Call It Experience; The Years of Learning How To Write

New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pierce, 1951. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Fair. 239, [1] pages. Signed by the author on the half-title page. The worn and torn dust jacket is in a plastic sleeve and has a corner clipped and sticker mark on front flap. Previous owner's [Sidney W. Frost] embossed seal on fep. This was possibly the copy of the Sidney W. Frost who was a first place winner in the Southwest Writers Contest and the Writers' League of Texas Contest. Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 - April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933) won him critical acclaim. Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre rank as two of the best-selling American novels, all-time, with the former being adapted into a 1933 play that set a Broadway record for consecutive performances, since surpassed. His first published works were The Bastard (1929) and Poor Fool (1930). His first book, The Bastard, was banned and copies of it were seized by authorities. With the publication of God's Little Acre, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice instigated legal action against him, for The Bastard. Caldwell was arrested at a book-signing there but was exonerated in court. In 1941, Caldwell reported from the USSR, for Life magazine, CBS radio and the newspaper PM. He wrote movie scripts for about five years. Caldwell wrote articles from Mexico and Czechoslovakia for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Caldwell married photographer Margaret Bourke-White, collaborating with her on three photo-documentaries. The purpose of this volume is to set forth some of the experience of an author which may be of interest to curious readers and would-be writers who seek visions of the conwerland in which all authors are believed to exist. It has not been the author's intention to put down in detail all of the happenings of his lifetime but to relate to some extent those experience that may have contributed to his writing and may have been reflected in short stories and novels. This book was written from memoranda and memory and it was the author's intention to real incidents and conversations to the best of his ability. This memoir presents an engaging self-portrait of Erskine Caldwell's first thirty years as a writer, with special emphasis on his long and hard apprenticeship before he emerged as one of the most widely read and controversial authors of his time. While conveying the enormous amount of drive and dedication with which he pursued the writer's life, Caldwell tells of his struggles to find his own voice, his travels, and his various jobs, which ranged from backbreaking common labor to much sought-after positions in radio, film, and journalism. Such literary personages as Nathanael West, Maxwell Perkins, and Margaret Mitchell appear in Call It Experience, as does Margaret Bourke-White, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects and whom he also married. Including a self-interview, Call It Experience offers a wealth of insights into Caldwell's imagination, his sources of inspiration, and his writing habits, as well as his views on critics and reviewers, publishers, and booksellers. It is a source of both information and inspiration to aspiring writers.