I and Claudie is a delightful and captivating novel about a couple of
bungling but good-hearted con men who (barely) make their way across
Texas over a two-year period in the 1930s. Their adventures, Anderson
said, were "in no sense autobiographical, but sometimes I am sorry they
are not." The charming con men outwit lumbermen, oil men, and others,
but are sometimes the victims themselves. Clint Hightower (the "I" in
the title) is a smooth- talking maker of deals; Claudie Hughes, all 6'6"
of him, is his slower-of-mind sidekick who does all the real work and,
often unwittingly, saves the day. The reader is both entertained and
informed by the book. We learn much about Texas and Texans of the
period. We learn about hurricanes along the coast, oil leasing and
lumbering in East Texas, buried treasure in West Texas, the state fair
in Dallas, the stockyards in Forth Worth, farming along the Brazos
River, and more. The stories that make up the novel have been compared
in style to O. Henry's classic tales. Several of them appeared in the
venerable Atlantic Monthly before the book was published in 1951. One of
A.C. Green's all time top 50 I and Claudie is a delightful book. One or
two latter-day critics have termed it too ingenuous for our
sophisticated age. Don't believe them. Clint Hightower would be right at
home today in many an executive suite, with Claudie . . . waiting to
take the fall for him.-- A. C. Greene, The Fifty Best Books on Texas
