New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans

New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans

New Critical Essays on James Agee and Walker Evans Perspectives on L ET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN Edited by Caroline Blinder

NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS ON JAMES AGEE AND WALKER EVANS Copyright Caroline Blinder, 2010. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 978-0-230-10292-7 All rights reserved. The editor and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. Copyright 1941 by James Agee and Walker Evans; copyright renewed 1969 by Mia Fritsch Agee and Walker Evans. Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin Company. All Rights Reserved. The Walker Evans Archives at The Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection. The James Agee Archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28747-5 ISBN 978-0-230-11186-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230111868 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New critical essays on James Agee and Walker Evans : perspectives on Let us now praise famous men / edited by Caroline Blinder. p. cm. 1. Agee, James, 1909 1955. 2. Evans, Walker, 1903 1975. 3. Agee, James, 1909 1955. Let us now praise famous men. 4. Artistic collaboration United States. I. Blinder, Caroline, 1967 PS3501.G35Z79 2010 818.5209 dc22 2010001852 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For one who sets himself to look at all earnestly, at all in purpose toward truth, into the eyes of a human life: what is it he there beholds that so freezes and abashes his ambitious heart? For Mamita

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments ix xi Introduction 1 Caroline Blinder 1 Ontological Aspects of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Death, Irony, Faulkner 21 Mick Gidley 2 On the Porch and in the Room: Threshold Moments and Other Ethnographic Tropes in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 41 John Dorst 3 Walker Evans s Contrapuntal Design: The Sequences of Photographs in the First and Second Editions of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 71 Alan Trachtenberg 4 The Tyranny of Words in the Economy of Abundance: Modernism, Language, and Politics in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 79 Sue Currell 5 Agee, Evans, and the Therapeutic Document: Narrative Neurosis in the Function of Art 105 Paul Hansom 6 Two Prickes : The Colon as Practice 121 Paula Rabinowitz

viii Contents 7 Animating the Gudgers: On the Problems of a Cinematic Aesthetic in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 145 Caroline Blinder Epilogue Agee and Evans: On The Porch: 4 165 William Stott Selected Bibliography 175 Contributors 181 Index 185

Illustrations 1.1 Walker Evans, Landowner in Moundville, Alabama 1936 26 2.1 Walker Evans, Dog Run of Floyd Burroughs s Home, Hale County, Alabama 1936 52 3.1 Walker Evans, Minstrel Poster in Alabama Town, 1936 75 4.1 Walker Evans, Kitchen Wall in Bud Field s House, Hale County, Alabama, 1936 87 6.1 Walker Evans, Home of Cotton Sharecropper Floyd Burroughs. Hale County, Alabama (1935 or 1936) 131 7.1 Walker Evans, Fireplace and Wall Detail 1936 152

Acknowledgments From the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, I must thank Hugh Davis, Mike Lofaro, and Nick Wyman for their expertise, encouragement, and help in accessing the James Agee Archives. To the contributors and participants in the one day conference on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, I also owe a great deal of thanks for making it an extraordinarily inspiring day. I would also like to thank both colleagues and students at Goldsmiths, University of London for listening to me garble on about Agee with patience and kindness. And last but not least I would like to thank both Kim and Natasha, the latter who is still hoping I will write a real book some day. C.B.