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A review by ruralheadache
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by Walker Evans, James Agee
4.0
not really a review i just want to mark my immediate reactions to this book- i’ve wanted to read it for years without knowing much about it because i had thought it was more straightforward labor history/journalism…was way more personal and poetic than i was expecting, not necessarily a positive thing for me, but it was harder to put down and stop thinking about the further i read.
a similar experience to reading Walden, which i also struggled with at first but ended up loving; i’m definitely not the first to make this comparison so it might be helpful in deciding if you want to commit to either of these books. usually my least favorite type of writers are horny male memoirists (can definitely see how Agee influenced the beat poets, for better or worse), and there are definitely some weirdly voyeuristic moments i didn’t love, but i think the potential self-indulgence of Agee’s writing was really tempered by the fact this started out as a journalistic project focusing on the tenant farmers rather than the author himself. The introduction states that Agee wanted his descriptions to feel as life-like, or at least photorealistic, as possible so that the reader wouldn’t be able to look away and turn their back on the plight of the farmers and even if it was difficult to read I think he absolutely succeeded.
a similar experience to reading Walden, which i also struggled with at first but ended up loving; i’m definitely not the first to make this comparison so it might be helpful in deciding if you want to commit to either of these books. usually my least favorite type of writers are horny male memoirists (can definitely see how Agee influenced the beat poets, for better or worse), and there are definitely some weirdly voyeuristic moments i didn’t love, but i think the potential self-indulgence of Agee’s writing was really tempered by the fact this started out as a journalistic project focusing on the tenant farmers rather than the author himself. The introduction states that Agee wanted his descriptions to feel as life-like, or at least photorealistic, as possible so that the reader wouldn’t be able to look away and turn their back on the plight of the farmers and even if it was difficult to read I think he absolutely succeeded.