“Structurally the story is chaotic and badly put together, being obviously the work of an ambitious young writer who has been emboldened to do something imaginatively big, but who has no control of the superabundance of material at his disposal. His ‘Poor white’ is in its way a remarkable piece of work, but it is not the first novel that has been written about the life it depicts or the last word in American fiction.” E. F. Edgett
+ − Boston Transcript p8 D 1 ’20 1700w
“He has made his story a ‘Pilgrim’s’ progress,’ peopled with characters as actual and as full of meaning as those of the immortal allegory.” R. M. Lovett
+ Dial 70:77 Ja ’21 850w
“While as a novel the design, rhythms, texture and synthesis are about as bad as can be, as a book of miracles it is beautiful. The unexpected marvels of understanding, the terrible flashes of accuracy, the strange pity and enfolding passion are all incidental and personal: the epic he sought to write is cumbersome and dead, but the souls born from his soul live and suffer before us.” C. K. Scott
+ − Freeman 2:403 Ja 5 ’21 580w
“In veracity and intellectual honesty Mr Anderson’s book is incomparably superior to most of our novels. But compared to ‘Main street’ it lacks fire and edge, lucidity and fulness.”
+ − Nation 111:536 N 10 ’20 200w
“To deny that ‘Poor white’ is a creation, an organism, with a life of its own, would be to sin against the light: but it is only fair to say that Mr Anderson’s limitations make ‘Poor white’ an incomplete, a maimed, organism.” F. H.
+ − New Repub 24:330 N 24 ’20 1250w