The Making of James Agee

The Making of James Agee PDF Author: Hugh Davis
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1572336072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"In The Making of James Agee, Hugh Davis takes a comprehensive look at Agee's career, showing the interrelatedness of his concerns as a writer. A full view of Agee's oeuvre, Davis argues, illuminates its deeply political nature and reveals a debt to various sources, particularly European surrealism, that have been little noted by previous Agee scholars." "Davis challenges the view of Agee that has persisted since his death - that he is best understood primarily as a romantic individualist at odds with convention and the literary mainstream - and argues that this myth was largely constructed by friends and associates who were so immersed in the tenets of modernism that they distorted Agee's work (and aesthetic intent) in an attempt to purify it in modernist terms. In revealing a writer of far greater complexity than the myth allows, Davis explores, for example, the leftist poetry that Agee wrote in the 1930s, which was almost completely suppressed by his editors. He also throws a fresh light on Agee's collaboration with photographer Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and reevaluates A Death in the Family in light of recent scholarship that has produced an almost entirely new version of the novel, one much closer to Agee's original intentions."--BOOK JACKET.

The Making of James Agee

The Making of James Agee PDF Author: Hugh Davis
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1572336072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In The Making of James Agee, Hugh Davis takes a comprehensive look at Agee's career, showing the interrelatedness of his concerns as a writer. A full view of Agee's oeuvre, Davis argues, illuminates its deeply political nature and reveals a debt to various sources, particularly European surrealism, that have been little noted by previous Agee scholars." "Davis challenges the view of Agee that has persisted since his death - that he is best understood primarily as a romantic individualist at odds with convention and the literary mainstream - and argues that this myth was largely constructed by friends and associates who were so immersed in the tenets of modernism that they distorted Agee's work (and aesthetic intent) in an attempt to purify it in modernist terms. In revealing a writer of far greater complexity than the myth allows, Davis explores, for example, the leftist poetry that Agee wrote in the 1930s, which was almost completely suppressed by his editors. He also throws a fresh light on Agee's collaboration with photographer Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and reevaluates A Death in the Family in light of recent scholarship that has produced an almost entirely new version of the novel, one much closer to Agee's original intentions."--BOOK JACKET.

Cotton Tenants

Cotton Tenants PDF Author: James Agee
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612192130
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
A re-discovered masterpiece of reporting by a literary icon and a celebrated photographer In 1941, James Agee and Walker Evans published Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a 400-page prose symphony about three tenant farming families in Hale County, Alabama, at the height of the Great Depression. The book shattered journalistic and literary conventions. Critic Lionel Trilling called it the “most realistic and most important moral effort of our American generation.” The origins of Agee and Evans’s famous collaboration date back to an assignment for Fortune magazine, which sent them to Alabama in the summer of 1936 to report a story that was never published. Some have assumed that Fortune’s editors shelved the story because of the unconventional style that marked Famous Men, and for years the original report was presumed lost. But fifty years after Agee’s death, a trove of his manuscripts turned out to include a typescript labeled “Cotton Tenants.” Once examined, the pages made it clear that Agee had in fact written a masterly, 30,000-word report for Fortune. Published here for the first time, and accompanied by thirty of Walker Evans’s historic photos, Cotton Tenants is an eloquent report of three families struggling through desperate times. Indeed, Agee’s dispatch remains relevant as one of the most honest explorations of poverty in America ever attempted and as a foundational document of long-form reporting. As the novelist Adam Haslett writes in an introduction, it is “a poet’s brief for the prosecution of economic and social injustice.”

Remembering James Agee

Remembering James Agee PDF Author: David Madden
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820319131
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Novelist, poet, screenwriter, journalist, film critic, and cult hero, James Agee was a man of many talents. This collection examines Agee's achievements from the perspective of family members, friends, and contemporaries to create a multifaceted portrait of a dynamic and influential man. Included are recollections and commentary from Agee's widow, his lifelong friend and teacher Father Flye, his editor David McDowell, and other notables, including John Huston, Andrew Lytle, and Walker Evans, with whom Agee collaborated on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. For this edition, the editors have added new insights from such luminaries as Robert Fitzgerald, Dwight Macdonald, and Frederick Manfred, along with Agee critics Scott Bates, Edward Carlos, James Lee, Edwin M. Sterling, and William Stott. In addition, editor Jeffrey J. Folks has contributed a new preface outlining the state of Agee criticism in the years since the first edition was published in 1974. With liveliness and candor, Remembering James Agee evokes the life and personality of a writer and critic who holds a unique place in American letters.

