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James Agee: A Life
A biography of American novelist, critic, poet, and screenwriter James Agee discusses his youth, education, marriages and affairs, literary career, profligate lifestyle, and early death and analyzes Agee's role in American letters
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
467 pages, Paperback
First published July 12, 1984
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76 people want to read
About the author
Laurence Bergreen
19 books322 followersLaurence Bergreen is an award-winning biographer, historian, and chronicler of exploration. His books have been translated into over 20 languages worldwide. In October 2007, Alfred A. Knopf published Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, a groundbreaking biography of the iconic traveler. Warner Brothers is developing a feature film based on this book starring Matt Damon and written by William Monahan, who won an Oscar for “The Departed.”
His previous work, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published to international acclaim by William Morrow/HarperCollins in October 2003. A New York Times “Notable Book” for 2003, it is also in development as a motion picture and is now in its tenth printing.
In addition, Bergreen is the author of Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth, a narrative of NASA’s exploration of Mars, published in November 2000 by Penguin Putnam. Dramatic rights were acquired by TNT.
In 1997, Bantam Doubleday Dell published Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, a comprehensive biography drawing on unpublished manuscripts and exclusive interviews with Armstrong colleagues and friends. It appeared on many “Best Books of 1997” lists, including those of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Publishers Weekly, and has been published in Germany, Finland, and Great Britain. In 1994, Simon & Schuster published his Capone: The Man and the Era. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it has been published in numerous foreign languages, was optioned by Miramax, and was a New York Times “Notable Book.”
His biography, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, appeared in 1990. This book won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award and received front-page reviews in major American and British newspapers and appeared on bestseller lists; it was also a New York Times “Notable Book” for 1990. His previous biography, James Agee: A Life, was also critically acclaimed and was a New York Times “Notable Book” for 1984. His first book was Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting, published by Doubleday in 1980.
He has written for many national publications including Esquire, Newsweek, TV Guide, Details, Prologue, The Chicago Tribune, and Military History Quarterly. He has taught at the New School for Social Research and served as Assistant to the President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. In 1995, he served as a judge for the National Book Awards and in 1991 as a judge for the PEN/Albrand Nonfiction Award. A frequent lecturer at major universities and symposiums, he also serves as a Featured Historian for the History Channel.
Mr. Bergreen graduated from Harvard University in 1972. He is a member of PEN American Center, The Explorers Club, the Authors Guild, and the board of the New York Society Library. He lives in New York City and is represented by Suzanne Gluck of the William Morris Agency.
His previous work, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, was published to international acclaim by William Morrow/HarperCollins in October 2003. A New York Times “Notable Book” for 2003, it is also in development as a motion picture and is now in its tenth printing.
In addition, Bergreen is the author of Voyage to Mars: NASA’s Search for Life Beyond Earth, a narrative of NASA’s exploration of Mars, published in November 2000 by Penguin Putnam. Dramatic rights were acquired by TNT.
In 1997, Bantam Doubleday Dell published Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life, a comprehensive biography drawing on unpublished manuscripts and exclusive interviews with Armstrong colleagues and friends. It appeared on many “Best Books of 1997” lists, including those of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Publishers Weekly, and has been published in Germany, Finland, and Great Britain. In 1994, Simon & Schuster published his Capone: The Man and the Era. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it has been published in numerous foreign languages, was optioned by Miramax, and was a New York Times “Notable Book.”
His biography, As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, appeared in 1990. This book won the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award and the ASCAP-Deems Taylor award and received front-page reviews in major American and British newspapers and appeared on bestseller lists; it was also a New York Times “Notable Book” for 1990. His previous biography, James Agee: A Life, was also critically acclaimed and was a New York Times “Notable Book” for 1984. His first book was Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting, published by Doubleday in 1980.
He has written for many national publications including Esquire, Newsweek, TV Guide, Details, Prologue, The Chicago Tribune, and Military History Quarterly. He has taught at the New School for Social Research and served as Assistant to the President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. In 1995, he served as a judge for the National Book Awards and in 1991 as a judge for the PEN/Albrand Nonfiction Award. A frequent lecturer at major universities and symposiums, he also serves as a Featured Historian for the History Channel.
