Customer Reviews

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

What is this thing?!?!? - As John Hersey says in the introduction (page xxviii), "There had never been, and there will never be, anything quite like this book."-On the back cover, a dashing Agee is pictured with a glass of what one presumes to be a shot of the strong stuff in his hand. Appropriately, because the writing resembles nothing so much as an (at times) divinely inspired inebriety. He bounces from one form of writing to the next (poetry, descriptive prose, vituperative essay) without so much as a feint of a segue. There is really no narrative form to speak of. It seems clear (to me at least) that Agee didn't know himself what he was doing at times, and the striking pictures of Evans never seem to connect in the way they should with Agee's prose. It's rather like the characters in James Dickey's Deliverence stumbled out into a swath of impoverished farmland to write a book and take some pictures rather than into a soon-to-be dammed up river to take an ill-advised canoe trip. (One is not surprised, somehow, to learn that Agee was one of Dickey's great literary heroes.) ....And yet, for all the muddle, or perhaps because of it, the book has a disconcerting charm that will not let one be. I don't know where to pinpoint it or how to analyze it. But it's there, like some mischievous elf standing before your eyes who will not leave no matter how many times you open and shut your eyes and shake your head...There is a paragraph in the "On The Porch" section toward the end of the book, describing a girl in the dawning of her sexuality: "A phase so unassailably beyond any meaning of tenderness and of trust, so like the opening of the first living upon the shining of the young earth in its first morning..." In the book's finest moments, in Agee's best sections of writing, we feel this painfully fleeting innocence and bliss wafting over the lives of the simple and hard-bitten tenant farmers, a presence almost physical amidst the cruel hardships they endure. Perhaps this is part of the book's mysterious hold on generations of readers.

I can scarcely recall a time when I did not want to read this book. In fact in february of 1996 I read And Their Children After Them, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, which is a 1989 sequel to Let Us Now Praise, and examines what happened to the people Agee tells us about in this book, and their children. After reading this, I now want to again read what became of the people Let Us Now Praise led us to come to know so intimately. For many pages of this book reading it was a drag, and only my rigid rejection of the "right" of a reader to quit reading a book he has started caused me to continue reading. But in time I became glad I was reading it. The minute listing of every item in a room did not entrance me, but the cumulative effect of the recital of rural poverty accomplished its aim, Agee has his share of nutty ideas, but they do not overly detract from what he is telling us about Alabama in 1936. I am glad I read the book, and I will have to again look at And Their Children After Them.

I'm surprised that no one has yet to write a negative review of this novel. I personally love it, but it would seem like an easy one to hate. The writing it thick, the storyline flows in an unusual way, and the book itself undertakes an epic task. Be warned: Everyone should read this book, but it takes a special kind of person to really enjoy it.

In one of the most edifying ways, James Agee illustrates the life of the Southern tenant sharecropper in the Great Depression. Agee's writings coupled with the eloquent photography of one notable Walker Evans, distinguishes the book in a elite category unparalleled by few if any whatsoever. The circumstances the sharecropper endured during the Depression not only working the land but also at home with family was rigorous and was additionally exposed very thoroughly in Agee's writings. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the History of the Great Depression era/New Dealism. One other book of notable mention for those interested is Larry Nelson's- KING COTTON'S ADVOCATE.

Can't quite give it 5 stars because Agee's self-indulgence does get to me (Evans, though is flawless). The indulgence I speak of is not so much the Agee's overdescription of his own mental states, though this can be intrusive and less than profound, but the too frequent willingness to let language and imagination take flight from reality, when reality, ultimately, is what is so compelling here. Imagination and trustworthiness unnecessarily depart ways, as Agee at times prefers the poetic to the truth. Nonetheless, the decision not to hem in those very flights of empathetic understanding that may depart from specific reality surely allowed him to give the essential breath and life to the portraiture. The perhaps more accurate, but much less illuminating, 1989 followup by Maharidge & Williamson (discussed below) is a useful contrast - all facts, rather little life. And one after all knows, reading Agee, that he probably hasn't quite got everything right; despite the book's inescapable flaws, it (and the marvelous photos) achieves the much deeper task of bringing these people to life and making outsiders understand their dignity in the face of poverty, even where that dignity is expressed in perverse ways (though sometimes seeing dignity when further investigation or more honest reporting, as Maharidge found with the Rickets, would have acknowledged more distressing truths).

But just adding a review to point the curious to a 1989 followup, And Their Children After Them, by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson, which traces what became of the Gudgers, Woodses, Rickets, and their descendants (they keep the pseudonyms, though the names are elsewhere widely known - Burroughs, Fields, and Tingle (or Tengle)). The newer book certainly does not have the poetry of the original, and it is out of print, but it's worth checking out of your local library if you're left haunted wondering whatever became of the people Agee made you care so deeply about (and how much he got right).

I don't agree that the writing is fantastic. I think that at times it bogs down and can be very boring. But the images Agee leaves with you are matched by the photographs of Evans. They are unforgettable. Read the chapter where Agee takes an entire household inventory. Amazing! I've always wanted to know--what happened to these people? These specific families...where are the children now? Did that one little girl live to adulthood? Did any of them "make something" of themselves? Fascinating questions...possibly disturbing answers.