Thu 7 Apr 2022
ERSKINE CALDWELL – The Bastard. Heron Press, hardcover, 1929. Novel Selections #51, paperback, 1953.
In a review of Harold Q. Masur’s Bury Me Deep, the PaperbackWarrior blog criticized the protagonist’s supposed lack of virility, claiming “The problem is that American crime fiction really hadn’t grown a set of balls by 1947.†They go on to credit Mickey Spillane as the tonic.
The claim is so false it makes me want to cry. But I won’t for fear they’d impugn my manhood or something.
Anywho, no one reading The Bastard could accuse the protagonist of “lacking balls.â€
Gene, who I’ll refer to as “the bastard,†is a bastard. In all the senses.
We’re introduced to him as he murders a patron of his whore (literally — I’d never use the word figuratively unless I was really really mad (which I am not at the moment)) of a mommy.
Then, his mother either not knowing or not caring, the bastard decides to become a client.
And that’s the light humor to begin the tale that only gets darker from there.
It’s an episodic book that just goes from scene to scene of aimless, conscienceless rape and murder.
Then, like Alex in Clockwork Orange’s final chapter (the one deleted from the film and American edition of the novel), he falls in love and decides to settle down.
But karma’s a bitch. And his wife births a freak whose sheer hideousness destroys his wife, and sets the bastard once more adrift.
If you like to rubberneck car wrecks, this one’s for you.
April 7th, 2022 at 6:43 pm
I never really did warm up to Caldwell, I know he wrote TOBACCO ROAD and GOD”S LITTLE ACRE, and I know his mix of sex, sweat, and the South was popular, and it certainly garnered some of the best and most memorable paperback covers of all time, but honestly it always felt like Faulkner without the sensibility and genius to me.
Considering his sales, I must be in a small minority about him, but hillbillies, moonshine, incest, and ignorance can only go so far as entertainment, and for me a little Caldwell went a long way.
April 7th, 2022 at 8:01 pm
David,
To me, Caldwell’s short stories are where he really shines. This novella I read partly because Allan Guthrie claimed it was perhaps the first noir. It is dark, that’s for sure, with hard colloquial prose. And possibly without precedent, coming out in 1929. Unlike Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre, this has absolutely no sense of humor. Just ultraviolence. And no redemption. Also interesting to see ‘justice’ meted out by something like karma, rather than ‘revenge’ or ‘the law’. In that way it reminded me of another Allan Guthrie fave, “Bodies Are Dust†by PJ Wolfson (1931). I’ve never seen it anywhere else.
April 7th, 2022 at 10:36 pm
Erskine Caldwell had a big influence on me in the early 1950’s. Not so much the fiction but the Signet paperbacks with the excellent James Avati covers which I found risque and sexy. Decades later I managed to buy a couple of the cover paintings and I still have one hanging in the hallway.