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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Stunned is the only way I can describe my immediate reaction to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It is not like any other book I have read and not at all what I expected. (And at times funny in ways I'm pretty sure Agee didn't mean it to be.) James Agee was 27 when he wrote it. Unbelievable.
I gave it five stars not because I loved every minute of reading it but because of the effort and because of the way he gets across the plight and horror of sharecropping without sentimentality (though with a fair amount of self-righteousness and some, mmm, bluster I guess for lack of a better word at hand right now).
It's probably not for everybody since he has whole chapters of digression and a fairly heavy writing style. It also takes a while to get used to the list-like descriptions, which also take up whole chapters.
When you are reading it, it's like swimming a deep, hard-running river. You aren't sure where you are, if you will make it through and if you have the strength. When you finish, you can't believe what a beautiful and amazing river you have just swum across.
I gave it five stars not because I loved every minute of reading it but because of the effort and because of the way he gets across the plight and horror of sharecropping without sentimentality (though with a fair amount of self-righteousness and some, mmm, bluster I guess for lack of a better word at hand right now).
It's probably not for everybody since he has whole chapters of digression and a fairly heavy writing style. It also takes a while to get used to the list-like descriptions, which also take up whole chapters.
When you are reading it, it's like swimming a deep, hard-running river. You aren't sure where you are, if you will make it through and if you have the strength. When you finish, you can't believe what a beautiful and amazing river you have just swum across.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I can't believe I got through an undergrad degree in American history and 2 years as a master's student in American history without ever reading even excerpts of this book.
I very much liked reading the parts about how the tenants and their families live--and how the families are so different in personality, hopes for the future in their kids (school, public appearance). I was a history major for a reason, and this interests me.
I also, though, enjoyed Agee's rambling thoughts on how he felt himself a spy, living with and interacting with those he is spying on, liking them, becoming friends with them. His worries about how he portrays them, and how, no matter what he writes, they will seem to be characters and not real people with depths he himself can never know.
These sections are hard to read because they are so rambly, but they are the same thoughts I struggled with in public history classes. The same thoughts other students/faculty generally didn't seem to either care much about or even understand what I was getting at.
I very much liked reading the parts about how the tenants and their families live--and how the families are so different in personality, hopes for the future in their kids (school, public appearance). I was a history major for a reason, and this interests me.
I also, though, enjoyed Agee's rambling thoughts on how he felt himself a spy, living with and interacting with those he is spying on, liking them, becoming friends with them. His worries about how he portrays them, and how, no matter what he writes, they will seem to be characters and not real people with depths he himself can never know.
These sections are hard to read because they are so rambly, but they are the same thoughts I struggled with in public history classes. The same thoughts other students/faculty generally didn't seem to either care much about or even understand what I was getting at.
Ambitiously experimental, deeply personal and at times beautiful, it's let down by its rambling, unfocused prose. Agee tries a very image-heavy reportage, focusing on small scenes that are made big by his endlessly reflective prose.
While it is interesting at times, Agee is more concerned with himself than the people he is reporting on. His worry about reporters' objectivity is intriguing at first, but in the end I knew Agee a lot better than I knew the people he was talking about.
Still, an interesting book, even if it works as more a glimpse inside an author's mind than a glimpse at rural poverty.
While it is interesting at times, Agee is more concerned with himself than the people he is reporting on. His worry about reporters' objectivity is intriguing at first, but in the end I knew Agee a lot better than I knew the people he was talking about.
Still, an interesting book, even if it works as more a glimpse inside an author's mind than a glimpse at rural poverty.
This book is unclassifiable, only marginally readable, and absolutely beautiful. Agee and Evans (who took the photographs for the book) approach their subject matter (three rural American families living in abject poverty during the great depression) with extraordinary honesty. Agee works very hard to offer an objective portrait of his subjects, drawing their surroundings and the conditions in which they live in excruciating detail. He is, at the same time, sensitive to his own position as a writer, and his place, as one more person, among these families. The text and photographs are bleak but also generous in their intimacy.
Did anyone who gave this book 5 stars actually read all of it? I skipped pages, and still feel as though I’ve been through an ordeal having read most of it. It took me over a year because I had to keep putting it down. I never write reviews but I am just flabbergasted.
I came away unnerved with how in his tortured attempts to mark himself as unlike his peers, he has fetishized these families and their circumstances.
Is the writing beautiful? In turns, astonishingly so. But truth be told, only a white man could get away with this book, and it reeks of it.
I came away unnerved with how in his tortured attempts to mark himself as unlike his peers, he has fetishized these families and their circumstances.
Is the writing beautiful? In turns, astonishingly so. But truth be told, only a white man could get away with this book, and it reeks of it.
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?
This book was a bit too descriptive for my liking, but it had some tangents of genius. A much different reading experience than I expected.