James Agee and the Legend of Himself

James Agee's literary reputation has grown enormously since his death in 1955. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry, film criticism, screenplays, and investigative journalism, but these accomplishments earned him only a modest public reputation during his brief life. Ironically, Agee's greatest recognition as a writer came posthumously, when his novel A Death in the Family won the Pulitzer Prize.

At the time of Agee's death, all of his published works were either out of print or buried in anthologies. Within fifteen years nearly everything Agee had ever written was in demand and available in print. Agee became something of a magical presence over a body of attitudes and experiences that may or may not have had anything to do with the writer or his accomplishments.

In James Agee and the Legend of Himself, Alan Spiegel examines these accomplishments and treats Agee not simply as a celebrity, journalist, or "Depression" writer but as a self- interrogating literary artist who created a homemade legend from his earliest family memories, sifting his experience through an automythology composed of his mother, his father, and himself.

Agee the man was fact, not legend. But it is the legend that infiltrates the terrain of his created fantasy: the figures, settings, structures, issues, and obsessions. Alan Spiegel explores the interior life through the different but continuous versions of the Agee persona as they appear in his books. In doing so, he also counters the prevalent misconceptions about Agee's work and its confusion with details of his actual life. Spiegel considers Agee's major writing, giving extended attention to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee on Film, The Morning Watch, and A Death in the Family.

Rich and evocative, James Agee and the Legend of Himself offers readers a deeper understanding of a fascinating and charismatic American artist and his literary accomplishment.