Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [Hardcover]

James: Evans, Walker Agee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1969

This is a hard cover book with a dust jacket. The jacket is in acceptable condition with some wear along the edges, primarily the top edge. There are some tears in the top edge as well as some creases. These are evident in the photo. The hard covers are in very good, excellent condition with no visible signs of wear. The interior is free of any marks or writing. The binding is solid and fully intact. This edition contains 62 black and white photos in the first part of the book.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (1969)
• ASIN: B000JKF0NI
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,389,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible, but widely misunderstood work, July 12, 2003

By 

jmm38 (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South (Hardcover)

Many people argue about Agee's complex text. The entire body of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is written in a kind of highly emotional euphoria in which Agee combines his own thoughts and perceptions with exhaustive description of the world around him. His intense feeling causes the writing to be, by conventional grammatical standards, virtually unreadable. Once the reader gets past his chapter-long sentences and widely varying themes, however, the book emerges as one of the greatest written accomplishments of the 20th century.

While the nominal subject of the documentary is an in-depth exploration of three tenant farming families during the Great Depression, the real project (and Agee himself admits this in his remarkably confessional prose) is the documentation of his own experience living with those farmers for several weeks--sleeping in their vermin-infested beds, eating their home-cooked food, and interacting with them on a human level. In addition, Agee self-consciously writes the text and explores the act of writing, both during his stay with the farmers and several years later, when he completed the vast majority of the book.

The final product is a patchwork book pieced together from Biblical prayer, Evans's photographs, Agee's flawless descriptions (which, in several cases, may be more accurate than Evans's probably manipulated prints) and meditations on writing, poverty, art, and day-to-day human experience. Two things make this work remarkable: Agee's honesty (he never claims to be objective or non-judgemental) and his innate talent for description. I approached this book with an open mind, and found it to be one of the most thoughtful and rewarding works I have ever read.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I thought I hated it at points, but I've never been able to get it out of my head., September 22, 2005

By 

Mike Smith (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: The American Classic, in Words and Photographs, of Three Tenant Families in the Deep South (Paperback)

This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.

UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Famous Men Revisited: and other comments on James Agee, January 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Paperback)

In one of the most edifying ways, James Agee illustrates the life of the Southern tenant sharecropper in the Great Depression. Agee's writings coupled with the eloquent photography of one notable Walker Evans, distinguishes the book in a elite category unparalleled by few if any whatsoever. The circumstances the sharecropper endured during the Depression not only working the land but also at home with family was rigorous and was additionally exposed very thoroughly in Agee's writings. The book is a must read for anyone interested in the History of the Great Depression era/New Dealism. One other book of notable mention for those interested is Larry Nelson's- KING COTTON'S ADVOCATE.