Darcy's review
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South
by James Agee
Darcy's review
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South by James Agee
Darcy's review
rating:
This book makes me wish I studied American Lit instead of British, just so I could teach this text. The book is not merely an account of the lives of tenant farmers in the south, but also about Agee's struggle with his role as a journalist. The opening section, where he describes himself and Walker Evans as spies neatly dissects Agee's dilemma--how does one write a detailed account of human suffering without turning that suffering into a spectacle to be consumed by others? The rest of the book essentially engages with this question in various ways. The best section is the one on clothing.
