.
scaifea's review against another edition
1.0
Wow. I didn't like this one at all. Too dark and depressing and cruel.
loris's review against another edition
5.0
An excellent read -- more of a commentary on social structure than a story. While it is tempting to look at Jeeter and the Lesters as put-upon by those more fortunate, they are actually their own worst enemy.
Not a light-hearted romp, but an excellent read nonetheless.
Not a light-hearted romp, but an excellent read nonetheless.
nicka's review against another edition
2.0
Let's see...Blood Meridian, Light in August, Suttree, and now Tobacco Road. I just can't get enough of the old timey stuff these days.
darwin8u's review against another edition
4.0
“He sometimes said it was partly his own fault, but he believed steadfastly that his position had been brought about by other people.”
― Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Sometimes, when I'm unable to understand Georgia's ability to support and defend Judge Roy Moore, it helps to read a little bit of Erskine Caldwell. 'Tobacco Road' reminds me a bit of Hemingway, a bit of Twain, and a bit of Steinbeck. It is both a social justice novel and a darkly comic novel that paints the ugly corners of human poverty and depravity. The Lesters are a family of white sharecropers that are basically rotting into the earth. Social and economic norms and even the family are lost. Religion is abused. Even new cars are abused and quickly swallowed by the Earth. The land is fallow, burned, and everything is going to Hell.
It is a good thing the novel was so short, because it was painful to read.
― Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Sometimes, when I'm unable to understand Georgia's ability to support and defend Judge Roy Moore, it helps to read a little bit of Erskine Caldwell. 'Tobacco Road' reminds me a bit of Hemingway, a bit of Twain, and a bit of Steinbeck. It is both a social justice novel and a darkly comic novel that paints the ugly corners of human poverty and depravity. The Lesters are a family of white sharecropers that are basically rotting into the earth. Social and economic norms and even the family are lost. Religion is abused. Even new cars are abused and quickly swallowed by the Earth. The land is fallow, burned, and everything is going to Hell.
It is a good thing the novel was so short, because it was painful to read.
expendablemudge's review against another edition
3.0
Book Circle Reads 148
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: University of Georgia Press's sales copy--Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, Tobacco Road was first published in 1932. It is the story of the Lesters, a family of white sharecroppers so destitute that most of their creditors have given up on them. Debased by poverty to an elemental state of ignorance and selfishness, the Lesters are preoccupied by their hunger, sexual longings, and fear that they will someday descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.
My Review: Ye gods and little fishes! Talk about "been down so long it looks like up to me!"
A shockingly honest book when it was published in 1932, it's still a picture that comparatively rich urban Americans need to see. The details have changed only a little in 80 years. This kind of poverty not only still exists, but these horrific racial prejudices do too. Read Knockemstiff and The Galaxie and Other Rides and American Salvage for the modern-day honest storytellers mining the same vein of American life. Winter's Bone is its direct descendant! So many of the works I've labeled hillbilly noir...and this is the granddaddy of 'em all. I loved the fact that it was so grim when I first read it as an angry, angsty teen, and it still, or again, aroused my loathing and ire when re-read last year at 52.
I can't remember not thinking that people were vile, irredeemable scum, and reading books like this taught me I wasn't the first to have this insight. Even the best are brought low by the vicious kicks of a merciless gawd. They keep going to church, though, to get kicked again...ultimately the solace of "at least we're not black" (though they use the other word I can't stand even to type) isn't enough to overcome the characters' various phobias and anxieties.
This won't make sense to someone who hasn't read the book, and will if one does read or has read it, but constitutes no spoiler: GO RATS!! Sic 'em!
A megaton of misery detonating in your brain, leaving craters a mile wide for compassion to leak out of.
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: University of Georgia Press's sales copy--Set during the Depression in the depleted farmlands surrounding Augusta, Georgia, Tobacco Road was first published in 1932. It is the story of the Lesters, a family of white sharecroppers so destitute that most of their creditors have given up on them. Debased by poverty to an elemental state of ignorance and selfishness, the Lesters are preoccupied by their hunger, sexual longings, and fear that they will someday descend to a lower rung on the social ladder than the black families who live near them.
My Review: Ye gods and little fishes! Talk about "been down so long it looks like up to me!"
A shockingly honest book when it was published in 1932, it's still a picture that comparatively rich urban Americans need to see. The details have changed only a little in 80 years. This kind of poverty not only still exists, but these horrific racial prejudices do too. Read Knockemstiff and The Galaxie and Other Rides and American Salvage for the modern-day honest storytellers mining the same vein of American life. Winter's Bone is its direct descendant! So many of the works I've labeled hillbilly noir...and this is the granddaddy of 'em all. I loved the fact that it was so grim when I first read it as an angry, angsty teen, and it still, or again, aroused my loathing and ire when re-read last year at 52.
I can't remember not thinking that people were vile, irredeemable scum, and reading books like this taught me I wasn't the first to have this insight. Even the best are brought low by the vicious kicks of a merciless gawd. They keep going to church, though, to get kicked again...ultimately the solace of "at least we're not black" (though they use the other word I can't stand even to type) isn't enough to overcome the characters' various phobias and anxieties.
This won't make sense to someone who hasn't read the book, and will if one does read or has read it, but constitutes no spoiler: GO RATS!! Sic 'em!
A megaton of misery detonating in your brain, leaving craters a mile wide for compassion to leak out of.