GOD'S LITTLE ACRE

Erskine Caldwell’s 1933 novel God’s Little Acre is Southern Gothic at its best. Is it better than his 1932 novel Tobacco Road? The jury is still out on that verdict, but I thoroughly enjoyed the 1933 novel. The vernacular language of the 1930’s Georgia/Carolina (the full name of South Carolina was never mentioned) was highly readable, while retaining the slang of the times. An example of that is when the patriarch of the 45 acre farm, Ty Ty Walden, bemoaned the fact that one of his sons, Shaw, dropped his shovel and wanted to go to town, “Why in the pluperfect hell can’t he let the women alone? There ain’t no sense in a man going rutting every day in the whole year. The women will wear Shaw to a frazzle...he ought to be satisfied just to sit at home and look at the girls in the house.” Ty Ty uses the word pluperfect throughout the novel as well as the terms: as sure as God makes little green apples...and that’s a fact. This novel was banned for a long time in many states because it was considered pornographic. While there are a lot of promiscuous sexual happenings amongst the Walden family, they would hardly be considered pornographic in today’s standards...maybe it would have a “R” rating at best. Even with all those restrictions, the novel still sold 10 million copies.

So Ty Ty Walden has been digging up his farm looking for gold for fifteen years with the help of his boys Buck and Shaw. His other son, Jim Leslie (a cotton broker) left a long time ago to marry a rich girl and live in a big white house on a hill in the city. Ty Ty has two darkies (the author’s words, not mine), Black Sam and Uncle Felix, planting cotton on a small parcel of the land (they also dig when not plowing). On page thirteen, Ty Ty tells Pluto Swint, who is running for sheriff, about the one acre he has set aside, “You see that piece of ground over yonder, Pluto? Well, that’s God’s little acre. I set aside an acre of this place, and every year I give the church all that comes off that acre of ground. If it’s cotton, I give the church all the money the cotton brings at market. The same with hogs, when I raised them, and about corn, too, when I plant it. That’s God’s little acre, Pluto. I’m proud to divide what little I have with God.” Unfortunately, Ty Ty hasn’t planted or raised anything on that acre for many years. And he keeps moving the acre around when he decides to dig there. Most of his farm is pock marked with giant holes and high piles of dirt and clay.`Ty Ty’s daughter, Darling Jill is a real looker, while Buck’s Wife, Griselda, is considered the prettiest girl in the county. A third daughter, Rosamond, lives in Carolina with her husband, Will, in a cotton mill town. Buck hates Will and calls him a lint-head, because cotton mill workers always have residue cotton fibers in their hair. Will and his co-workers have been on strike against the mill for eighteen months. The entire Walden family (except Jim Leslie) are dirt poor.

Pluto, who loves Darling Jill, tells Ty Ty that a albino man has been spotted near the swamp. The darkies say that an all-white man can divine (locate) a lode. They believe in the power of conjuring. Ty Ty and his boys drive to the swamp in hopes of capturing the all-white man. They capture the albino in his house by the swamp and bring him back to the farm. Sometimes this novel makes me laugh (it’s not supposed to). Uncle Felix keeps guard on Dave, the albino, but he really doesn’t have to since Dave has eyes for Darling Jill. So funny (this novel isn’t a comedy, but sometimes it seemed like one). The next day, Pluto ask Ty Ty, “Did he divine for you, Ty Ty?” “Just like four and four makes eight,” Ty Ty said. “When we got him here and told him what he was to do, why the first thing he did was to point out that spot where the new hole is now. He said that was the place to dig for the lode. And that’s where it is.” There is a lot of excitement in the ensuing pages. Who has sex with who? Who or how many in the family will die or be murdered? How about the cotton mill strike? Does Ty Ty find his gold? This was a great story of the final decline of a poor white family in rural Georgia that had me hooked from page one to the last few pages, which were fateful or fatal...depending on who the character was.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: The novel was turned into a major motion picture in 1958. The cast included: Robert Ryan as Ty Ty, Tina Louise as Griselda, Aldo Ray as Will, Buddy Hackett as Pluto Swint, Jack Lord as Buck, Michael Landing as Dave (the albino), Fay Spain as Darlin’ Jill, Vic Morrow as Shaw, Helen Westcott as Rosamond, Rex Ingram as Uncle Felix and Lance Fuller as Jim Leslie. Wow, what a cast! How much would it cost in today’s money to have all those stars in the same movie?