I'm just an ordinary writer, Erskine Caldwell once wrote. I'm not trying to sell anything; I'm not trying to buy anything. I'm just trying to present my vision of life. His ostensibly unsolicitous vision of Southern grotesques, of the slack-jawed, pellagra-ridden sharecroppers, repressed farmwives, and oversexed nymphets, elicited, however, anything but an ordinary response. Hailed by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins, reviled by others as a pornographer or sensationalist, Caldwell was once called America's most popular author. Once the furor flagged, Caldwell was relegated to the mansions of subliterature, where his reputation resides today.