Twentieth Century American Literature: James Agee

Description

The landmark Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism, first published in the 1980s, is one of the most impressive collections of literary criticism ever produced. It is now available in digital format for the first time. This volume of the series provides excerpts and full-length critical essays on the writer James Agee.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• Literature
• Contemporary history
• Study
• 20th century
• Author
• American
• Contemporary
• Train de luxe
• James Agee

Informations

• Publié par: Infobase Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781685661151
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Twentieth Century American Literature: James Agee
Copyright © 2022 by Infobase
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information, contact:
Chelsea House An imprint of Infobase 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001
ISBN 978-1-68566-115-1
You can find Chelsea House on the World Wide Web at http://www.infobase.com
Contents Chapters Agee, James James Agee—The Question of Wasted Talent (excerpt) Partisan Review (excerpt on James Agee) Greatness with One Fault in It (excerpt on James Agee) Sense and Sensibility (excerpt on James Agee) Tender Anguish (excerpt on James Agee) Childhood: James Agee's A Death in the Family (excerpt) Agee (excerpt)
Chapters
Agee, James
(b. 1909–d. 1955)

James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 27, 1909. After his father's death in 1916, Agee attended several boarding schools. The last was Phillips Exeter Academy, where he began to write. He produced a volume of poetry, Permit Me Voyage, in 1934, two years after graduating from Harvard. During the rest of the 1930s he worked for Fortune magazine, which assigned him to write on tenant farmers in Alabama. Agee and photographer Walker Evans spent five years on the project, published in 1941 as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
In 1939 Agee wrote a treatment for a screenplay of André Malraux's Man's Fate. The movie was never made, but Agee's interest in cinema was piqued. He became film critic for Time and for the Nation, where his passionate, intelligent reviews virtually invented modern film criticism. They were collected as Volume One of Agee on Film in 1958. Volume Two contains the screenplays he wrote after 1948, including The African Queen, filmed by John Huston in 1951; The Night of the Hunter, filmed by Charles Laughton in 1955; and the unproduced Noa Noa, based on the journal of Paul Gauguin.
The 1950s were difficult for Agee, blocked by self-doubt and the effects of years of heavy drinking. His autobiographical The Morning Watch appeared in 1950; his next book, the novel A Death in the Family, was published after his death in New York City on May 16, 1955. The book won him the acclaim he never received in life, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Agee was married three times, and had four children.
James Agee—The Question of