Mr. Bergreen graduated from Harvard University in 1972. He is a member of PEN American Center, The Explorers Club, the Authors Guild, and the board of the New York Society Library. He lives in New York City and is represented by Suzanne Gluck of the William Morris Agency.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 10, 2010
Fact: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was my earliest "gonzo" literary experience -- an elaborate, Biblical, rambling book with a world-historical anchor and a truth to tell us about poverty and faith. I was practically a kid when I devoured it between three jobs and over coffee -- age 22 or so -- but my impression was of an inspired tongue-of-fire collaborating with a no-nonsense genius photographer, Walker Evans. A professional collaboration, paid for by Fortune magazine no less. So imagine my surprise, reading the man's bio many years later, to find Jim Agee weeping uncontrollably at the foot of the bed as he watched Walker having sex with his pregnant wife Alma. Of course Agee arranged this kink scenario because he believed in universal love and whatnot, but the event scarred him and probably embarrassed all three parties... But that's nothing, Jim's ex-wife was also riding Walker's man-dangle just a couple years earlier.
I still can't say I have a grip on Agee, even after reading this propulsive bio. On the one hand he slogged about like a poverty-stricken sot (he "would work a suit into fitting him perfectly by the simple method of not taking it off much" says Evans), yet he was a Harvard grad who never held a regular manual-labor job in his life. He made some babies but never paid much attention to them, while adoring the many simultaneous women he was boning in some abstruse proto-hippie poly lifestyle. He became fast friends with Whittaker Chambers, Charlie Chaplin, Dwight MacDonald, John Huston, the mighty Helen Levitt, and Clement Greenberg (who said this about Jim: "He had the ability to be sincere without being honest").
His film reviews are a frontier of wit and insight; and he wrote the screenplays for The African Queen and Night of the Hunter. His ability to score chicks magically increased as he got doughier and more dissipated, with bad teeth and booze on his breath day and night. Indeed, one could say that round about 1949 (pace Jim Croce) you do mess around with Jim.
As he entered his forties he had heart attacks constantly, and at 45 he died in the back of a cab on the way to a regular doctor appointment. "He wanted to destroy with his own hands everything in the world, including himself, that was shoddy, false, and despicable," so went one eulogy from T.S. Matthews. Something like that -- he really did have a sense of principle, and his talent did magically ascend even as he trotted about at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. And of course his afterlife was much better -- hippies and beats and one future President resurrecting 'Famous Men', and cineastes exalting his reviews and scripts.
This bio puts all that in front of you in a very gossipy and insightful narrative -- it's obvious Bergreen has a love/hate relationship with his subject too. Highly recommended.
I still can't say I have a grip on Agee, even after reading this propulsive bio. On the one hand he slogged about like a poverty-stricken sot (he "would work a suit into fitting him perfectly by the simple method of not taking it off much" says Evans), yet he was a Harvard grad who never held a regular manual-labor job in his life. He made some babies but never paid much attention to them, while adoring the many simultaneous women he was boning in some abstruse proto-hippie poly lifestyle. He became fast friends with Whittaker Chambers, Charlie Chaplin, Dwight MacDonald, John Huston, the mighty Helen Levitt, and Clement Greenberg (who said this about Jim: "He had the ability to be sincere without being honest").
His film reviews are a frontier of wit and insight; and he wrote the screenplays for The African Queen and Night of the Hunter. His ability to score chicks magically increased as he got doughier and more dissipated, with bad teeth and booze on his breath day and night. Indeed, one could say that round about 1949 (pace Jim Croce) you do mess around with Jim.
As he entered his forties he had heart attacks constantly, and at 45 he died in the back of a cab on the way to a regular doctor appointment. "He wanted to destroy with his own hands everything in the world, including himself, that was shoddy, false, and despicable," so went one eulogy from T.S. Matthews. Something like that -- he really did have a sense of principle, and his talent did magically ascend even as he trotted about at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. And of course his afterlife was much better -- hippies and beats and one future President resurrecting 'Famous Men', and cineastes exalting his reviews and scripts.
