James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Jeffrey J. Folks (Doshisha University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Domains

Political Science

Dates

First circulation or publication 1941

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Biography (any)
Essays/ Lectures (any)
Historical
Non-fictional prose

Resources

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Recommended Reading

In July and August of 1936, James Agee and photographer Walker Evans travelled to the American South to research a story on sharecropping for

Fortune Magazine

. Their assignment, according to Agee's “Preface”, was to produce a “photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers”. Beyond this “nominal subject”, however, Agee ultimately conceived of the project as a work of several volumes to be entitled “Three Tenant Families” (only the first volume,

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

, was ever written). This larger work would consist of nothing less than “an independent inquiry into certain normal predicaments of human divinity”.

In speaking from the beginning of “normal predicaments of human divinity”, Agee

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Citation: Folks, Jeffrey J.. "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 July 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4015, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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