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Selected Journalism
Poet, film critic, screenwriter, and novelist James Agee is best known for his autobiographical Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Death in the Family. Yet the journalistic writings of this Knoxville, Tennessee, native established him as an equal of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Stephen Crane.
James Agee: Selected Journalism is a collection of his articles published from 1933 to 1947 by Time and Fortune, two of the era's most influential magazines. This edition of the book includes two new articles from Agee's school years and a new introduction by editor Paul Ashdown that places Agee's journalistic work in the context of his entire career.
Agee's readers have often felt that his preoccupation with journalism prevented him from achieving a reputation as a great modern writer. However, Agee valued his articles highly, and so did many influential critics. His magazine work led to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a challenge to the journalism profession. The selections in this volume offer grounds for a fuller reinterpretation of Agee's career.
The articles reproduced here chronicle life at home and abroad during the Depression and the war-torn 1940s. The range of topics is vastfrom cockfighting and the racing season at Saratoga, to the devastation of postwar France and the passing of the Roman aristocracy, to the corporatization of a small orchid nursery and the way in which a variety of Americans experienced the death of President Roosevelt. In his journalistic pieces Agee shows a remarkable prescience. For example, he was early to realize the tremendous significance of the atom bomb and the effect of the Tennessee Valley Authority on the mountain regions.
In the nineteen essays in this volume, Agee demonstrates his characteristic sensitivity and awareness and provides a keen insight into the culture of this turbulent era.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
166 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1985
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About the author
James Agee
98 books288 followersNoted American writer and critic James Rufus Agee collaborated with photographer Walker Evans on
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
(1941), a bleak depiction of rural poverty and posthumously published his novel
A Death in the Family
(1957).
This author, journalist, poet, screenwriter in the 1940s most influenced films in the United States. His autobiographical work won a Pulitzer Prize.
Life
Born at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six years of age in 1915, his father died in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, he and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross, and it was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with an Episcopal priest, Father James Harold Flye, began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye was the recipient of many of Agee's most revealing letters.
Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924–1925 school year, then travelled with Father Flye to Europe. On their return, Agee moved to boarding school in New Hampshire, entering the class of 1928 at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, he was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Agee was admitted to Harvard University's class of 1932. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate.
In 1951 in Santa Barbara, Agee, a hard drinker and chain-smoker, suffered the first two in a series of heart attacks, which ultimately claimed his life four years later at the age of 45. He was buried on a farm he owned at Hillsdale, New York.
Career
After graduation, he wrote for Fortune and Time magazines, although he is better known for his later film criticism in The Nation. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans living among sharecroppers in Alabama. Agee turned the material into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered.
In 1942, Agee became the film critic for Time and, at one point, reviewed up to six films per week. Together, he and friend Whittaker Chambers ran "the back of the book" for Time. He left to become film critic for The Nation. In 1948, however, he quit both magazines to become a freelance writer. One of his assignments was a well-received article for Life Magazine about the great silent movie comedians, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, which has been credited for reviving Keaton's career. As a freelance in the 1950s, he continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts, often with photographer Helen Levitt.
Agee was an ardent champion of Charlie Chaplin's then extremely unpopular film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which has since become a film classic. He was also a great admirer of Laurence Olivier's Henry V and Hamlet, especially Henry V, for which he actually published three separate reviews, all of which have been printed in the collection Agee on Film.
Legacy
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ignored on its original publication in 1941, has been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th Century by the New York School of Journalism and the New York Public Library.
This author, journalist, poet, screenwriter in the 1940s most influenced films in the United States. His autobiographical work won a Pulitzer Prize.
Life
Born at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six years of age in 1915, his father died in an automobile accident. From the age of seven, he and his younger sister, Emma, were educated in boarding schools. The most influential of these was located near his mother's summer cottage two miles from Sewanee, Tennessee. Saint Andrews School for Mountain Boys was run by Episcopal monks affiliated with the Order of the Holy Cross, and it was there that Agee's lifelong friendship with an Episcopal priest, Father James Harold Flye, began in 1919. As Agee's close friend and spiritual confidant, Flye was the recipient of many of Agee's most revealing letters.
Agee went to Knoxville High School for the 1924–1925 school year, then travelled with Father Flye to Europe. On their return, Agee moved to boarding school in New Hampshire, entering the class of 1928 at Phillips Exeter Academy. There, he was president of The Lantern Club and editor of the Monthly where his first short stories, plays, poetry and articles were published. Agee was admitted to Harvard University's class of 1932. He was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Advocate.
In 1951 in Santa Barbara, Agee, a hard drinker and chain-smoker, suffered the first two in a series of heart attacks, which ultimately claimed his life four years later at the age of 45. He was buried on a farm he owned at Hillsdale, New York.
Career
After graduation, he wrote for Fortune and Time magazines, although he is better known for his later film criticism in The Nation. In 1934, he published his only volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.
In the summer of 1936, Agee spent eight weeks on assignment for Fortune with photographer Walker Evans living among sharecroppers in Alabama. Agee turned the material into a book entitled, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). It sold only 600 copies before being remaindered.
In 1942, Agee became the film critic for Time and, at one point, reviewed up to six films per week. Together, he and friend Whittaker Chambers ran "the back of the book" for Time. He left to become film critic for The Nation. In 1948, however, he quit both magazines to become a freelance writer. One of his assignments was a well-received article for Life Magazine about the great silent movie comedians, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, which has been credited for reviving Keaton's career. As a freelance in the 1950s, he continued to write magazine articles while working on movie scripts, often with photographer Helen Levitt.
Agee was an ardent champion of Charlie Chaplin's then extremely unpopular film Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which has since become a film classic. He was also a great admirer of Laurence Olivier's Henry V and Hamlet, especially Henry V, for which he actually published three separate reviews, all of which have been printed in the collection Agee on Film.
Legacy
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, ignored on its original publication in 1941, has been placed among the greatest literary works of the 20th Century by the New York School of Journalism and the New York Public Library.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 18, 2021
I hate to have to give this two stars, James Agee is an incredibly talented writer, but the Fortune magazine articles that make up the bulk of this collection are impossibly dull: endless lists of facts and figures, minute details about the mechanics of business. I'm sure this is due to the constraints of style imposed by the editors of Fortune and not Agee's own journalistic proclivities, but it still makes for a tiresome read. The only exception is "Havana Cruise", about the events of a 1937 cruise from New York to Cuba. In it, Agee is surprisingly frank (for the era) about the depressingly human foibles of a group of American middle-class tourists.
The best part of this collection is Agee's reportage from Time, mostly pertaining to postwar conditions. The best pieces in the whole book, "Europe: Autumn Story" and "The Nation", are made up of heartbreaking vignettes illustrating the toll wrought by World War II on European and American citizens.
While all the Time articles are good, and allow Agee to focus on the subject he's most eloquent about (the dignity of ordinary people), they only account for about 20 pages of 'Selected Journalism'.
The best part of this collection is Agee's reportage from Time, mostly pertaining to postwar conditions. The best pieces in the whole book, "Europe: Autumn Story" and "The Nation", are made up of heartbreaking vignettes illustrating the toll wrought by World War II on European and American citizens.
While all the Time articles are good, and allow Agee to focus on the subject he's most eloquent about (the dignity of ordinary people), they only account for about 20 pages of 'Selected Journalism'.
April 15, 2008
Agee fascinates me. Went through a major Agee period in '88 or so. Brilliant writer, a great and sad soul. There are many great essays here, but the most memorable are the essay on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (from Time magazine) and the one about going on a cruise ship. Also the essay on orchids.
June 6, 2012
A collection of Agee essays spanning a range of topics that includes cockfighting, orchids, the day FDR died and the splitting of the atom over Japan when, "All thoughts and things were split." Agee reveals more insight and genius in a two-page essay than most men do in dissertations.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews