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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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Puzzle to be piece together....,
By A Customer
This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Paperback)
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.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Detailed and moving,
This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Paperback)
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.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Read it? YES --- Praise it? NO,
By Scott Alan Krzych (Chatsworth, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Hardcover)
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.
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