Georgia Preacher

JOURNEYMAN--Erskine Caldwell--Viking Press ($4.50).

It has always been a nice problem in the past to determine where realism leaves off and burlesque begins in Erskine Caldwell's novels (Tobacco Road, God's Little Acre). But this new Caldwell story will not give many readers trouble, for it reads throughout like a complete travesty of the author's previous method. Journeyman is the story of an itinerant preacher. Semon Dye, the "potentest" man that ever drove a ramshackle remnant of a Model T Ford down a Georgia turnpike. Semon is a crap-shooting, corn-guzzling, philandering highbinder with a gimlet eye and a ready pistol.

A legendary character in the Georgia backwoods, he both delights and surprises white-trash Clay Horey by driving into the yard one day and demanding food, lodging and female solace from one of the "high-yallers" down the road. Horey is glad to comply until Semon makes a play for his 15-year-old wife, Dene. The novel bounces riotously from lecherous high jinks to a crap game in which Horey loses money, new car and spouse to the all-powerful Man of God. The book reaches a tropical heat-wave climax with Sunday's revival meeting in the schoolhouse, where the inhabitants of Rocky Comfort roll on the floor, beat their heads against the walls and dance the cancan in order to get close to God.

In the end, although Semon Dye has seduced most of the women, consumed most of the corn, and taken most of the money in the immediate neighborhood of Clay Horey's shack, the people of Rocky Comfort are sorry to have the wandering Man of God hit the trail for the next town. He may have brought ruination with him, but he was at least a diversion. Most readers will not believe in any of the characters of Journeyman, but they may be impressed by Mr. Caldwell's violent energy, his satirical thrusts at orgiastic religion.

Journeyman is limited to 1,475 numbered copies. Probable reason for this publishing tactic is fear of Vice Suppressor John S. Sumner, who had the Viking Press haled before Magistrate Benjamin Greenspan more than a year ago on a charge that God's Little Acre was lascivious, lewd, indecent. Judge Greenspan, a liberal, failed to see eye to eye with Mr. Sumner, dismissed the charge. But the Viking Press prefers to be cautious with Journeyman. Less subtle than God's Little Acre, less clogged with esoteric symbolism, it is totally innocent of sexual circumlocutions.

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