Caldwell claims to have studiously avoided modeling himself on any other writer. In his autobiography With All My Might, he explained that for this reason he deliberately limited himself in his reading. "Since I had so much writing of my own to try to accomplish, I could not bring myself to devote valuable time to reading the heralded masters of the past. Instead, I decided to select one book by a contemporary author as being representative of his work." Thus Caldwell denies having read such probable influences as Mark Twain or Jack London.

He did, however, acknowledge in interviews his early indebtedness to Sherwood Anderson, with whom he shares numerous similarities. He also expressed his admiration for Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900), Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground (1925), and William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930), all of which he read near the beginning of his own career. And if...