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James Agee and Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Penguin Modern Classics) /anglais Paperback – April 6, 2006

by AGEE JAMES/ WALKER E (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 370 ratings
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In the summer of 1936, Agee and Evans set out on assignment for "Fortune" magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when in 1941 "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" was first published to enormous critical acclaim.
This unsparing record of place, of the people who shaped the land, and of the rhythm of their lives today stands as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    512 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    PENGUIN UK
  4. Publication date
    April 6, 2006
  5. Dimensions
    5.08 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0141188499
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0141188492
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ PENGUIN UK (April 6, 2006)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0141188499
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141188492
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.1 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.08 x 1.14 x 7.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 370 ratings

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  1. Walker Evans

    Walker Evans

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  2. James Agee

    James Agee

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
370 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Rev. Ralph
5.0 out of 5 stars and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015
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The photos by Walker Evans in "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" are, in my judgment, American classics. They enable the families of three tenant farmers in the deep south of this nation to plead for our understanding. In the midst of America's emerging industrialization in the 1930s and early '40s, the tenant families are left behind. The photos convey that, with an earnestness and sense of hope-in-spite- of-hopelessness that evokes our hope for a country that will hear their plea, and respond. The photos are not illustrative. They accompany the text as a full partner -- indeed as "coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative," as James Agee himself puts it in the book's Preface.

The great 19th Century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer pointed out that our sight is an active, our hearing a passive sense. Walker Evans' photographs call us into an active involvement with three tenant families, engaging us in a deep perception of how life actually was for a large segment of our country. We are challenged "to understand" what Walker Evans is perceiving so well.

James Agee, in the written text itself, makes a unique contribution to American literature. One sentence in Part One: A Country Letter demonstrates that: "All that each person is, and experiences, and shall never experience, in body and in mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had precedent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath, and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe."

Masterful !
15 people found this helpful
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Roderick S. Haynes
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Period Piece Examining GREAT DEPRESSION
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014
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This work is touted by some as "one of the twentieth century's greatest pieces of literature." I wouldn't go that far, but the photos are incredible and I have to say the reader is placed right inside the tenant farmer's (Alabama) house and in the fields he tends. The time is the mid-1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression. Tenant farmers down South are struggling with deepening debt, chronic illnesses in their families (NO health care), land that is not arrable, and the hopeless, grinding poverty much of America suffered through in that era. The author, at times, sounds like he is attempting to imitate William Faulkner. The writing in places is highly complex, stream of consciousness stuff in some places. I like the book a lot but the reader must be very patient and willing to read methodically. It's not a breezy kind of style. It will also break your heart. The tenant farmer certainly had a rough go of it. Makes you wonder how much of this country is still in such dire straits.
33 people found this helpful
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Stevie Z
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a one-off
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2023
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Agee tells you up front what his target is: to create consciousness in the reader. And knowing that that might be impossible, he writes in a style, and lays his cards down in a very careful order, so as to push away the idly curious. In this sense, the book takes the same tactic Jesus took when he switched to speaking in parables: "because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand."
6 people found this helpful
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J. Edgar Mihelic, MA, MA, MBA
4.0 out of 5 stars Not What You Expect
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2021
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There's a line from the preface to this book we're James Agee says but he's going to take his subject matter seriously.

It Is hard to find the cogent words to talk about this book.

It's not a novel, but it is novel.

See if you go look up the reviews you'll find confusion about what it is that Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was supposed to be about. And I have the same confusion. Ultimately I think this book is often lumped in with Grapes of Wrath not because they're stylistically the same or did they really kind of hit on the same subject matter or even though that's more parallel. But what I think Steinbeck has in common with James Agee is that they both took that subject matter seriously. If I could compare this book to anything in literature I think it is those interstitial chapters to Grapes of Wrath that aren’t specifically about the Joad family but that are trying to set the scene.

Because ultimately what this book is more than anything “about” it's not about the sharecroppers it's nominally covering but I would say it's more a close reading of the land of the objects and the clothes and the things that they touch. More than anything it reminds me of that mid century literary criticism before the French broke everything but it's a literary criticism that applies to the physicality of the world. So it's kind of like a precursor to Barthes looking at the semiotics, the laundry detergent or whatever.

So It's a really interesting book but it's impossible to read cover-to-cover because it is like a kind of pastiche of bringing together notes and clipping. You don't get any kind of narrative arc but it's as if you're looking at a world from one inch away. I tried to understand it like that. I think it's a rightfully celebrated text but you have to understand it on its own terms and not try to see it as something else that you wanted to be.
27 people found this helpful
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zenner
2.0 out of 5 stars hard to read
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2023
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I enjoy non-fiction and I am interested in reading and learning about this subject matter. I must agree with others who rated this poorly, it is a challenge to read. I kept hearing in my head, "James (Agee), can you get to the point?" It was disjointed and hard to follow. He seemed more interested in being a clever writer focused on his prose and using an enormous amount of words (pretentious yes, I agree with others). Sentences go on and on, what was the point? What a disappointment. I am no literary critic, but this was not to my liking. I really wanted to enjoy this book. I should have, right? I could not...famous book or not. IMHO.
8 people found this helpful
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JJ: the particular consumer
3.0 out of 5 stars interesting mostly for historical purposes
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2023
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This book is well printed, I have no complaint with the physical object.

The content is interesting historically, and could be useful for a true historian of US social / class history especially of the Great Depression.

For me, an amateur dilettante non-historian, it did not hold my attention well. It would have held my attention if it described the detailed condition of tenant farmers of the 2020's.
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Tombo
5.0 out of 5 stars Agee's book and writing should be better-known.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2024
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This book is a photo essay is about the lives of white sharecroppers in Alabama in the 1930's. It is a classic. Its issues are as relevant today as then. Agee died young so we have little of his work. Intelligent, difficult writing but unique. Agee must not be forgotten or overlooked. This book is the place to begin.
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Lotte-Lale
5.0 out of 5 stars Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Reviewed in Germany on February 18, 2011
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Fantastic book, a prose work that is poetic. James Agee's life was short and turbulent, but he lives on forever in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and A Death in the Family.
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SM
5.0 out of 5 stars Un livre étonnant à découvrir
Reviewed in France on October 4, 2010
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Ce livre a été publié en 1936 à partir d'un reportage sur des familles très pauvres d'agriculteurs blancs de l'Alabama. Il mélange précision journalistique, liberté littéraire et poésie. Le texte écrit par James Agee est accompagné de magnifiques photos prises par Walker Evans. Un livre étonnant à posséder dans sa bibliothèque que ce soit en version originale ou traduit en Français (collection Terre Humaine).
2 people found this helpful
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RAYMOND LABERGE
5.0 out of 5 stars Condition excellente!
Reviewed in Canada on March 14, 2021
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Livre en état neuf et livraison rapide = satisfaction complète. merci!
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penguni
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, great subject, well written, good print quality.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 28, 2015
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Excellent book, great subject, well written, good print quality.
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