Firstly, I must apologise for the quality of the photo - taking a photo of a wonderful photo published in a book does in no way do it justice. Which is a great shame as the photos in this book, not that there are many of them, are as important as the text. The book in question is called "Let us now praise famous men", the photos are by Walter Evans and the text is by James Agee.The two men were sent by Fortune magazine in the summer of 1936 to record the daily lives of white, cotton sharecroppers in the South - the result was this book which in fact is part of a larger work entitled Three Tenant Families. The book was published in 1941 and heralded as an historical record of a America that most Americans knew little about. Due to its publication during the War, it did not sell well, and it wasn't until the early '60s that the book was recognised as a frank eye-witness account of the terrible poverty and desperation in which sharecroppers lived.
These two young men set off on their assignment, it would seem little knowing what was awaiting them. Agee recounts their meeting with sharecroppers who couldn't understand why they should be interviewed or photographed and showed a certain amount of mistrust. But they were soon accepted by the community and moved from their hotel to live with the families whose daily lives they recorded.
Fairly early on in the book, Agee falls in love with Emma and she with him, although both of them know that it is an impossible situation:
"...and all I could do, the very most, for this girl who was so soon going on out of my existence into so hopeless a one of hers, the very most I could do was not to show all I cared for her and for what she was saying, and not to even try to do, or to indicate the good I wished I might do her and was so utterly helpless to do".
But this is an interlude in the book only - however Agee's affection for the families is obviously very genuine and helped towards their being able to live 'en famille' and to record the croppers terrible lives.
The photos are wonderful - however although there is a list of the names of the croppers in the book and their relationship to each other, the photos are nameless. Whilst reading the book, I spent my time going back to the photos, putting a name to a photo, but didn't succeed! I read this book a year ago, and as far as I remember I never discovered which was Emma!
I personally thought it a lovely book, descriptive, poetic, never patronising towards the croppers and their families and at the same time a fascinating insight into the lives of these people as it really was, and not as Hollywood would like us to think it was!
I was prompted to write about this book as the Library of Congress are running an exhibition called Bound for Glory (America in color 1939-1943) - there are some black and white photos in the collection however. You can view some of them online at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/boundforglory/
I hope you liked my little review - I never thought writing about a book could be so hard!
PS : Thursday morning - the above link doesn't work - or at least if you click on it the link goes through beta.blogger and therefore the page doesn't open - I don't think I have quite mastered links yet! An easy way out is to google 'bound for glory' to visit the site!
I hope you liked my little review - I never thought writing about a book could be so hard!
PS : Thursday morning - the above link doesn't work - or at least if you click on it the link goes through beta.blogger and therefore the page doesn't open - I don't think I have quite mastered links yet! An easy way out is to google 'bound for glory' to visit the site!
5 comments:
Yes it looks like a crutch, doesn't it? I had to look twice - in fact it is the iron bed post.
Wonderful pictures, but shocking when you learn they are USA, 1936, not 1880. Look at the fellow closely, his upper arm and sticking-out ribs. He's on the way to looking like something out of Belsen. Given that the children and mother look reasonably well fed, one wonders why he's so gaunt. Long hours in the fields, and giving the family his rations ?
Your link to the Library of Congress did not work, Louise, but was OK when copied and pasted into the address bar for URLs. But doing that, at least on my laptop, topped and tailed it with http etc, and (more importantly) a forward slash on the end.
You're right about book reviews - they aren't terribly time-effective in blogging terms. I'm thinking of doing Samuel Pepy's diary and Stephen Oppenheimer's weighty tome on his genetic detective story on us Brits. But that's a lot of reading, and tight summarising, all for just two posts.
Louise, to add a link, highlight the word you want to make into a link, then click on the 'link' symbol above (where the font, image etc symbols are) - it's a green one that looks like a chain link. Then paste the http address and click OK. You'll have a highlighted word that takes you to the linked address with no problem.
Louise it is important to get started and I am sure you will improve. This is Grapes of Wrath era. Which I liked when I read it a long time ago, I am sure today I would find it intolerably American. The interesting thing is that the book ends on a fairly forlorn tone. The old man being suckled by the girl who's premature baby just died. ie the American dream sucks. Holywood could not sell such a realistic message. So the famous film of the same name (which I intensely disliked), distorts the whole message by ending with an upbeat message.
Yes, very much a 'Grapes of Wrath' touch - but this book is not fiction.
Of course it is American - I don't know why you should find it 'intolerable' - it is a chapter of American life which I personally found interesting and just because they have Bush at the moment, doesn't mean to say that all things American should be ignored.
Going down that line - I hope you are not interested in anything French - they have Chirac!
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