I've known a few other folks who've read this book, and have seen some real differences in opinion. Some thought it was just beautiful, some really loved it's content, some thought it was pretentious, others thought it was just a dressed-up screed. So, then, a few questions to get us conversing. Answer which ones you will, as you will:
1--What's your gut reaction here? I mean that in senses both broad and narrow.
2--Agee and Evans originally had an assignment from a magazine--Fortune, to be exact--to investigate sharecroppers and write a magazine-length story. It obviously turned into something much bigger and grander, and was never published in Fortune.. Nevertheless, the journalistic impulse is still there, in a mutated way. What do you make of the shifts in genres here? Sometimes it reads like a play, sometimes like a piece of journalism, sometimes like a novel, sometimes like a poem. Why does the book need to be written from so many different aspects, in so many different forms, to accomplish Agee's purpose?
3--Building off that last question, what does Agee seem to think the truth of the book is, the truth of these people's lives is? It's hard to tell when he's being journalistic and when he's being a novelist (which was his other trade). Which reveals the reality of the situation of the sharecropper better, fiction or ostensibly truthful journalism? What does this tell us about how we understand our own contemporary problems?
4--What do we call this book? How do we label it?
5--Do the photographs work with Agee's text or not? Is there tension between what they present? If, indeed, this is so, then why do Agee and Evans agree to pair them?
6--To my reading, this is a book with a very big dose of that great bugbear, liberal white guilt. Does this negatively affect the book? Or is it absolutely necessary?
Looking forward to a nice discussion, and hope my selection wasn't too out of left field for everyone!
I didn't like this book. I found it excessively verbose and obfuscative (since I'm now guilty of the same, I'll say it more simply: I thought it was wordy, and the author used too many 50-cent words when simpler ones would have done.)
ReplyDeleteMy main bone of contention here is my overwhelming feeling is that the author alienates his subject, not only by doing the above but also by utilizing language that reinforces his social and economic superiority. Circular logic, yes, but he not only uses big words, but big words with an eye to judgment.
On the subject -- I don't think this is an instance of "white guilt" Matt -- this is an instance of WASP guilt. White guilt would imply that Agee was observing African American people. As he was observing white sharecroppers, I think his guilt is more about being better off.
Agee's a poor anthropologist, as his judgment clouds his report. Agee's a poor newsman for the same -- with the addition that his judgment and yet desire to be accepted and acclimated makes him all the more distateful. He's superor and condescending instead of respectful. I found this read historically telling, but had I not the educational background to see it for what it is, I would have found it even more offensive and distasteful than I already do.