This bio puts all that in front of you in a very gossipy and insightful narrative -- it's obvious Bergreen has a love/hate relationship with his subject too. Highly recommended.
November 20, 2008
This is how a biography should be written. So easy to read, and endlessly fascinating. I knew little to nothing of James Agee before reading this bio, and now I'm dying to get copies of Agee's books. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes biographies or has an interest in writers.
September 3, 2025
James Agee was the poster-boy for self-destructive writers. His literary reputation doesn’t ring Fitzgerald bells. But his (limited) output includes a posthumous masterpiece (“A Death in the Family”), a Depression-era classic (“Let us Now Praise Famous Men”) & an Oscar-nominated screenplay (“African Queen”). When he wasn’t writing, he obsessed over death (He dangled from the window of a NYC skyscraper) & sex (He made a reluctant wife sleep with photographer Walker Evans—& watched). He also drank. A lot. At 45, he died of a heart attack in a Manhattan cab. Bergreen’s best known for bios of Magellan & Marco Polo. Agee was a different kinda thrill-seeker.
January 1, 2023
Laurence Bergreen's book, the fullest and most ambitious biography of James Agee's life, gives a balanced, well-researched and unsparing look at the short life of the novelist, poet, journalist, critic and screenwriter.
It's largely a tale of wasted, sporadic talent, practiced by a man nearly hell-bent on self-destruction (and the destruction of those around him) through his addition to alcohol, undisciplined work methods and perpetual affairs with women who weren't his wife (or wives). His talent, even so, was so pronounced that, even with a premature death, he made a name for himself as one of the best and first important film critics (writing for two magazines simultaneously); the author of a masterpiece of poetic, investigative journalism (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the author of a classic, near perfect novel (A Death in the Family) and the author (or partial author) of two major screenplays (The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter), the latter of which has, over time, become accepted as a masterpiece of gothic Americana.
Bergreen's book is now thirty-seven years old. I have disappointments with its lack of completeness and context in places. (What were the sharecroppers' reactions to the book Agee wrote about them? What became of Agee's several children? Who became the executor of his estate after his death? What became of Louise Saunders, who Agee wrote to for decades? Did his wives write memoirs of their own?, etc.) A better Agee biography, though, isn't likely to happen in 2023 or in the future. For better or worse, this effort, alongside Agee's published work will continue to be the record historians refer to.
It's largely a tale of wasted, sporadic talent, practiced by a man nearly hell-bent on self-destruction (and the destruction of those around him) through his addition to alcohol, undisciplined work methods and perpetual affairs with women who weren't his wife (or wives). His talent, even so, was so pronounced that, even with a premature death, he made a name for himself as one of the best and first important film critics (writing for two magazines simultaneously); the author of a masterpiece of poetic, investigative journalism (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the author of a classic, near perfect novel (A Death in the Family) and the author (or partial author) of two major screenplays (The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter), the latter of which has, over time, become accepted as a masterpiece of gothic Americana.
Bergreen's book is now thirty-seven years old. I have disappointments with its lack of completeness and context in places. (What were the sharecroppers' reactions to the book Agee wrote about them? What became of Agee's several children? Who became the executor of his estate after his death? What became of Louise Saunders, who Agee wrote to for decades? Did his wives write memoirs of their own?, etc.) A better Agee biography, though, isn't likely to happen in 2023 or in the future. For better or worse, this effort, alongside Agee's published work will continue to be the record historians refer to.
September 30, 2016
It's a shame that this is Agee's biography. There is so much about Agee's life that a good biography could tackle. Lionel Trilling famously said Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was the most realistic and the most important moral effort of his generation. Trilling’s words could apply to all of Agee’s writing and to Agee’s life itself. The biography I would like to read would revolve around Trilling’s words; the life long moral effort of James Agee, in his writing, in his life, in his successes, in his failures, and in his insights. Yet this biography doesn't get within a continent of what is important about Agee.
