Books: Rednecks & Vinegar Sippers

MEN AND WOMEN (313 pp.)—Erskine Caldwell—Little, Brown ($5.25).

The ability to sell heavily in drugstores adds weight to an aspirin manufacturer's reputation, but not to a writer's. Probably for this reason, Erskine Caldwell seldom makes the lists of Meaningful Authors. Some 47 million Caldwell reprints (Certain Women, Claudelle Inglish) have been sold, most of them a salty but honestly written sort of gallus humor. But their covers—and occasionally, some of their contents—are aimed at the skin trade. Consequently, the author is too often ignored by readers who have passed the stage of handing...