In case you wondered …

… On James Agee | Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)

My recollections of that initial encounter are, first, that it took forever to read the book, and, second, that I loved it. It was dense and difficult and sometimes I had no idea what James Agee was talking about or trying to do. And when I told people I was reading a 400-page book about tenant farmers in rural Alabama, they found it difficult to understand why – and I found it equally difficult to explain. The story ofLet Us Now Praise Famous Men – both the story it tells and the story of its writing – is a strange one, and it symbolizes the strangeness and intensity of its author’s career as a whole.