Category: Books

James Agee has long been one of my favorite writ­ers. Recent­ly I received a book of his film crit­i­cism from the library. It is pub­lished by one of my favorite pub­lish­ers: The Library of Amer­i­ca. Typ­i­cal­ly I’m not a fan of any par­tic­u­lar type of jour­nal­ism or jour­nal­ist, but Agee does­n’t real­ly fit a type; his earnest­ness, pas­sion and frank­ness make his bell-like prose all the more inter­est­ing.

I’m cur­rent­ly real­ly enjoy­ing read­ing his old reviews from The Nation in the 1940s. A fair num­ber of the films I’ve seen; some I’ve nev­er even heard of, but want to track down now. He thought Casablan­ca was maudlin. His writ­ing is also a very acces­si­ble cul­tur­al snap­shot of the US dur­ing WWII. His poet­ry isn’t the best, but some­times it can be insid­i­ous. From Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

(To Walk­er Evans.

Against time and the dam­ages of the brain
Sharp­en and cal­i­brate. Not yet in full,
Yet in some arbi­trat­ed part
Order the façade of the list­less sum­mer.

Spies, mov­ing del­i­cate­ly among the ene­my,
The younger sons, the fools,
Set some­what aside the dialects and the stained skins of feigned
mad­ness,
Ambigu­ous­ly sig­nal, baf­fle, the elud­ed sen­tinel.

Edgar, weep­ing for pity, to the shelf of that sick bluff,
Bring your blind father, and describe a lit­tle;
Behold him, part wak­ened, fall­en among field flow­ers shal­low
But undis­closed, with­draw.

Not yet that naked hour when armed,
Dis­guise flung flat, square­ly we chal­lenge the fiend.
Still, com­rade, the run­ning of beasts and the ruin­ing of heav­en
Still cap­tive the old wild king.

He’s also the man who wrote the mot­to I try to live by, again from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

Isn’t every human being both a sci­en­tist and an artist; and in writ­ing of human expe­ri­ence, isn’t there a good deal to be said for rec­og­niz­ing that fact and for using both meth­ods?