Complete Film Criticism

Complete Film Criticism PDF Author: James Agee
Publisher: Collected Works of James Agee
ISBN: 9781621902584
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
-From 1942 to 1948, James Agee wrote rather voluminous move reviews for Time and The Nation at a time when motion pictures captured wide swaths of the viewing public. This fifth volume in the Works of James Agee series includes Maland's historical introduction and his textual introduction as well as Agee's reviews from Time, The Nation, other published film criticism, and unpublished articles. Agee's Time reviews have never been published in their entirety, and early reviews from Agee's time at Exeter Academy are also included---

James Agee Rediscovered

James Agee Rediscovered PDF Author: James Agee
Publisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572333550
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
"James Agee Rediscovered, edited by Michael A. Lofaro and Hugh Davis, gives a new and unique perspective on this prolific writer. With this book, the editors have put together an untarnished and unfettered collection of previously unpublished manuscripts of one of America's most intriguing authors. Featuring various drafts and fragments of Agee's manuscripts from University of Tennessee Special Collections, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the James Agee Trust, this book reveals the inner thoughts and creative sensibilities of an eclectic writer." "James Agee Rediscovered consists of journal entries, drafts of original material, and heretofore undiscovered literary works, as well as nineteen previously unpublished photos by Walker Evans."--BOOK JACKET.

James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men / A Death in the Family / Shorter Fiction (LOA #159)

James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men / A Death in the Family / Shorter Fiction (LOA #159) PDF Author: James Agee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 920

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Book Description
Contains nonfiction work such as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with the Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Death In The Family and other fictional material.

James Agee

James Agee PDF Author: Laurence Bergreen
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 9780140080643
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description


Make It Scream, Make It Burn

Make It Scream, Make It Burn PDF Author: Leslie Jamison
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316259667
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
From the "astounding" (Entertainment Weekly), "spectacularly evocative" (The Atlantic), and "brilliant" (Los Angeles Times) author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes a return to the essay form in this expansive book. With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which Leslie Jamison has been so widely acclaimed, the fourteen essays in Make It Scream, Make It Burn explore the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession. Among Jamison's subjects are 52 Blue, deemed "the loneliest whale in the world"; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings -- with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity -- in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth. Often compared to Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, and widely considered one of the defining voices of her generation, Jamison interrogates her own life with the same nuance and rigor she brings to her subjects. The result is a provocative reminder of the joy and sustenance that can be found in the unlikeliest of circumstances. Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay One of the fall's most anticipated books: Time, Entertainment Weekly, O, Oprah Magazine, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Esquire, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, BuzzFeed, BookPage, The Millions, Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Lit Hub, Women's Day, AV Club, Nylon, Bustle, Goop, Goodreads, Book Riot, Yahoo! Lifestyle, Pacific Standard, The Week, and Romper.

James Agee in Context

James Agee in Context PDF Author: Michael A. Lofaro
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1621907422
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"This collection of new essays exploring the life and cultural significance of James Agee grew largely from the scholarship of The Works of James Agee series under the editorial guidance of Michael A. Lofaro. The present volume's eleven essays concern Agee's relation to authors as diverse as Wright Morris, John Dos Passos, William T. Vollmann, Stephen Crane, and Ernest Hemingway. Furthermore, it sheds fresh light on Agee's career as an artist, critic, romantic and modernist, reviewer of books, film, and photography, journalist for Fortune magazine, and, uniquely, explores the author's personal writings through the lens of his father's life"--

Complete Journalism

Complete Journalism PDF Author: James Agee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781572339941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 646

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Book Description
In addition to producing such distinguished literary works as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A Death in the Family, James Agee spent almost two decades of his professional career in journalism, primarily as an anonymous staff writer for the Henry Luce magazines Fortune and Time. At Fortune, especially, Agee excelled in pointed, bemused reporting on American life that embraced a wide range of topics, from cockfighting to the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg to the ambitious programs of the Tennessee Valley Authority. What is arguably his most celebrated Fortune piece, “The Great American Roadside,” remains a remarkably prescient account of the ways in which the automobile was transforming America's economic landscape and cultural sensibility. This book, the second volume in The Works of James Agee series, recovers for modern readers the remarkable breadth and depth of Agee's reportage, beginning with his apprenticeship writings for student publications at Exeter and Harvard in the 1920s and 1930s and concluding with his last book review (of a Dylan Thomas screenplay), written in 1953 for the New York Times. Also included are two posthumously published pieces—the Whitmanesque “Brooklyn Is” and a meditation on news photography and race relations, “'America! Look at Your Shame!'”—as well as unpublished articles, book reviews, and rough drafts and notes that yield unique insight into theauthor's complex writing process. (Excluded from this volume but scheduled for a later one is Agee's much-heralded film criticism.) To say that Agee was ambivalent about journalism is an understatement: in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, he famously denounced it as “a broad and successful form of lying.” Yet, in his unsigned labors on behalf of the Luce empire and in various other assignments, Agee seized opportunities to hone his craft and exercise his acute powers of observation—work that would serve him well as he undertook the kind of passionate and deeply personal writing that would secure his reputation.