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savaging's review against another edition
3.0
What?
What is this?
What is this?
Why is it so beautiful?
And then dull?
And then arrogant? And then the most humble thing a Harvard kid has ever written?
Why do I want to make every ethnographer I know read it? Even though it aggravates me?
What is this?
What is this?
Why is it so beautiful?
And then dull?
And then arrogant? And then the most humble thing a Harvard kid has ever written?
Why do I want to make every ethnographer I know read it? Even though it aggravates me?
thesimplereader's review against another edition
2.0
There was less focus on the actual people and their lives than I was hoping.
emzapk's review against another edition
3.0
"The essences of anguish and of joy are thus identical: they are the explosion or incandescence resulting from the incontrovertible perception of the incredible."
davidabrams's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
I came to James Agee late in life, after decades of fellow readers insisting I "must" read LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN before I die. The entry in James Mustich's "1,000 Books to Read Before You Die" only reinforced that prescription. And so several months ago, I succumbed to my curiosity and dove in, ready to praise men famous and not-so-famous. What I didn't expect was to be greeted by a Wall of Words: Agee took the reins off his pen and just let it fly across the page! On most pages, every white space was filled with brick and mortar from that wall o' words. Digressive, full of detours, soaked with rumination and lust, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" is unlike anything you've ever read and, in some cases, wanted to read. It's not what I expected and, even after taking it slow through these pages, I'm still trying to decide if it was worth my time or not. Your country mileage may vary.
chemistreader's review against another edition
1.0
His descriptions are exhausting. His writing is difficult to follow and I am not sure he accomplishes his project of portraying life of the share cropper in the South. Frankly, I cannot believe he wrote a "Death in the Family", which is one of my favorite books.
reading_to_write's review against another edition
5.0
A classic, an important read in the canon of nonfiction. Agee is a master poet who takes the reader thoroughly into his experience with southern tenant farmers, dissecting his own role which he acknowledges as self-serving as much as he wishes to expose and enlighten the tenant Farmer existence. His digression into fake news and the role of media is even more poignant today, and while his examination of his role sometimes strays into beating that subject to a pulp, it’s an important “discussion” to have- one that is again made more poignant when read today when many are having the same conversation (who gets to tell other people’s stories and why?). Not an easy read, but a very important one.
kamckim's review against another edition
4.0
This was such an interesting book. In 1936, Agee was on assignment to document the plight of poor, white share-croppers in Alabama. Walker Evans was assigned as his photographer. Together, the work they did vividly portrays in artistic detail the lives of "the common man [and woman]." The book requires slow wading and thought, as it is sometimes difficult parse his styles. At times, he seems an objective observer; however, this role is overshadowed by his genuine Christian love and compassion for the poor, who he very much wishes he could help on a more practical level, his despair knowing that he is among them but not of them. He's at his best when he paints portraits of his subjects and describes their lives and surroundings. At his worst, he is highly politically charged and maybe even a bit melodramatic. He definitely throws in an existential punch now and again. The work is definitely a product of its time, in that he was on assignment and unable to follow-up on several other issues that could have been addressed, including the Jim Crow South. However, I believe his work along with the work of contemporaries such as John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Dorothea Lange, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few paved the way for the awareness of rural poverty and civil injustice that led to the plays of Tennessee Williams in the 50s, and the protest movement of the 1960s. Those who teach To Kill a Mockingbird (1964), for example, will discover sympathy for the Ewells and Cunninghams. I've seen Walker Evans' photographs from this period licensed for archival work and used as covers for books set in the Depression era (Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, for example). For this reason, I would study parts of it as a seminal work in several disciplines and courses. I'd have another copy of it on my nightstand for reading and contemplation. This book will leave the same quiet resonance within you as it has in modern American literature, arts and culture.
tomnana's review against another edition
5.0
I have alternately wanted to rate this as 4/5 and 5/5. This is less from a proper judgment of the book's worth and more from a confused sense of whether or not I was able to properly respond to the book. I have decided on rating it based on my intuition that this is a valuable book which requires that I at least plan to return to in order to come to a fuller appreciation, but which will nonetheless present repeated images and meanings to me in the meanwhile as the small parts I have grasped gradually turn themselves around in my head.
Agee, in dispersed sections of the book, lays out in fairly plain terms (or at least terms made understandable through dogged repetition) what the aim of his book is. It is intended as a study of the lives of three Alabama sharecropper families in the mid-1930's. It is a study that doesn't dare to consider itself even partly objective, but rather pursues totally to relay Agee's perception of these families. It attempts to instill the idea of these people as extant, living, transcendental beings who cannot be reduced to either a conservative's dregs of capitalist meritocracy, nor to a liberal's bundle of suffering in need of patronization. It is written in a style which forgoes, even resists, narrative telling in favor of incredibly detailed descriptions of living conditions, clothing, methods of working, cooking, learning, etc.
It is difficult to both progress through the text at a convenient pace and to feel satisfied in giving these still descriptions justice. Agee is Proustian, in his flowing but interminable metaphorical sentences and intense focus on the smaller components of living, but seems Proustian via Whitman in his zest for overwhelming the reader with the sheer muchness of existence, and the inexhaustible nouns and verbs that uniquely capture this muchness. In a compromise between progression and focus, I read the book while listening to a slightly sped up audiobook. In reading by itself, my eyes would conveniently glide over the words and my mind would preferably work through my own unrelated daydreams or memories. In listening to the audiobook by itself, my brain would all too easily tumble down from focus to meditation, from meditation to napping. This was somewhat better than reading, since my naps were still tangled with images of wooden walls or the sounds of whippoorwills.
It's easy to call this a boring book, and the author explicitly does not excuse himself from causing boredom, but it's a misleading description. To call a story boring is to judge that it fails in its presumed aim to be exciting or engrossing. This book is not intended for those who, and should not draw anyone who, want to be entertained and miraculously also come out a little more improved, a little more knowledgeable, a little more empathetic. Rather, it is for those who are willing to put effort into coming to terms with the often dull but truthful perception of another human being. I suspect that when I return, equipped with the familiarity that breeds appreciation and the appreciation that breeds focus, I will strike into a rich vein. I suspect that, with a book's inherent passivity, this is a text that cannot force its meaning onto you as other art media will do, but can, with a book's subtle talent, respond with forcefulness in proportion to the attention and care you bring to it.
For now, I possess disparate image and brief but deep vignettes from the text. I feel a spiritual companionship with Agee's book and am confident that I have grasped at least the tenor and the timbre of it. I have a trust that what little I have taken is still chiefly good, and a presentiment that what remains to gather is even better.
Agee, in dispersed sections of the book, lays out in fairly plain terms (or at least terms made understandable through dogged repetition) what the aim of his book is. It is intended as a study of the lives of three Alabama sharecropper families in the mid-1930's. It is a study that doesn't dare to consider itself even partly objective, but rather pursues totally to relay Agee's perception of these families. It attempts to instill the idea of these people as extant, living, transcendental beings who cannot be reduced to either a conservative's dregs of capitalist meritocracy, nor to a liberal's bundle of suffering in need of patronization. It is written in a style which forgoes, even resists, narrative telling in favor of incredibly detailed descriptions of living conditions, clothing, methods of working, cooking, learning, etc.
It is difficult to both progress through the text at a convenient pace and to feel satisfied in giving these still descriptions justice. Agee is Proustian, in his flowing but interminable metaphorical sentences and intense focus on the smaller components of living, but seems Proustian via Whitman in his zest for overwhelming the reader with the sheer muchness of existence, and the inexhaustible nouns and verbs that uniquely capture this muchness. In a compromise between progression and focus, I read the book while listening to a slightly sped up audiobook. In reading by itself, my eyes would conveniently glide over the words and my mind would preferably work through my own unrelated daydreams or memories. In listening to the audiobook by itself, my brain would all too easily tumble down from focus to meditation, from meditation to napping. This was somewhat better than reading, since my naps were still tangled with images of wooden walls or the sounds of whippoorwills.
It's easy to call this a boring book, and the author explicitly does not excuse himself from causing boredom, but it's a misleading description. To call a story boring is to judge that it fails in its presumed aim to be exciting or engrossing. This book is not intended for those who, and should not draw anyone who, want to be entertained and miraculously also come out a little more improved, a little more knowledgeable, a little more empathetic. Rather, it is for those who are willing to put effort into coming to terms with the often dull but truthful perception of another human being. I suspect that when I return, equipped with the familiarity that breeds appreciation and the appreciation that breeds focus, I will strike into a rich vein. I suspect that, with a book's inherent passivity, this is a text that cannot force its meaning onto you as other art media will do, but can, with a book's subtle talent, respond with forcefulness in proportion to the attention and care you bring to it.
For now, I possess disparate image and brief but deep vignettes from the text. I feel a spiritual companionship with Agee's book and am confident that I have grasped at least the tenor and the timbre of it. I have a trust that what little I have taken is still chiefly good, and a presentiment that what remains to gather is even better.