[.ca] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (ISBN 0395957710)

From Amazon.com:
Just what kind of book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? It contains many things: poems; confessional reveries; disquisitions on the proper way to listen to Beethoven; snippets of dialogue, both real and imagined; a lengthy response to a survey from the Partisan Review; exhaustive catalogs of furniture, clothing, objects, and smells. And then there are Walker Evans's famously stark portraits of depression-era sharecroppers--photographs that both stand apart from and reinforce James Agee's words. Assigned to do a story for Fortune magazine about sharecroppers in the Deep South, Agee and Evans spent four weeks living with a poor white tenant family, winning the Burroughs's trust and immersing themselves in a sharecropper's daily existence. Given a first draft of the resulting article, the editors at Fortune quite understandably threw up their hands--as did several other editors who subsequently worked with a later book-length manuscript. The writing was contrary. It refused to accommodate itself to the reader, and at times it positively bristled with hostility. (What other book could take Marx as the epigraph and then announce: "These words are quoted here to mislead those who will be misled by them"?) Response to the book was puzzled or unfriendly, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sputtered out of print only a few short years after its publication. It took the 1960s, and a vogue for social justice, to bring Agee's masterwork the audience it deserved. Yet the book is far more interesting--aesthetically and morally--than the sort of guilty-liberal tract for which it is often mistaken. On an existential level, Agee's text is a deeply felt examination of what it means to suffer, to struggle to live in spite of suffering. On a personal level, it is the painful, beautifully written portrait of one man's obsession. In its collaboration with Evans's photographs, the book is also a groundbreaking experiment in form. In the end, however, it is more than merely the sum of its parts. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is, quite simply, a book unlike any other, simmering with anger and beauty and mystery. --Mary Park

Read it? YES --- Praise it? NO:
Yes, Agee has an exceptional ability to use language. Yes, this novel is a "must read" for anyone interested in Depression-Era literature. No, it is not a good book, precisely for the same reason it is frequently recommended, namely, it's language. Agee is understandably distressed by the inability of language to adequately express the plight of the families he portrays. However, he does not merely acknowledge this and move on, he rather writes an entire book about his inability to write. For someone interested in theory this might be interesting, but for someone interested in better understanding tenant farmers in the early 20th century, this is not the place to go. Although his intentions may be good, Agee's angst becomes primary in the text, even to the point of superseding the families' troubles. In the end, Agee is more concerned with how he is affected by his subject than by his subject in and of itself. See Orwell's THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER for a superb treatment of a similar topic.

Painfully Good Photos and Essays That Sing:
I would recommend this book for highschool kids who can handle more difficult phrasing and literary styles..because it is a great read and depicts life in a time that most of us living today can't imagine: the Great Depression. We've all seen some photos of the horrible ravages of the dust bowl era on farmfields in the 1930's..but the pictures included here by Walker Evans are of the faces that witnessed and were living through that ravaging..and they show it. The passages are bleak, darkly humorous at times..and gritty..and best of all..they're real. The passage on young Emma is flawless. I would recommend to anyone who has already read and enjoyed this book a listen to Richard Buckner's album 'Bloomed'..in which he sets to minimal and appealing tune the words that describe Emma's plight. A perfect antidote for the bland materialism of today's mall culture.

Detailed and moving:
Starts out with a long discourse that is not easy to read, but soon becomes a detailed and moving description of three tenant famer families. Depressing, but valuable. Photos are very moving.

Deeply Flawed Work; Don't Be Seduced by the Language:
This book is indeed a landmark in the (rather young) field of American ethnography; it is a one-of-a-kind work, and a very brave effort by two immensely talented, well-intentioned men. Aesthetically speaking, this is a tremendous work. At the same time, this book's beauty should not overshadow the fact that as a piece of ethnography, it is deeply, even fatally flawed. Agee allows his political agenda and deeply-rooted assumptions about life and poverty in the rural South to completely exclude the lives and thoughts of his subjects, committing the cardinal sin of ethnography. For instance, in describing a bedroom, he talks about an "obscene smelling Bible." How in God's name can a Bible smell obscene? This is a Bible kept on a dresser, well-worn and clearly frequently used. To Agee, this Bible is a pathetic and somehow "obscene" artifact, while it obviously is a treasured spiritual possession that speaks to the core of its owners' existence. Why describe it as "obscene smelling" when you can ask its owner exactly what it means to him or her? Examples like this flood the book, and it is easy to be seduced by Agee's beautiful writing and miss how flawed his perspective is; it is flawed to the core. Remember, this book is ostensibly about rural tenant farmers in the South, but much of it is really about Agee. Keep this in mind when you read it.

A Puzzle to be piece together....:
James Agee's book on the sharecroppers of the American south during the great depression is a book not to be taken lightly. I read this book for a college english class and I can honestly say that most people in the course including myself are confused by Agee's intent and purpose. Agee's highly lyrical and philosophical tone allows a deep analysis into the question of human existence in the depression south. Yet, the very scope and difficulty of his subject is expressed in his confused, perhaps confusing writing. There are lonely moments of insight stacked alongside pages of seemingly irrelevant and baseless speculation. I say seemingly because each time I re-read the passage I find that Agee's words have quite a bit more meaning than I had originally found. This book is not a novel, not journalism but a puzzle which Agee could not piece together. Only with time and care can the reader hope to understand the frustratingly complex yet real message of Agee's work.