Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - Wikipedia Let Us Now Praise Famous Men From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (February 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) First edition (publ. Houghton Mifflin) Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is a book with text by American writer James Agee and photographs by American photographer Walker Evans, first published in 1941 in the United States. The work documents the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. Although it is in keeping with Evans's work with the Farm Security Administration, the project was initiated not by the FSA, but by Fortune magazine. The title derives from a passage in the Wisdom of Sirach (44:1) that begins, "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us". Contents 1 Background 2 Agee as a character 3 Impact 4 Pseudonyms 5 Radio adaptation 6 References 7 External links Background[edit] Walker Evans photograph of three sharecroppers, Frank Tengle, Bud Fields, and Floyd Burroughs, Alabama, Summer 1936 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men grew out of an assignment that Agee and Evans accepted in 1936 to produce a Fortune article on the conditions among sharecropper families in the American South during the "Dust Bowl". It was the time of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs designed to help the poorest segments of the society. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They returned with Evans's portfolio of stark images—of families with gaunt faces, adults and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the Depression-era nowhere of the deep south—and Agee's detailed notes.[1] As he remarks in the book's preface, the original assignment was to produce a "photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers". However, as the Literary Encyclopedia points out, "Agee ultimately conceived of the project as a work of several volumes to be entitled Three Tenant Families, though only the first volume, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, was ever written". Agee considered that the larger work, though based in journalism, would be "an independent inquiry into certain normal predicaments of human divinity". Agee as a character[edit] Agee, who writes modestly and self-consciously about his privileged position in the book's creation, appears as a character himself at times in the narrative, as when he agonizes over his role as "spy" and intruder into these humble lives. At other times, as when he simply lists the contents of a sharecropper's shack or the meager articles of clothing they have to wear on Sunday, he is altogether absent. The strange ordering of books and chapters, the titles that range from mundane ("Clothes") to "radically artistic" (as the New York Times put it), the direct appeals by Agee for the reader to see the humanity and grandeur of these horrible lives, and his suffering at the thought that he cannot accomplish his appointed task, or should not, for the additional suffering it inflicts on his subjects, are all part of the book's character.[2] Impact[edit] Scholars have noted that the book's ambitious scale and rejection of traditional reporting runs parallel with the creative, non-traditional programs of the U.S. government under Roosevelt. Agee argues with literary, political, and moral traditions that might mean nothing to his subjects but which are important for the larger audience and the larger context of examining others' lives. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sold only half its press run following publication, but since then has won high praise over the years and is routinely studied in the U.S. as a source of both journalistic and literary innovation. Reading the book inspired Aaron Copland to write his opera, The Tender Land.[3] David Simon, journalist and creator of the television series The Wire, credited the book with impacting him early in his career and informing his practice of journalism.[4] Pseudonyms[edit] Throughout the book, Agee and Evans use pseudonyms to obscure the identity of the three tenant farmer families. This convention is retained in the 1989 follow-up book by D. Maharidge and M. Williamson And Their Children After Them: The Legacy of "Let us now praise famous men" : James Agee, Walker Evans, and the Rise and Fall of Cotton in the South. However Evans's photos that are archived in the Library of Congress American Memory Project have the original names of the photographic subjects. Pseudonym Actual Name Gudger Family George Gudger Floyd Burroughs Annie Mae (Woods) Gudger Allie Mae Burroughs George Gudger Jr. Floyd Burroughs Jr. Maggie Louise Gudger Lucille Burroughs Burt Westly Gudger Charles Burroughs Valley Few "Squinchy" Gudger Othel Lee "Squeaky" Burroughs Ricketts Family Fred Garvrin Ricketts Frank Tengle* Sadie (Woods) Ricketts Flora Bee Tengle Margaret Ricketts Elizabeth Tengle Paralee Ricketts Dora Mae Tengle John Garvrin Ricketts ??? Tengle Richard Ricketts William Tengle (not confirmed) Flora Merry Lee Ricketts Laura Minnie Lee Tengle Katy Ricketts Ida Ruth Tengle Clair Bell Ricketts ??? Tengle Woods Family Thomas Gallatin "Bud" Woods Bud Fields Ivy Woods Lily Rogers Fields Pearl Woods ??? Fields Thomas Woods William Fields Ellen Woods ??? Fields Others T. Hudson Margraves Watson Tidmore (not confirmed) * There is disagreement over whether the family name is properly spelled Tengle or Tingle. The Library of Congress's spelling is used here. