I finished Tobacco Road nearly two days ago. It’s taking me a bit to figure out what to write. In fact, I’m still not quite sure what I think about the book, but my memory will fade so I have to get something written for now.
Tobacco Road is a couple of days in the life of Jeeter Lester and his poor white trash family on a former tobacco plantation in Georgia. Where once the family owned the land for miles around, Lester is now a cotton sharecropper on the property. Only he has no money or credit for buying seed or fertilizer and hasn’t for years. Only the landlord’s disinterest in the place allows Lester and family to continue to live there. At this point in the description, you’d think this would be a Southern version of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
But it’s no Grapes of Wrath. The Lesters are racist, ignorant, lazy, and sex-obsessed. All except for racist are of the most extreme variety, and of the most callous sort for racist. The first chapter is a confrontation between Jeeter’s son-in-law Lov Bensey and Jeeter. See, Jeeter married off his 12 year old daughter Pearl to Lov, and a year later Lov isn’t so happy with the deal. Pearl won’t talk, sleeps on a pallet, and won’t let Lov touch her. He wants to know if Jeeter thinks it’s a good idea to tie Pearl down. The confrontation begins because when Lov stops by for this chat, he’s carrying a bag of turnips. Jeeter and family haven’t had food in so long that the entire conversation is a big dance around Jeeter getting the turnips. Eventually, Lov becomes distracted (and by distracted
I mean dry-humping
) by another Lester daughter, Ellie May, and Jeeter takes his opportunity to grab the bag of turnips and run. This is the start of the book.
The Lesters and kin are a caricature of the worst of the Southern white trash stereotypes. So much so that who Caldwell is satirizing is lost on me. Is this a parody of the South? Perhaps. It just seems too obvious. I don’t know enough about the perception of the South during the Depression to know. I’ve purposefully not looked for any deconstruction of this on the web. Tobacco Road has lost it’s relevancy to a general audience if it needs explaining.
Without that explanation, a lot of the humor fell short with me. The Lester’s are just so over the top stupid that I got bored. It’s kind of how I view clowns. It takes a rare clown to make me laugh. Jeeter Lester is not that clown.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Illustrator: David Fredenthal
Imprint / publisher: Signet / New American Library
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 159 p.
Publication date: March 1947 (originally 1932)
LC classification: PS3505.A322 T6 1932
