I'm reading Caldwell's TRAGIC GROUND. His book about a hillbilly white trash family trapped in the big city after World War 2 ends. Spencer Doubit is a no-account country bumpkin Cracker, his wife Maud is an alcoholic. Their teen daughters, Mavis and Libby are whores. The rent is 3 months behind and an old maid social worker from the county rides their asses. You get the idea.
TOBACCO ROAD and GODS LITTLE ACRE are famous but TRAGIC GROUND and PLACE LIKE ESTHERVILLE are better writing. James Agee made poverty and squalor romantic in LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, but Caldwell was equally liberal yet depicted the same people as they are: human animals. My mother one time tossed a mutt into a kennel fulla pure-bred bitches, and that poor guy had his work cut out for him. All those Polly Purebreds wanted his cock. Human females are the same.
