SOURCE: "Repetition as Technique in the Short Stories of Erskine Caldwell," in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 5, No. 2, Autumn, 1977, pp. 213-25.

In the following essay, MacDonald details Caldwell's use of repetition in his characters ' speeches, in descriptions of settings and events, and in the structures of his short stories.

James Dickey has said [in Sorties, 1971] that Thomas Wolfe's work is "so rhetorical that it is almost a shameful act. But there should be such rhetorical writing, as the indication of a kind of limit." The converse might be said about Erskine Caldwell's short fiction. In many of his stories Caldwell's style is so spare and so completely unadorned that the reader learns just how few of the traditional literary devices a writer can use and still create stories which are meaningful and effective. While the hallmark of Caldwell's prose style is simplicity, however, a careful investigation of...