Conversation with Caldwell

Freedom from the stylization of an earlier day is a good thing in current writing, according to Erskine Caldwell, one of America's best-known and most prolific writers. Caldwell was here in mid-October for a 10-day stay as Visiting Author in Baker Library, repeating a visit he made five years ago.

"After all," the ruddy-faced author explained, 'the whole idea of writing is to express ideas in a fresh way. The recent freedom in style may well be a way to achieve that."

A soft-spoken, carefully attentive man, Caldwell urged continual practice upon those who would follow the difficult craft of writing. But. at the same time, he cautioned against derivative imitation. "I would tell a young person who wants to write, he said, "to forget what's already been done. Express yourself in your own way. This takes a lot of practice, in much the same way a doctor needs a thorough internship to perfect his skills." One has to read the past, he admitted, to know about the present and the future. But a successful writer's outlook must be to the future. "The day of the essayist writing in an attic is past," he said. "The writer of today, whether of fiction or non-fiction, must go out in the street and learn about today."

The Georgia-born novelist, who has been a newspaperman, editor, lecturer and script-writer as well, has been in the forefront of American letters since his first book was published in 1929. His long, varied and eminently successful career has produced such famous books as God'sLittle Acre. Tobacco Road, Trouble inJuly, and Georgia Boy. Indeed. Annette, published this month by the New American Library is his 50th title ("It may be 51, but 50 is a good, round number"). It is, he explained, about a disturbed person who keeps trying to find a way to stop living without knowing quite how to do it.

Caldwell, who has lived in many areas of the United States (Maine, Connecticut, New York, Arizona, California, most of the southern states, and, for the past five years, Florida), says that his entire life is spent writing or travelling. Most recently he spent January and February in Eastern Europe, in Russia and in the Soviet bloc countries. He found this area, in contrast with earlier visits to it, more Westernized in attitudes and fashions and quite upto-date with the trends, thoughts and politics of the West. Next year, he hopes to revisit Japan ("everyone there seems to be a student of something, even of folding paper - it's a fascinating country and people").

But, for all his travels abroad, Caldwell confessed that his most unique experience occurred this past August in Indiana. He had, he said, been a judge in many sorts of contests over the years - beauty contest, hog-calling, the Cannes Film Festival - but in the Hoosier State his critical faculties were put to yet another test. "I was," he said, with the trace of a smile, "a judge in the Miss Nude America Contest, with entries from all 50 states. It was elective for the judges to perform their duties in the nude. I did not so elect."