God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell (1933)

God's Little Acre was Banned in Boston when it was published back in 1933 and its author, Erskine Caldwell, was tried for obscenity (though not convicted). The problem was the hyper-sexuality which permeates the novel; although no actual physical details are given about the several sexual couplings, the language throughout is frank and graphic. As the Chicago Tribune said at the time, "What William Faulkner implies Erskine Caldwell records...." In spite of all this controversy, or more likely because of it, the book became a runaway best seller.

I don't consider myself a prude, but, frankly, I found this book distasteful and offensive. This is the story of a Southern White Trash family who are obsessed with digging for gold on their fertile land instead of farming it. They are none too bright and are animalistic in their quite active sexual lives, with the women behaving like bitch dogs in perpetual heat and the men responding without regard for decorum. That is the distasteful part. The offensiveness comes from the overall picture of poor Southerners, who I don't believe ever fell quite this low on the humanity chain. As a poor Southerner, I take offense.

Obviously, Faulkner explored some of the same themes, but, as the Chicago Tribune said, he only implied and never resorted to the like of Caldwell's oft-repeated chunk of dialogue by the father in this story speaking of his daughter-in-law's "pair of rising beauties" which make him "just ache to get down and lick something."

Distasteful, right?