Instead it reduces biography to mere, wordy, chronology. Worse still it isn’t even honest to this approach. Bergreen states right from the start that he is going to use Agee’s fictional writing as a source for facts about Agee’s life. Even more alarmingly, when dealing with a particular chronological event, Bergreen has no problem plucking a passage from anywhere in Agee's output, stripping it of its context and then using it as a gloss of insight or elaboration into that chronological event. Bergreen appears unconcerned by the fact that the passage was taken from a book published years before or after the event and unrelated to it. Nor does Bergreen feel compelled to tell you that he is doing this. Perhaps worst of all is, when unable to manipulate Agee's work into artificial insight, he manufactures his own insight, reducing Agee to a caricature. “While waiting his turn, he struck up a conversation with a peg-legged man of about sixty, at last savoring the camaraderie he had sought all summer. How much more highly he prized this simple communion with his fellow man than all the pointless carousing at Harvard.” Or again, “The intricacies of Elizabethan poetry held no terrors for a man who had traveled across the country with ten dollars to his name.”
The best part of this book, what makes it worth reading at all, are the passages from Agee’s writing, his correspondence, the correspondence from his friends and family, and the direct quotes from the people that knew him.
As a p.s. there is a movie about Agee called Agee: Sovereign Prince of the English Language. It too is not very well done, and falls into some similar traps. However, the movie has several interviews with the people Agee cared about, and those who cared about him. Similar to this biography, it is their words which make the movie worth watching. Father Flye, Agee’s long-time correspondent, has two memorable scenes. One occurs when Father Flye begins to quote from Agee and one sees onself in how much the language moves him. The other is Father Flye’s outrage at the invention of the atomic bomb. His intensity cannot be contained by time, place, or film.
Instead it reduces biography to mere, wordy, chronology. Worse still it isn’t even honest to this approach. Bergreen states right from the start that he is going to use Agee’s fictional writing as a source for facts about Agee’s life. Even more alarmingly, when dealing with a particular chronological event, Bergreen has no problem plucking a passage from anywhere in Agee's output, stripping it of its context and then using it as a gloss of insight or elaboration into that chronological event. Bergreen appears unconcerned by the fact that the passage was taken from a book published years before or after the event and unrelated to it. Nor does Bergreen feel compelled to tell you that he is doing this. Perhaps worst of all is, when unable to manipulate Agee's work into artificial insight, he manufactures his own insight, reducing Agee to a caricature. “While waiting his turn, he struck up a conversation with a peg-legged man of about sixty, at last savoring the camaraderie he had sought all summer. How much more highly he prized this simple communion with his fellow man than all the pointless carousing at Harvard.” Or again, “The intricacies of Elizabethan poetry held no terrors for a man who had traveled across the country with ten dollars to his name.”
The best part of this book, what makes it worth reading at all, are the passages from Agee’s writing, his correspondence, the correspondence from his friends and family, and the direct quotes from the people that knew him.
As a p.s. there is a movie about Agee called Agee: Sovereign Prince of the English Language. It too is not very well done, and falls into some similar traps. However, the movie has several interviews with the people Agee cared about, and those who cared about him. Similar to this biography, it is their words which make the movie worth watching. Father Flye, Agee’s long-time correspondent, has two memorable scenes. One occurs when Father Flye begins to quote from Agee and one sees onself in how much the language moves him. The other is Father Flye’s outrage at the invention of the atomic bomb. His intensity cannot be contained by time, place, or film.
February 24, 2017
I knew nothing about James Agee before reading this book except that he wrote Let Us Now Praise Famous Men which was a book I loved when I read it in my younger years. Always interesting to read about an author and realize how much knowing his story helps to understand his works. The author wrote with a neutral view and I found it interesting to read. Such a sad end.
January 17, 2015
This is a good inclusive review of James Agee's life. The death of his father when he was only six was a shock. when he was nine, he was sent to school at St Andrews where he met Father Flye who was a teacher and a replacement father to him. After Exeter and Harvard he went to work wring for Fortune and Time magazines. He got his break in 1936 when Fortune assigned him and Walker Evans, a photographer, to gather information to write an article on. tenant garnering in Alabama. Agee submitted a 300 page article which. Fortune rejected and five years later he gets his article published as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
July 15, 2017
Agee's life was less interesting to me than his prose, and though this book was reasonably well researched I found the writing style to be a challenge.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews