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A Death in the Family

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 5,865 ratings · 485 reviews

James Agee. A Death in the Family. New York: McDowell, Obolensky, [1957]. First edition with the correct first issue points. Octavo. 339 pages. Publisher's binding, dust jacket.
Winner of the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

Agee was a poet, a penetrating film critic for TIME and other magazines, an intricate public conscience, and a man who carried all his life the bur...more

Hardcover, 339 pages

Published 1957 by McDowell, Obolensky

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May 20, 2012 Julie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, usa-historical, best-of-2009, read-2009, book-club-selection

When I told Brendan that I'd finished "A Death in the Family" he asked me how it made me feel. Not "What did you think of the book?" but "How did it make you feel?"

I felt those hideous, unspeakable emotions that arise when contemplating the death of a loved one. I felt the suffocating sorrow knowing the worst was yet to come for the characters: after the ceremonies end and friends and family slip away to return to their lives, you are left alone and the shock wears away to leave you hopeless an...more When I told Brendan that I'd finished "A Death in the Family" he asked me how it made me feel. Not "What did you think of the book?" but "How did it make you feel?"

I felt those hideous, unspeakable emotions that arise when contemplating the death of a loved one. I felt the suffocating sorrow knowing the worst was yet to come for the characters: after the ceremonies end and friends and family slip away to return to their lives, you are left alone and the shock wears away to leave you hopeless and bereft. And yet I felt also the solid hope that those left behind can pick up the remnants of their lives and move on, that healing will come.

What I treasured about this novel is its simplicity and purity. There is no plot in a traditional sense, no build-up of events culminating in a conclusion, only a story as real and old as time. Although Agee died before the book's completion and its contents were pieced together, I didn't feel anything was left unwritten. There was a completeness to the characters' experiences, the narrative ending just as Mary's life without Jay was really beginning.

The details left a profound impression, as well. The fixation on the manner and details of Jay's death was so natural - we are wired to sort out and categorize events in our attempt to understand and control. Mary's embarrassment over wishing Aunt Hannah to stay with her rather than her own mother acknowledged that shouting at her half-deaf mom would have turned grief into a farce; the discussion about hot toddies versus whiskey neat, the smell of Mary's breath as she explained Jay's death to his children - so many mundane events take on a surreal glow in the light of tragedy.

Agee fit as naturally into the minds of young Rufus and his little sister as those of the adults. Rufus's experience at the hands of stupid and cruel children and the pleasure he takes as his status rises in the glamour of his father's accident; little Catherine's inability to grasp the forever of her daddy's disappearance from her life; the bickering and boredom of two young kids trapped in a home in mourning- all delivered sincerely through the eyes and words of children, heartbreaking but not melodramatic.

A beautiful book that's probably been the bane of many high school junior English classes- better left for a quiet time and quiet reflection when one isn't feeling quite so invincible.

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Apr 12, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Agee's autobiographical masterpiece was still in unfinished form when he died—a labour of love for him, he apparently tinkered with its content and structure endlessly. What he was producing was a remarkable, plenitudinous look at a relatively mundane subject: the effect of the death of a young, strong, and good man on his wife, children and family. We are introduced to this average, likeable Tennessee family—based upon Agee's own childhood—dealing with their daily share of struggles, troubles a...more Agee's autobiographical masterpiece was still in unfinished form when he died—a labour of love for him, he apparently tinkered with its content and structure endlessly. What he was producing was a remarkable, plenitudinous look at a relatively mundane subject: the effect of the death of a young, strong, and good man on his wife, children and family. We are introduced to this average, likeable Tennessee family—based upon Agee's own childhood—dealing with their daily share of struggles, troubles and minor triumphs and given periodic glimpses through life's window at their unfolding story, leading up to the moment of great travail. The doomed husband, Jay Follet, is a man's man, a strong, sturdy, masculine figure who is struggling with his recent abstention from alcohol, with trying to raise two children with little money and few prospects, and dealing with the permanent sadness his devout wife bears towards his atheistic temperament.

The division between belief and unbelief straddles the entire book, as does the difference between Jay and such as his weak, insecure, and drink-beholden brother, whose intentions to display a firm responsibility and assured manner upon the perceived passing of his and Jay's own father—a mistaken diagnosis which calls Jay out upon his fateful trip—revealed only the general pitying contempt he is held within and his own collapse into the burning comfort of a liquid self-pity. This contrasts with Jay's calm strength and stolidity, which draws and reassures his shy, sensitive son, Rufus—a stand-in for Agee—whilst terrifying him with its mysterious potency and seeming unattainability. Yet such scenes as when Jay, in the midst of stealing a quick, backsliding nip, lifts his boy up onto a bar counter and proudly watches him charm the tavern patrons, or afterwards pauses with his son on a hill overlooking their town and places his hand steadily and affectionately atop the child's head, are sparsely worded moments that Agee fills with a tension, a meaning, a resonance familiar to all.

So it is that we come to feel a sense of kinship with the characters. In this manner, when Jay is killed in a traffic mishap, the grief and shock are that much more real, and hits the reader in a stark and visceral manner. I've never before read a novel that drew me so effortlessly into the sentiments and emotional turmoil of its characters and would not let go. I was shattered when Andrew, the brother of Jay's wife, Mary, reluctantly enters the house to give the grim news all know is coming, with eyes like splintered glass. The fatality derived from that commonality in so many of life's journeys, a happenstance; in this instance one involving an otherwise insignificant, mass-produced cotter pin. The banal circumstance of the accident—and the guilt Mary is burdened with by having instinctively believed that her missing husband had succumbed to the lure of drink—serves as a lightning rod for the various family members, re-introduced to a terrible separating pain and aroused within their representative positions of drawing solace from, or bearing anger towards, the Christian faith.

It is all done with a perfect pitch. There are no false scenes in the book. There is no melodrama or bathos. The relationship of Rufus with his parents is movingly recounted, as well as the utter confusion and fear that are engendered in the boy by the loss of his father. Using flashbacks of the family softly singing with each other under the stars, interacting with visiting relatives, and soothing Rufus' night terrors, Agee manages to paint touching portraits of the bonds between parents and children, husband and wife, a gentleness and kindliness to this hard-framed, firm-jawed man. There is also an opening vista which, although unrelated to the story itself, is as lovely a piece of prose as you are likely to find. In the Bantam edition that I read, the editors commented on this beautiful classic being a near perfect work of art; and there's naught I can add to that other than complete agreement.(less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: what can you see?!

Recommended to Mariel by: kaneda

Rufus seldom had at all sharply the feeling that he and his father were estranged, yet they must have been, and he must have felt it, for always during these quiet moments on the rock a part of his sense of complete contentment lay in the feeling that they were reconciled, that there was really no division, no estrangement, or none so strong, anyhow, that it could mean much, by comparison with the unity that was so firm and assured, here. He felt that although his father loved their home and lov...more Rufus seldom had at all sharply the feeling that he and his father were estranged, yet they must have been, and he must have felt it, for always during these quiet moments on the rock a part of his sense of complete contentment lay in the feeling that they were reconciled, that there was really no division, no estrangement, or none so strong, anyhow, that it could mean much, by comparison with the unity that was so firm and assured, here. He felt that although his father loved their home and loved all of them, he was more lonely than the contentment of this family love could help; that it even increased his loneliness, or made it hard for him not to be lonely.

I've been at a loss about having these kinds of "insights" into people I have known the way that young Rufus does. Thinking too much, or maybe it is needing too much to feel at place. I would do it too. I would think that Rufus was thinking these things to understand why his father had to drink whisky, why he had to take such a long time about getting home, almost as if he didn't want to be there. Sometimes the things you think make it too easy to walk away, to feel less lonely apart.

He told me because I wasn't there and he wanted to tell somebody and thought I would want to know and I do. But not if he hates them. And he does. He hates them just like opening a furnace door but he doesn't want them to know it. He doesn't want them to know it because he doesn't want to hurt their feelings. He doesn't want them to know it because he knows they love him and he thinks he loves them. He doesn't want them to know it because he loves them. But how can he love them if he hates them so? How can he hate them if he loves them? Is he mad at them because they can say their prayers and he doesn't? He could if he wanted to, why doesn't he? And them too for saying them.

The ending of Rufus taking a walk with his Uncle Andrew and going over and over in his mind if his Uncle hates or loves his family reminds me of the hurt and suspicion shared by older members of his family. It has hurt too much to not take those tentative steps into optimism and I got hurt again so I lose and three steps back into it's their fault. I thought this was well done by Agee in placing Rufus in this (this is the only word for it) family.

And looking at himself now, he neither despised himself nor felt pity for himself, nor blamed others for whatever they might feel about him. He knew that they probably didn't the incredibly mean, contemptuous things of him that he was apt to imagine they did. He knew that he couldn't ever really know what they thought, that his extreme quickness to think that he knew was just another of his dreams. He was sure, though, that whatever they might think, it couldn't be very good, because there wasn't any very good thing to think of. But he felt that whatever they thought, they were just, as he was almost never just.

I had selected a few other passages to "hook" my review on. Several of them were about Ralph, the self-hating and alcoholic brother. He's a father, a son and a husband. He is in a lot of pain, helpless to his own mental hell hole of not being what anyone needs. I can relate to a lot through him about the pain of making it worse. My own closest relationship lost to a deathbed was not like this, exactly, but I was all too aware that I was an outsider where others were far more important to the dying. I remember thinking a lot about if I was making it worse for everyone else, imposing on their last special time together. My mother did, as it happens, later rail at me for being "too cold". So I did do it wrong (her reaction to my sisters was the opposite complaint. They also did it wrong). When faced with death this family were afraid of not being good enough for each other, or for survival afterwards. If they all loved him, they all felt something. It was too sad that Ralph couldn't feel sad as his son but all the shame as her son. Useless. I don't know if any of them would be afraid of death for themselves when faced with it. It was hard enough to cope with who was left and the hole that was left from the dead.

There was an underlying theme throughout about deciding what another person is thinking or feeling. I've become afraid of doing this unless you can bring some kind of kindness to it, as young Rufus did (it's possible he would have been let down if he had grown up under the alcoholism and allowed his hopes to continually go up. I'm still afraid of doing that with family members and I'm an adult). The underbelly of this is if you are going to be up to the task of everything. Family, death, life, love. Maybe you aren't strong enough. People would hurt as they were being loved. The little daughter, Catherine, is rejected by her mother for how closeness is perceived. Her young son, Rufus, feels like a liar because he can't talk to his father anymore. He's a liar because his mother misunderstands his intentions in being closer. He's not a liar but no one can tell him because he can't tell anyone. It's hard being as alone as Catherine and Rufus. I felt the pain of being young acutely. He could be in the heavens watching him forever, never telling his son what he can do to make it better. He'll never wave at Catherine again. If someone could tell Rufus that it wasn't evil when he could get accepted by the bullies (that was one of the best bullying descriptions I have ever read. Some boys would be nicer if only they were alone. How nothing he could do would have changed it. He was littler and he was there). If their mother could only remember every time that they needed to know she still loved them. If only they never grow up to read into her that she doesn't love them.

Mary has faith in God. Maybe Aunt Hannah does have faith in God and maybe she doesn't. I think she's too afraid to not have it. There's a drift between Mary and her father. Brother Andrew, as well. There was a drift when Jay was still alive that she would have to put her faith in God that it was the right thing. If only they could put their faith in someone who doesn't put their faith where they do. I've read complaints about their tear over religion. I felt that it only highlighted further that everyone thought they knew what everyone else was thinking (or not thinking).

Jay dies coming home from visiting his father who might not have been as close to the door of death as Ralph suggested on the phone (my heart would go out to a Ralph thinking of the guilt he'll have for the rest of his days over this one). He may or may not have been drinking. This is how my father and one of my grandfathers died (as a kid I feared the apologies for the deaths of someones we were far better off without). Also, an uncle. A few more to alcohol or drug related deaths. They were also from Tennessee where A Death in the Family is set. I kind of had to try not to think about that too much. It was strange visiting graves of dead relatives that I had never met and trying to think of something to say. I probably imagined thoughts of judgement because I am regrettably a lot like Ralph in my worse moments. I guess I relate more to Ralph than to Rufus because the young kid hasn't had time to pile on the shame of a life time of failed attempts to be there for family in times of trouble. The death of my grandfather was horrible. He had two cancer scares before the third finally killed him. He asked my mom to assist him in suicide. The aftermath of my mother dealing with his death is one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with in my life. I was twenty-one. I can only say that it was true to me this book about how death can ravage a family far more than only losing one member. Death is expected. That you can lose what you didn't know you had with the living? It's living with drifts and more lonely than the family love hiding something lonely that Rufus described. There's no right thing to do, right? I've seen films and read stories about a new born baby taking the place of the deceased and I cried bull shit. The right thing to do is not to take inventory of what you or anyone else is doing and talk about it? At least not at some point. My mother bought this book for me, actually. I don't think she's ever read it (she has a need for me to read all southern authors since I was quite young. I'll find out years later she never read the book she had so urgently pressed on me). I get to feeling lost about ever breaking out of that Ralph cyclone of your worst nightmare mind reading. How do you forget about the drift, when you didn't get that love you needed, the suspicion that they don't really love you? It hurt a lot to read about little Catherine and Rufus doing it too. A Death in the Family is a heartbreaker of a book. Freaking perfect too. Every one of them was prey to the same thing. Dying happens to everyone. Does this happen to everyone too?

Agee died before he finished writing his book. The word in the graveyard says it is autobiographical. If Rufus can grow up to feel how they all feel.... Maybe you just gotta imagine the good parts. Even Ralph knows they probably aren't thinking those hateful things about him. There's hope for family, right, if that's true?(less)

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Sep 13, 2008 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: All of you!

Shelves: classics, to-be-read-again, four-star-fiction, all-fiction, america, extraordinary-prose, pyoo-litzers

James Agee died very suddenly in his early forties after he'd been working on this novel for several years. Those who published it posthumously had to piece it together as best they could, so there are some sections that don't quite fit where they were placed. However, this is still a very powerful piece, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958.

The story itself is very simple. In 1915, a young man with a wife and two children is instantly killed one night in a car accident. The book follows the grie...more

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Sep 10, 2007 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who appreciate the hidden mystery of the emotional moment

This isn't a difficult book but it's certainly not traditional. There is practically no profluence beyond the natural causality of a single incident--the death of a good man. In other words, there are no surprises, nothing is coming that you don't already know, no real "narrative" reason to turn the page.

Rather, the book is held together by a string of incredibly detailed descriptions of highly emotional moments in one family's life. The vivid inner lives of the characters that Agee creates are...more

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Dec 28, 2010 Monica rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Monica by: mom and dad

Shelves: special-books

original note: This book so far is giving me some comfort.
It's on a list of the 101 best novels since 1923 that I haven't studied yet, but think it may sit better with me than the 1001 previously discussed.

This Bantam edition I guess I've had since 1983. It says it's the 13th printing and portions were previously published in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar: all publications worthy of such incredible writing. One half to three quarters of the way t...more original note: This book so far is giving me some comfort.
It's on a list of the 101 best novels since 1923 that I haven't studied yet, but think it may sit better with me than the 1001 previously discussed.

This Bantam edition I guess I've had since 1983. It says it's the 13th printing and portions were previously published in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar: all publications worthy of such incredible writing. One half to three quarters of the way through, I felt like I was reading an outstanding classic like F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is The Night", or something the caliber of a great Eugene O'Neill play, with brilliant dialogue, insightful , contradictory thoughts which juxtaposed character's spoken words and actions. Agee portrays guilty sibling behavior as only an older brother could with an annoying younger sister. He painfully shows the cruelty inflicted by children on other children; the alienation, insecurity and loneliness even a six year old is able to experience. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" struck me like a bolt of lightning when I was 15 or 16, and this is no less a masterpiece. Agee's understanding of normal human existence is unparalleled. The book takes place over the span of only forty-eight hours, including a few flashback inserts the editors printed in italics, with a clarity and resonance that will be very hard to forget. This book must be an example of a writer"showing" instead of "telling". It felt so real you could have been hearing a brilliantly written screenplay or watching an excellent stage presentation. The different character's religious zeal, cynical doubts, loving compassion and simplicity shown off the page. What a memory Agee had for every detail and nuance of those forty-eight hours which changed his life forever. The family's tragedy was illustrated at a "snails" pace, in the best sense of the word, each perception, thought, action and word carefully considered and honestly portrayed as only Agee could. His experience as a young boy resonated on these pages. The difficulties he had with his sister, loosing his dad, his relationships with his relatives, made him the great writer he became. I could have read sooner but whenever you get to a book is it's proper place in time and I'm grateful finally found my proper time for this masterpiece.

post script 6/15/08 father's day- I don't know if I'm up for 615 pages for the revised edition because I was so impressed with the first -- it was short and "sweet". That much of a commitment to Agee's writing could be worth it but there are so many film reviews and essays to read, too. On this father's day i salute my dad who worked with Agee at Time and tells the story better than I about having to sit on him to calm him down at a very short Christmas party because there was a woman in the research department (not my mom) with whom Agee was extremely upset; whether because she was ignoring him or was involved with someone else - don't know. Agee, thought normally calm became unglued and enraged and was evidently extremely fired up on alcohol.(less)

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Feb 21, 2011 Tabitha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 111-in-2011, fiction, spirituality, adult-fiction, favorites

This was the second time that I read this book in a two year period and it is as gorgeous and grotesque as I remember.

"She wanted to hold her niece at arms' length and to turn and admire this blossoming. She wanted to take her in her arms and groan unto God for what it meant to be alive(p120)."

"Suddenly there opened within her a chasm of infinite depth and from it flowed the paralyzing breath of eternal darkness. I believe nothing. Nothing whatever." (p121)

"Just spunk won't be enough; you've go...more

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Jun 18, 2012 Derek rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Death in the Family is as every bit as beautiful and grotesque as the title suggests. First, and foremost, I will admit this up front: I cried a little. It wasn't a whole lot, but it was enough. This book roils in emotion -- not ever overdone or melodramatic -- but with just the right, honest blend of reality that nearly every reader will relate to. I oftentimes found myself engaging in the characters' struggles and desparation; I oftentimes found myself thinking back on my own heart-hurts and...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Jessica T rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As I came to an end of reading the novel Death in the Family by James Agee, I felt unbelievably like I was Rose in the 1999 movie remake of Titanic, when Jack dies at the heart of the Atlantic Ocean. Tears just came streaming down my face like how I felt after watching that movie. Not one other book has ever made me feel like I have after reading this story. I feel this book was extremely relatable for people who have lost loved ones which have passed away.

As someone who has lost a close family...more As I came to an end of reading the novel Death in the Family by James Agee, I felt unbelievably like I was Rose in the 1999 movie remake of Titanic, when Jack dies at the heart of the Atlantic Ocean. Tears just came streaming down my face like how I felt after watching that movie. Not one other book has ever made me feel like I have after reading this story. I feel this book was extremely relatable for people who have lost loved ones which have passed away.

As someone who has lost a close family member and has recently lost a good friend of many years, I do know what it feels like to have a tragedy in your life as a young child. Which Agee explains with the characters of Rufus and Little Catherine, the two children of Jay Follet. As their father passes away, I feel that Agee put himself into the children’s minds because as an outsider Rufus struggled very hard growing up, which being a child and not like is really hard on yourself and I really enjoyed relating to Rufus because he tried to fit in and not let the passing of his father bring him down.

When I lost my grandmother is was like losing myself, every time I saw her I always saw me in her. We were like twins in to different centuries; she was a Marilyn while I am a Madonna. I thought Agee's way of feeling and writing about the feeling you feel when you lose someone close made the book unpredictable because we all do handle death in different ways.

I liked how Agee decided to have such an unpredictable way to place Jay Follet’s death. Any way or anywhere at anytime someone you may think may not ever leave you might which makes life so uncontrollable because you can’t predict your life, you can change you, but you will never when you’ll past away. I like the natural thought Agee displays throughout the book.

After Jay passes away, Agee doesn't let the sorrow end just quite yet. The characters have to live on and go back to their daily lives which will never be the same again. But I didn't stress because healing does come. “Death is easy, life is harder” pretty much sums up my thoughts on the book and James Agee did a emotional way of doing so throughout a original book.

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Dec 01, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chris by: Julie

Shelves: 2009-reads, pulitzer-prize-winners, classics

Heartbreaking and raw. I don't believe I've ever read a book or seen a movie that so realistically portrays a death in the family and what every single member goes through; the weaving of conversations and thoughts between the characters, and being an outsider looking in, some of the conversations and things that were said to Mary and the children. People think they are doing good and mean well, when actually they are saying all the wrong things. And that priest, I wanted to kick him out the doo...more

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Oct 13, 2011 wally rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: agee

good

not positive of the time, though it is a time when horse or mule-drawn wagons are not uncommon, one cranks a vehicle with a length of tool to start it, and so on...

knoxville, tennessee i take it.

21% into the story and one man has gone....north...i take it....to see the old man who lies dying...got the call from a brother, a drunk brother, a drunk baby brother...who must have other issues as well...he gets the call middle of the night, gets up, gets ready, his wife fixes a breakfast, and he l...more

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Sep 13, 2009 Lisa Vegan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, orphaned-and-quasi-orphaned-kids, novel, reviewed, favorites

I read this book for my fall freshman year of college, for an English lit course, and it made a huge impression on me. I think I’ve reread it only once, and that was decades ago, but it remains a powerful influence.

I think that this book does a better job than any other I’ve read of communicating the innocence of young children and of portraying how their perceptions of events can be different from those of adults.

The writing style is lovely and the book is very well written, the characters’ per...more

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Apr 27, 2012 Linda K K rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Oct 31, 2007 Brian Lane rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Agee was working with so many different points of view, with being inside the psyche of adults and children, struggling through the depth and complexity of their thoughts and feelings. He must not have been able to keep at the intensity required to pull this book from the innermost recesses of his soul for long periods. And even with its richness and complexity, I feel that he was probably still working on the prose - there is a longing incompleteness to the book. There is a genuineness about th...more

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May 04, 2013 Uwe Hook rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a well crafted a book as I have ever read. It is a powerful story of what happens to a family in the immedaite aftermath of an unexpected death, and Agee is as pitch perfect as is possible in giving voice to the various characters in this book. His choice of words and phrases are such that each individual is entirely believable and authentic, with a unique voice and a complexity of character that leaves nothing wanting.

Agee has a mastery of the language that rivals writing peers, and th...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Maria rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorieten

Een prachtig , autobiografisch, boek over het jongetje Rufus, zijn familie en vooral zijn vader. Het hele verhaal werkt toe naar een noodlottige gebeurtenis: het auto-ongeluk waarbij vader Jay omkomt. Rufus is dan zes jaar.
Het grootste deel van het boek is geschreven vanuit de naïeve en gevoelige Rufus wat ontroerende maar ook hilarische momenten oplevert. Rufus observeert voortdurend de wereld om hem heen: “grootvader had glas voor zijn ogen en rode en witte haren op zijn hele gezicht maar aan...more Een prachtig , autobiografisch, boek over het jongetje Rufus, zijn familie en vooral zijn vader. Het hele verhaal werkt toe naar een noodlottige gebeurtenis: het auto-ongeluk waarbij vader Jay omkomt. Rufus is dan zes jaar.
Het grootste deel van het boek is geschreven vanuit de naïeve en gevoelige Rufus wat ontroerende maar ook hilarische momenten oplevert. Rufus observeert voortdurend de wereld om hem heen: “grootvader had glas voor zijn ogen en rode en witte haren op zijn hele gezicht maar aan de bovenkant niet veel”,en “Soms glimlachte pappa en dan was het fijn. Soms was hij kwaad en dan was het niet fijn. Als hij verdomme zei vond mamma dat niet leuk. Dan zei ze Jay! Zo noemde zij pappa. Hij noemde haar Laura. Ze hadden nog meer namen voor elkaar: Schat. Lieveling. Lieverd.” En “Als ze jij zeiden bedoelden ze hem. Als ze ik zeiden bedoelde ze zichzelf. Of mij. Of wij. Maar als hij jij zei terwijl hij het over zichzelf had, dan was het niet goed.” Je leert zo goed de wereld om hem heen kennen, vooral de ouders: de religieuze, beschermende moeder van goede afkomst en de uitbundige, wat onbesuisde vader afkomstig van het arme platteland. Ze houden veel van elkaar maar ook wringt het regelmatig.
Wanneer Jay en Laura na veel discussie besluiten de T- Ford te kopen, voel je het onheil steeds meer naderen en wil je Jay het liefst tegenhouden wanneer hij op een avond door zijn broer Frank (een zwakke, vaak dronken man) in paniek wordt gevraagd te komen omdat hun vader ernstig ziek is.

Mooi geschreven boek met knappe observaties vanuit de ogen van een kind. Bij de beschrijving van een bezoek aan de kermis: de draaimolen, het treintje voel je je weer kind. En na de dood van de vader voel je met Rufus en zijn zusje Emma de verwarring.
Maar niet alleen Rufus (= James Agee zelf) wordt overtuigend neergezet, ook de anderen worden èchte mensen voor je. Door gesprekken en gedachten kun je met hen meedenken en voelen.
Een minpuntje vond ik zelf de proloog: een bizarre droom van de volwassen Rufus.

Een bijzonder boek waar nog veel meer inzit dan hier beschreven. Een boek ook met een bijzondere geschiedenis. Na de vroege dood van Agee in 1955 (na een tragisch en onaf leven) werd het onvoltooide ‘A death in the family’, waar hij twintig jaar aan had geschreven en geschaafd, gevonden. Uit dit onvoltooide, chaotische, handgeschreven manuscript werd door McDowell een roman samengesteld, die een jaar later bekroond werd met de Pulitzer prijs. Dertig jaar later werden de oorspronkelijke manuscripten aangekocht door Knoxville university en men kwam tot het inzicht dat de bestaande editie drastisch afweek van wat James Agee had beoogd. Men ging ermee aan de slag en in 2007 werd een volledig gerestaureerde editie uitgebracht. (less)

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Mar 26, 2013 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is nearly perfect in its artistry. I have never read anything else with such transparent prose. I came to it expecting something closer to the rhapsody of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, but the strength here is in the passages of preternatural simplicity, usually interior monologue, particularly those of the child protagonist, Rufus. There is very little physical description in these passages but Agee seems to follow the thoughts of his characters with such truth, precision and rhythm t...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Jaksen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm moving through those classics on the '100 books' every reader should read...etc, whatever. (There are a lot of such lists, and on many of them I've already read a good half to three quarters of the books. Anyhow...)

I hadn't read this one, though the movie version with Robert Preston is one of my favorites. The book is a sad one, big reveal. Whenever I felt a little bit of optimism, the next page was a huge sink that just swallowed me up. I've been there, in terrible and all-consuming grief,...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Caroline rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I was searching for a book to read for my Humanities class there were many choices to pick from, the reason I picked A Death in the Family is because I recently lost my grandmother and I wanted to see if this book described at all what I felt. And it did just that, it showed me that other people are going through the same things that i am going through.
I didn’t know how good of a book this would be, being scenes I knew the book would be about death... but i was seriously mistaken. From pag...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Matt Hlinak rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love the introductory prose-poem “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” a hauntingly nostalgic depiction of a night in the author’s childhood. Although Agee examines this night with a sharp eye for detail, his view is uncritical. This is the reminiscence of a boy “well-beloved in that home,” and the piece contains no direct signs of conflict, although there are allusions to “the sorrow of being on this earth” and a prayer to remember Agee’s family “kindly in their time of trouble.” The main focus of the...more I love the introductory prose-poem “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” a hauntingly nostalgic depiction of a night in the author’s childhood. Although Agee examines this night with a sharp eye for detail, his view is uncritical. This is the reminiscence of a boy “well-beloved in that home,” and the piece contains no direct signs of conflict, although there are allusions to “the sorrow of being on this earth” and a prayer to remember Agee’s family “kindly in their time of trouble.” The main focus of the piece is to conjure up a vivid image of an evening happily-remembered, but this is not the saccharine nostalgia I find in my grandmother’s magazine rack. The element of this essay that sets it above such pieces is the precise and lyrical use of language.

One line in particular stands out to me so much that I intend to devote the remainder of this commentary to a single sentence. As Agee describes lying with his family on quilts in the backyard, he states: “They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all.” This line conjures in my mind an image of a baby softly babbling herself to sleep.

This line is most interesting from a structural perspective. Agee repeats the words “of nothing” at the beginning of three consecutive clauses. While it seems counterintuitive to use repetition in a short piece where economy of language is at a premium, this use of anaphora (I had to look it up: “a type of parallelism created when successive phrases or lines begin with the same words”) places greater emphasis on the idea of the empty nature of the communication. Although each clause conveys a subtly different idea, the repetitious “of nothing” zeroes in the idea this is idle chatter, like my impression of a baby spouting incomprehensible syllables as she nods off. The adults in this essay are similarly lulling each other to sleep at the end of a busy day.

Although each clause supports this same general concept, they also express more nuanced views. The first clause, “of nothing in particular,” uses a common colloquial expression to indicate small talk. The reader is unlikely to put much thought into such everyday language. However, in the second clause, “of nothing at all in particular,” Agee sharpens the point. Increased emphasis is placed on “nothing” and the reader becomes aware that the common expression has been slightly changed, which invites closer attention. Significantly, “at all” is placed in the middle of the clause, rather than at the end. This creates a mini-anaphora, “of nothing at all,” in the second and third clauses, as Agee drives the point home. The final clause emphasizes the nothingness of the speech and completely abandons the colloquialism of the first clause. The effect is much like that of the children’s game, “Telephone,” in which some individual words are successfully transmitted from one person to the next, but the overall message changes with each telling. The gradual evolution of the message from clause to clause goes from the general to the specific and draws the reader into a contented family’s drowsy evening of stargazing. (less)

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Sep 10, 2012 Patricia Bracewell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

Perhaps this novel was innovative in 1955, when it was published, in its clear-eyed depiction of the thought processes of family members confronting the sudden death of a young husband and father.

Agee explores the devout widow's relationships with her husband and her God -- and the tension that results. It is interesting to note that believers appear to be women, and questioners men. And the priest is probably the least sympathetic character in the book.

We are given the viewpoint of the ne'er do...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

James Agee, screenwriter of The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter, was a prolific film critic and sometime novelist. A Death in the Family, published after his early death of a heart attack at the age of forty-five, would earn him the Pulitzer Prize and international acclaim. Though the novel was incomplete at his death, its constituent elements had been completed and it only befell its editor, David McDowell to organise his work into its final form. This meant including Knoxville: Summe...more

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Dec 05, 2011 David rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was really looking forward to this book. It is spoken of so highly, was graced with a Pulitzer Prize and published posthumously after the untimely death of its young author. However I waited in vain for it to catch fire and was quite disappointed overall. It clearly packed much more of a wallop when first printed but now seems rather dated and less powerful than it once was. At least to me.

Certainly there are lyric passages of great beauty, the most famous of which would be the introductory "K...more

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Aug 17, 2011 Christopher Sutch rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am greatly impressed by this posthumous novel. It's a finely detailed, semi-autobiographical work that examines the effects of the accidental death of the father on a small-town Tennessee family. Agee's prose is the clearest, least cluttered of his major works, while still maintaining a subtle level of artistic aspiration. Agee uses the fine lens of his prose to focus on the feelings of each of the major family members (Mary, wife and mother; Rufus, son aged about 6; and Catherine, daughter ab...more

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Jun 07, 2011 Khayman Brunswick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Death in the Family by James Agee (Reviewed by Khayman Brunswick and Andrew Puente).

This book. . . It's strange. We can't define the audience. The objective seems to be an experience, the death of a loved one, which is universal, so the audience could be about anyone who can comprehend the reading. The novel is told through third person and multiple people. It takes place in Knoxville, Tennessee. The year is 1915, and Jay Follett has suffered a fatal car accident. Jay, being the protagonist, i...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Clarissa Mason added it · review of another edition

I just finished the book A Death in the family by James Agee. James was born November 27, 1909 and passed away on May 16, 1955. His hometown is in Knoxville, Tennesse but his residence is New York, New York. He has written many books, magazine articles, and poems. Also he has many awards for his literature that he has written.

In this book a father passes away after a car accident. The family thinks he was drunk when it happened. He loved to drink, and did it quite often. Jay is the son, and h...more

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Oct 22, 2009 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is impossible for me to inject any levity into a review of A Death in the Family. No “headline” here, as has been my wont in other reviews. Yes, the pretext for the novel is a death in the family, but the subject matter is the experience of life.

The best captured experience of life here is from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy in the context of the untimely death of his father. If someone were to ask me what it was like to be a little boy, I would refer them to this text. The reason is t...more It is impossible for me to inject any levity into a review of A Death in the Family. No “headline” here, as has been my wont in other reviews. Yes, the pretext for the novel is a death in the family, but the subject matter is the experience of life.

The best captured experience of life here is from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy in the context of the untimely death of his father. If someone were to ask me what it was like to be a little boy, I would refer them to this text. The reason is this. I myself have only a hazy recollection of the experience of childhood. Set piece images of various scenes. James Agee, however, transported me back into the midst of it all. It was a tremendously affecting experience.

Rufus explores his dead father's morsechair. He sticks his finger in the ashtray. Retrieves it with a smudge of ash on it. Looks at it. Licks it off. It tastes of darkness.

That passage, among others, required me to set the book aside and collect myself before driving on. It is a sad thing to admit that one's own personal recollection of childhood had to be informed by another, an author long dead.

Nor is it necessary to be male for the book to have its affect. I have had the pleasure to discuss it with thoughtful women. The experience of early childhood is not so much a gender specific one. Before the injection of hormones forever divides the various genders, the experience of early childhood is a more universal one than the experience of later life.

This is an extraordinary novel. A transforming one, and—I must use that word again—transporting one. It does not transport you to some exotic time or place. It transports you to an early era in your very own life.

Organized religion takes a hit in this text. If you are one who cannot abide that, perhaps you should leave this novel alone.

I am informed now that after serious research, an academic has put together a text that allegedly more closely approximates James Agee's intentions for the novel in its final form. The major alteration is the removal of the initial section with its portrayal of Knoxville prior to the father's death. Apparently, the 1938 publisher lifted this section whole from another work entirely and inserted here. That section was the only defect that I discerned in the original version. It did not belong. For once, my judgment was astute. I look forward to reading the renovated version, which I understand is considerably altered in other respects, also.

Do not let the title, the superficially perceived subject matter of the novel, put you off. Do not miss the experience of this.(less)

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Aug 26, 2009 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-summer-book-reading

A death in the family by james Agree is a book about a family that experiences a tragic death ( as explained in the tittle). when Jay Folit gets a call in the middle of the night from his brother saying that his dad is in the hospital. Jay can tell the brother is sober and it could be a false alert, when jay goes down to see his brother he soon finds out that his father is fine he leaves in a huff then gets hit by a car on his way home and killed. After this the brother and the family all are de...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are good reads that satisfy and are thoughtful and have lovely writing. And then there are the truly great reads that leave the reader longing to start the book over and reread it just as soon as one turns to the final paragraph. A Death in the Family is a great read.

The story is very simple. Jay Follet, the dad and the husband in the family, receives a call from his brother that his father is very ill and is near death. Jay goes to be with his father and on his return is killed in an auto...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Annisa Anggiana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, e-book

Tebal : 246 pages on ebook

Sama sekali tidak mengherankan kalo buku ini memenangi Pulitzer Prize pada tahun 1958 dan masuk ke dalam Times 100 best novel of all times. Menurut saya, buku ini adalah salah satu buku terbaik dalam menggambarkan emosi dari karakter-karakter yang ada di dalamnya. Jika dibuat filmnya, mungkin akan dibutuhkan aktor/aktris yang sangat jagoan untuk bisa menggambarkan emosi dalam keheningan. Tapi itulah juaranya written stories, dengan alfabet a sampai z adegan yang mungkin...more

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About James Agee

An American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

Life
Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler....more An American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

Life
Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, at Highland Avenue and 15th Street (renamed James Agee Street in 1999) to Hugh James Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When Agee was six, 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 books 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.(less)

More about James Agee...

Books by James Agee

Agee on Film: Criticism and Comment on the Movies

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, and Shorter Fiction (Library of America #159)

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Quotes from A Death in the Family

“How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it's good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. And what's it all for? All I tried to be, all I ever wanted and went away for, what's it all for?

Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and it's almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember.

And God knows he was lucky, so many ways, and God knows he was thankful. Everything was good and better than he could have hoped for, better than he ever deserved; only, whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn't what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remembered, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.” — 21 people liked it

“And no matter what, there's not one thing in this world *or* the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That's all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That's all. That's all that matters. It's all that matters because it's all that's possible. ” — 11 people liked it

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