Michael A. Vuksta
NOTE TO THE TEACHER: I would caution the teacher not to assign the entire text of
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
to certain classes due to the fact that some sections pose problems of racial and/or sexual suitability to the students’ development and maturity.
Without a doubt you will want to examine Agee’s text yourself for selections which may be relevant to your own pedagogical needs. I list here a few selections with an all too brief annotation:
“(On the Porch: 1” : pages 19, 20 & 21—this is the earliest entry of the book that does not engage in a discussion of the book’s purpose. The text begins in silence as all are asleep. Perhaps, under this cloak of darkness it is the writer’s wish that he be allowed to observe and record while he remains “invisible” to the waking consciousness of others;
“Near A Church” : pages 37 & 38—here lies Agee’s first act of describing and inventorytaking. This passage is not without metaphor and imagination as he refers to the church as “God’s mask and wooden skull.” There is also an account of his assisting Evans in preparing to photograph the church;
“All Over Alabama” : pages 42 & 43—As night descends not only on the porch but all around him, Agee continues to place his readers and himself and the tenant farmers in the larger picture.
Agee’s first entry of pure description is an account of the oil lamp in one of the tenants’ houses. The lamp is visible in one of Evans’s photographs and the two can be used in combination to compare the powers of each medium—pages 47 & 48;
A meditation on what a tenant family is. This is a very general and subjective evaluation and takes into account what a family and each of its members experience across generations—pages 52—54;
This section is followed by a revelation of Agee’s point of view at this time in the narrative. It is one of empathy with their tiredness and their dreams—pages 54—56;
From the perspective of a tenant youth, Agee reflects on the possibility and nature of hope in a tenant’s life—page 76;
From this dark and silent slumber there comes a waking—pages 80—84. It is an enthralling imaginative recital of the land and animals arising with an emphasis on the sounds and their movement through time and space;
Page 84 provides the reader with an autobiographical vignette of the rituals of his own wakings and how they compare with those of the tenants:
In “Colon” he claims to make a new beginning of his task of writing. He begins to describe a structure that the book will take. Agee characterizes this structure as spherical and globular. What follows is much like a personal creation myth with each and every creature at the center of his own sphere—pages 93—102;
Agee finds himself alone in the house and this solitude gives him the opportunity to look, to gaze, to stare, to pry; and we are rewarded because of this. There follows a lengthy, elaborate, painstaking inventory and description of one of the tenant houses. It is a must read for experiencing Agee at his descriptive best. I might highlight his account of “The room beneath the house”, “Odors” and “The altar.” The latter can be used together with one of the photographs as another comparison of the accuracy and efficacy of the two mediums—pages 125-169. Within this section Agee include two “essentials’’ that reflect upon a building as a mental construction: one is that of the simultaneity of the existence of the house and all its four rooms in the imagination of the observer, very much like that of an architectural plan or model inside our mind; the other one is an account of how the materials give a story or reading of its construction. Finally, on pages 168 & 169, he returns to the theme or image of light and all of its manifestations, at this time it is a signal. Here Agee points to the unique occurrence of light in time and space. I won’t ruin it for you read it!
Another section of description that coincides with one of Evans’s photographs appears on pages 176—180, describing the Ricketts’ fireplace;
“Beauty” is the subject of Agee’s attention on pages 181 & 182; and on page 187 he evaluates the habitability and function of tenant houses;
“(On the Porch : 2” : pages 201—229; This is the most self-ware section of the book in which he tackles many conceptual difficulties of writing and the presentation of actuality. In brief, some of the topics are: consciousness, the cosmos and man’s natural order, truth, art and imagination, fact and fiction, journalism, naturalism and realism, the nature of language and writing. On page 219 he describes the four “planes of truth which he will utilize throughout the book, they are recall, reception, contemplation, and
in medias res
. Agee expresses a relationship to the land that borders on being a prehistoric or mythic evocation. He writes of reciprocity in the earthly movements and experience;
For the symbolic nature of objects, this time, clothing, see the section on “Overalls”, pages 240—244;
I’m sure none of you will want to skip over the section on “Education” on pages 263—286;
Pages 291—294 describe the family and its relationship to work;
Pages 366—369 is a touching and revealing account of Agee’s thoughts and feelings upon first encountering the tenants. It comes to a magnificent chronicle of his getting stuck in the mud with his automobile and having to appeal to and warmly receive the family’s compassion, hospitality and assistance—pages 373—382;
The final entries include a description of a graveyard in which he remarks about the presence of photographs and other objects on the graves, pages 395—399. There is a photograph of a child’s grave in Book I that can be referred to, for others see Evans
Photographs for the Farm Security Administration. . . .
The absolute last images of the book before Agee returns to the porch series to close, are those of two children one cradled in his mother’s arms and another asleep on the porch, 401 and 402.
“(On the Porch : 3”:—pages 421—428 is a meditation on the nature, purpose and possibility of communication. It is about the limits and the hopes of language, of the human need and attempt to communicate. It is also about multiplicity, ambiguity and incommunicability. Finally, it is about silence, thinking, analyzing, remembering and praying.
For a concise overview and interpretation of the text see Genevieve Moreau’s
The Restless Journey of James Agee
, William and Morrow and Company, New York, 1977, pp. 135—144 & pp. 185—199.