By Jeanie McKennaWhen asked what he did for a living, James Agee called himself simply a "writer (Kramer 17), but that title doesn't convey the breadth and depth of his talents or the wide range of his concerns. Poet, film
critic, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, journalist, social commentator: all of these were Agee's roles in a short but prolific career.
He is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Death in the Family
, but he also wrote one of the great literary treatments of the poor in America, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (with photographer Walker Evans). Written at the height of the Great Depression,
Famous Men
chronicles the lives of Alabama tenant farmers and their families whom Agee and Evans visited in 1936. Without condescension and with a poet's eye, Agee's prose (along with Evans' photographs), portrays the dignity and strength in the lives of those most affected by the economic upheaval of the time.
Even lesser known perhaps is Agee's work on screenplays, the most famous of which is The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn and directed by John Huston. Early in his
career as a writer, even at school, Agee wrote about the movies, and film criticism comprised much of his work as a journalist at The Nation. Although he shared the sentiments of fellow writers William
Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald that writing for the movies was "hack work, " he relished the free time his work in films afforded him (Kramer 25).
A look at Agee's childhood and education not only
provides insight into how a writer of such scope is created but also how Agee's best known work, A Death in the Family, was born. There are many autobiographical connections to Agee's life and the novel.
Agee was born James Rufus Agee on November 27, 1909, in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Family members called him Rufus, and this name becomes the name of the young boy in the novel. Agee's father, Hugh James Agee (Jay in the
novel), was killed in an automobile accident when the child was only six. This same event becomes the central tragedy in the novel. As a sensitive writer, Agee knew as early as age 16 that he wanted to write about the
death of his father and its effects on the whole family (Kramer 147).
Agee's father was from the backwoods hill country north of Knoxville while his mother's family was more educated and genteel. His mother was
college educated and deeply devoted to the Episcopal faith while his father did not belong to the Church. His concerns and interests were much more worldly. This contrast in influences is a key to understanding Agee's
need to come to terms with his father's death. He understood early on that his life would have been very different had his father's sensibilities played a greater influence in his life (Kramer).
After the loss of her husband, Laura Agee moved her family to Sewanee, Tennessee and enrolled young James at St. Andrew's, an Episcopal school. While a student there, he met one of the greatest influences in his life,
his teacher Father James Flye. These two remained close until Agee's death in 1955. He attended high school for one year in Knoxville before his mother remarried and the family relocated to New England. This move to New
England and improved financial circumstances allowed the precocious and sensitive Agee to attend the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy and later Harvard College. This fortuitous course of events paved the way for the
development of Agee's interest in writing. While at Exeter and Harvard he excelled in literary pursuits and became editor of The Advocate
at Harvard. One of the greatest friends he met at Harvard was Robert Fitzgerald, who wrote famous translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey. With this background, environment, and connections, Agee was
prepared to stake his literary claim.
The Depression seriously limited his ability to pursue an artistic, bohemian lifestyle, so he accepted a job at Fortune magazine. Let Us Now Praise Famous
Men began as an assignment for the magazine. From that point, Agee's career was as varied as his interests and concerns. Tragically, he died at age 45 of a heart attack. Much of his work, including A
Death in the Family, was published posthumously. James Agee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for this work.
Though the modes Agee wrote in were disparate, his literary
style was uniquely and clearly his own. Impressionistic, imagistic, even his prose shines with a poet's attention to the moment. Plot is secondary to the emotional reality of a single character or even of a single
detail. In A Death in the Family, this style is finely crafted as the reader is called upon to feel everyone's emotional response. The death of Agee's father was the most personal and crucial of his life, and in
a magnanimous, universal gesture, a gesture perhaps only true artists can complete, he allows us into the experience to feel its pain, its confusion, and its truth.
Work Cited: Kramer, Victor A.
James Agee. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.
Works Consulted: Agee, James. A Death in the Family. New York: McDowekk, Obolensky, 1957.
Spear, Ross, et.al. editors.
Agee, His Life Remembered. New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1985.
Jeanie McKenna teaches English at Soddy-Daisy High School in Hamilton County, Tennessee.
