Erskine Caldwell PRESTON Kimdir ?

(1903 Georgia, ABD - 1987 Arizona, ABD) Amerikalı yazar. Gençliğinde aşçı, garson, gazeteci olarak çalıştı. Ömrünün büyük bir kısmını güney bölgelerinde geçirdi.
Romanlarında Georgia’daki yaşamı sert bir gerçekçilikle anlattı. Yoksul beyazların sefaletiyle zenciler üzerindeki baskıyı irdeledi. Yapıtlarında bölgecilik yaptığı gerekçesiyle, zamanında büyük tepkiler aldı. Tütün Yolu ve Tanrının Küçük Tarlası adlı romanlarıyla büyük bir ün kazandı. Birinci romanının oyun hâline getirilmiş şekli yedi yıl süreyle sahneden inmedi. ABD ve Avrupa’da yapılmış çok sayıda röportaj yayımladı.
Başlıca yapıtları şunlardır:
Romanları; Piç (1930), Yoksul Çılgın (1930), Tütün Yolu (1932), Tanrının Küçük Tarlası (1933), Gezici Vaiz (1935), Temmuz Derdi (1940), Uğursuz Toprak (1944), Dağlık Bölgede Bir Ev (1946), Tanrının Yanılmaz Eli (1947), Bu Toprak (1948), Estherville Diye Bir Yer (1949), Akşamda Bir Işık (1952), Jenny (1961), Eve Yakın (1962), Mis Mamma Aimee (1967), Arnette (1973); öyküleri; Amerika’nın Toprağı (1930), Doğan Güneşe Diz Çök (1935), Güneye Doğru (1938), Georgialı Delikanlı (1943), Geride Kalan Yıllar (öz yaşam öyküsü, 1951), Aşk ve Para (1955), Gretta (1955), O Kadınlar (1958).

Alıntı:

Erskine Preston Caldwell carved a monumental career as one of America's bestselling authors out of a dogged desire to reveal "the inner spirit of men and women as they responded to the joys of life and reacted to the sorrows of existence." 1 Criticized and censored by the complicating intellects of literary centurions on one side and by the misapprehending loyalties of sentimental Southerners on another, Caldwell persevered to outlive (and outwork) his detractors and to earn the highest accolades of his profession and his fellow Southerners.
Between 1929 and 1984, Caldwell published 26 novels, 16 collections of stories, 15 books of nonfiction, two children's books, and a collection of poetry. Two of his novels are easily among the most well-known works in twentieth-century America, either through the sheer number of copies sold or due to the many adaptations that they have inspired. Tobacco Road, the enduring depiction of impoverished Georgia tenant farmers, was included in The Modern Library's list of the 100 most influential novels in English since 1900. God's Little Acre, another Georgia-based novel of the rural poor, has sold over fourteen million copies and was recently reprinted (with Tobacco Road, Georgia Boy and others) by The University of Georgia Press.
His aggressive, adventurous journalism and his craft as a short-story writer are often overshadowed by the fame (or notoriety) of his novels. However, New Deal-era reforms of the Southern tenant farm system were bolstered by his nonfiction attacks on the tenant system - in pamphlet form, in New York Post articles, and in his collaborative effort with photographer Margaret Bourke White, You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). And no less than seven Caldwell stories were included in the Best American Short Stories anthology series, and four were included in the annual O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories series.
In 1984 Erskine Caldwell was elected to the fifty-chair body of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. At last count, his books had sold more than 80 million copies and have been translated into 43 languages.