Following the publication of The road to snuff "(1932) and" The parcel of God "(1933) Erskine Caldwell set out to write another novel. The success, including scandal, met for the above works assumed for its author a new challenge. During the writing of "The Preacher" Caldwell doubts assailed him, and even after the novel published in 1935 maintained its reservations about the result achieved. However, with hindsight, what is evident is the extreme consistency of a singular narrative at its height, so that "the preacher", but less well known than his two previous novels, is a fitting climax to a superb trilogy.
Erskine Caldwell was the son of an ordained minister of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian, and spent the first years of his life traveling with her parents a number of towns and cities of South America. As he says in "In the shadow of bell "(1966), a book half way between the essay and autobiographical reminiscence," had lived as a child of a pastor during those years, I had accumulated a considerable amount of religious experience, so I felt confident he can adjust to any kind of life, wherever he was. "largely a result of this experience is" The Preacher ", first published in Spain by Navona.
The protagonist of the novel is Semon Dye, an itinerant preacher one day it stops in the town of Rocky Comfort, in Georgia, apparently ready to save the souls of its inhabitants. Dye staying with Clay Horey, a married landowner Dene a girl of fifteen. He meets, among others, to Lorene's ex-wife of Clay, which exerts a prostitute, Sugar and Hardy, a pair of black tenants, and neighbor Tom Rhodes, illegal whiskey distillers. Thereafter, and during just one week, the lives of all who come into contact with the preacher will be disrupted. Dye is sleeping with Sugar, tries to seduce Dene, he offered to be the pimp beats Lorene and Dice Clay (rigged) almost all their belongings.
Seductive, naughty, scheming and shameless character breaks Semon Dye schemes which are supposed to be a minister of the Lord. Cheating, drinking, gambling, fornication and no doubt where appropriate to make use of a firearm. In this sense, Semon Dye-a "man of God", as defined by himself, can be aligned with two other famous preachers of fiction: Elmer Gantry, the novel by Sinclair Lewis, and the Rev. Harry Powell in "The Night of the Hunter "by Davis Grub. Not as histrionic as the first, nor as sinister as the second, both equal in wickedness. There is in the attitude of some demonic Dye. In the name of God does the work of the devil (the flies that plague women in the Sunday sermon would become as emissary of Beelzebub, the "Lord of the Flies" in the tradition demonological). With this excessive and disturbing character Caldwell wanted to condense the worst of those unscrupulous charlatans masquerading as ministers of the Lord. This time, rather than denounce the social and racial discrimination, as it had most of his earlier stories and novels, the author directs his darts to certain religious sects that exploited with impunity the most disadvantaged sections of the South with message handlers and ceremonies hysterical (the cathartic, almost orgasmic, final sermon would be an epitome of such acts).
As expected the publication of "The Preacher" was greeted with a difference of opinion and not achieved the same remarkable favor of the public who had harvested the two previous novels (although it sold well and became a stage version of it). For its part, the criticism, somewhat puzzled by the new turn of Caldwell, was divided. While some appreciated the dark side of the case and "exasperation" of the author with his characters, while others emphasized the character "fun" of reading or affected the "consummate humor" in some situations. Certainly a bittersweet humor pervades the actions of some characters with a touch bizarre. This chaired as usual by a refined style, frankly, no one talks rhetoric and lectures.
In one of the most original scenes towards the end of the novel, Clay and Semon will visit Tom Rhodes. They find it in the shed, sitting on a stool, watching enraptured the outside world through a crack in the wall of the same: "There is nothing like looking through the wall of the shed, he tells them. You sit a while, and as you lose your concentration, you can not look away. Catch a man as anything in the world. You sit down, squinting and looking at trees or something, and maybe start thinking about how stupid it is what you're doing, but do not give a damn. The only thing that matters is you stand there and watch. " Apart from the symbolism that we want to assign to this "crack" Something similar happens with this novel by Caldwell. Once started can not stop reading it. Jorge Ordaz
