SOURCE: An introduction to Men and Women by Erskine Caldwell, edited by Carvel Collins, little, Brown and Company, 1961, pp. 3-9.

Collins was an American critic, educator, and editor, In the essay below, he accounts for Caldwell's great popularity by pointing to the sexual content of his stories, their element of social protest, and their humor.

In addition to his many novels Erskine Caldwell has published a hundred and fifty short stories. When he recently asked whether I would read his stories and select those I thought best, I was pleased to have the opportunity to reexamine an important part of the work of the world's most popular author of fiction.

Several of his stories, "Kneel to the Rising Sun" and "Candy-Man Beechum" and "Country Full of Swedes" among them, are classics of what Budd Schulberg calls "the one cultural expression in which our country seems to have excelled...