Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

There's a line from the preface to this book we're James Agee says but he's going to take his subject matter seriously.It Is hard to find the cogent words to talk about this book.It's not a novel, but it is novel.See if you go look up the reviews you'll find confusion about what it is that Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was supposed to be about. And I have the same confusion. Ultimately I think this book is often lumped in with Grapes of Wrath not because they're stylistically the same or did they really kind of hit on the same subject matter or even though that's more parallel. But what I think Steinbeck has in common with James Agee is that they both took that subject matter seriously. If I could compare this book to anything in literature I think it is those interstitial chapters to Grapes of Wrath that aren’t specifically about the Joad family but that are trying to set the scene.Because ultimately what this book is more than anything “about” it's not about the sharecroppers it's nominally covering but I would say it's more a close reading of the land of the objects and the clothes and the things that they touch. More than anything it reminds me of that mid century literary criticism before the French broke everything but it's a literary criticism that applies to the physicality of the world. So it's kind of like a precursor to Barthes looking at the semiotics, the laundry detergent or whatever.So It's a really interesting book but it's impossible to read cover-to-cover because it is like a kind of pastiche of bringing together notes and clipping. You don't get any kind of narrative arc but it's as if you're looking at a world from one inch away. I tried to understand it like that. I think it's a rightfully celebrated text but you have to understand it on its own terms and not try to see it as something else that you wanted to be.

Wow is this book a roller coaster ride. For me It went from deeply affecting and beautifully poetic to tedious and annoying. For a while I honestly thought this might be the best book I ever read. Then the pace slows . . . or stops even . . . as if you're spacing out along with the author and fixating on a floorboard or cheap picture on the wall. And then it seems like the author hands over the wheel to the photographer, who writes whatever pops into his head for pages upon pages. Or maybe its the same dude writing, in an altered state of mind, I'm not sure.Anyway, to me this book is brave and profound. The brave part is the author's refusal to cash in on this experience by writing what he thinks we (or his bosses) want to hear. But then again he pretty much betrays his trusting hosts by snooping through their stuff and writing real personal stuff surely without their permission. The profoundness to me is the effective relaying of dignity amid the tragedy of a truly trapped situation.If you have ever over-romanticized the south of old, or poor farm life, this book should cure you for good. It's not all perfect, but parts of it are. I would say its definitely worth the trip . . . just be ready for some detours.

This timeless, classic, excellent and important book deserves better publication! Everytime Agee’s word “lie” appeared, the OCR (or whatever) printed “he” instead. Many other misprints as well. Please!

The photos by Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" are, in my judgment, American classics. They enable the families of three tenant farmers in the deep south of this nation to plead for our understanding. In the midst of America's emerging industrialization in the 1930s and early '40s, the tenant families are left behind. The photos convey that, with an earnestness and sense of hope-in-spite- of-hopelessness that evokes our hope for a country that will hear their plea, and respond. The photos are not illustrative. They accompany the text as a full partner -- indeed as "coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative," as James Agee himself puts it in the book's Preface.The great 19th Century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out that our sight is an active, our hearing a passive sense. Walker Evans' photographs call us into an active involvement with three tenant families, engaging us in a deep perception of how life actually was for a large segment of our country. We are challenged "to understand" what Walker Evans is perceiving so well.James Agee, in the written text itself, makes a unique contribution to American literature. One sentence in Part One: A Country Letter demonstrates that: "All that each person is, and experiences, and shall never experience, in body and in mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe."Masterful !

This is not a criticism of the prose, but a criticism of the Penguin Classic edition. Walker Evans memorable photographs are wasted. Reproduced as small badly printed reproductions at the front of the book and lacking any contextualisation.Search out a version that does the photographer justice.

A chance to experience a much-praised classic. The book begins with 64 pages of Walker Evans' pictures, as pithy and full of impact as the day they were taken. There then follows Agee's text, 411 pages of the most tortured, convoluted, pretentious, rambling verbosity I have read in a good long time. One can assume from the fact that Agee struggled to find a publisher, and that the planned parts 2 and 3 were never written, that even at the time his work was considered barely readable, and it has aged very badly. But the book is still worth buying for the pictures!

Fantastic book, a prose work that is poetic. James Agee's life was short and turbulent, but he lives on forever in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A Death in the Family.

Ce livre a été publié en 1936 à partir d'un reportage sur des familles très pauvres d'agriculteurs blancs de l'Alabama. Il mélange précision journalistique, liberté littéraire et poésie. Le texte écrit par James Agee est accompagné de magnifiques photos prises par Walker Evans. Un livre étonnant à posséder dans sa bibliothèque que ce soit en version originale ou traduit en Français (collection Terre Humaine).

Livre en état neuf et livraison rapide = satisfaction complète. merci!