“He still could not understand why he had nothing, and would never have anything, and there was no one who knew and who could tell him. It was the unsolved mystery of his life.”

Brown Baggers book club met Thursday, November 15 at noon to discuss Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell. Readers can expect to find an unhappy family of poor sharecroppers in rural Georgia, headed by main character Jeeter Lester, in this southern gothic classic. Jeeter and his wife Ada and their twelve children are “overcome by the fractured and violent society around them.” No wonder one reader classified this as “the most depressing book I’ve ever read.”

Funny enough, this was actually a point of contrasting opinions among our readers. Many readers found the book absolutely not depressing and others even found the book “extremely funny” (noticing black humor, satire, and/or intentional sensationalism). Because of the complex and varied ways our readers interpreted the characters and plot, it came as no surprise to see that the room was almost exactly evenly split when asked “did you like the book?” This book reminded many readers of the traditional theater mask featuring the split face – half drooping in tragedy, half uplifted in comedy. Speaking of theater, interestingly, the Broadway dramatization of the novel was (and is!) phenomenally successful (“as of 2023, it was still the 20th longest-running Broadway show in history, as well as being the second-longest running non-musical ever on Broadway”). To read Tobacco Road as a play, find it here in the library catalog.

We talked about reading this book through humorous/tragic lenses, and we also talked about reading it like a folktale. Consider how the story cycles, again and again, back to itself. All the repetition reminded readers of folktales in which part of the fun is knowing that bits and pieces are coming back again. If you’re reading for plot, you might have to laugh, when eventually you can answer the question of “where is this going?” with an emphatic “nowhere!”

The last paragraph of the book reads: “I reckon I’ll get me a mule somewhere and some seed-cotton and guano, and grow me a crop of cotton this year,” Dude said. “It feels to me like it’s going to be a good year for cotton. Maybe I could grow me a bale to the acre, like Pa was always talking about doing.” It’s not a happy ending, as it suggests the generational reincarnation of old – and fruitless – ambitions of those in poverty is inevitable and unending. But readers felt, after everything clicked, that they had been brought to the end. Caldwell’s message, that poverty has a dehumanizing effect on the human spirit, shines here.

Last, it’s important to note that some readers were offended by this book. For some, the subject matter of a poor farming family cut too close to home. Especially because some felt that Caldwell was making fun of the Lesters. Still others noted that the novel, by being read and discussed today, could perpetuate the myth of the American south.

What did you think of Tobacco Road? Did you watch the movie adaptation?

Other books to explore:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Holding on to Nothing by Elizabeth Chiles Shelburn

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy

If the Creek Don’t Rise by Leah Weiss

Bloodroot by Amy Greene

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell

You Have Seen Their Faces by Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White