This book is a magazine article written for Fortune Magazine in 1936 and never published until this book. It was the first result of the on site research James Agee undertook in the rural south. Later he wrote now Let Us Praise Famous Men using this background. The writing style is formal, reporterly but also sometimes poetic and not in a manner that appealed to me. When the 27 year old mother and her 10 year old daughter prepare for bed he writes: "they wash their feet with modesty, they retire into that room where six sleep in no privacy, and undress. The wife and daughter change into cotton shifts the respective ruin and april of their flesh." To describe overcooked vegetables he writes: "winter greens which, again are cooked to the texture of shoetongues." Every shoe tongue I have ever encountered has been pretty firm; leather or canvas. I think he just wanted to add a flourish even if it did not make sense. I don't think an adult reader would find out anything new from this book and the style would put off anyone younger. Just published after @60 years - written for a Fortune magazine article by a young James Agee - subsequent winner of a Pulitzer Prize - with photographs by Walker Evans. It describes living conditions for three white tenant families in Alabama in the 30's - a rather disturbing view of a way of life that doesn't exist anymore - but might be analagous to present times in terms of an underclass without education and trapped in poverty.After you read the article you will understand why Fortune did not want it printed. With the photographs and the writing it is a worthwhile read!
The writing is pitch perfect in this irreplaceable addendum to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
—Mel
Excellent document of the South and the terrible toil it took to barely survive.
—dranter
Agee at his best: precise, colorful prose and careful empathy
—ericko10229
Fascinating. I couldn't put this down.
—frank
wonderful, simple, and haunting
—kbeauford92
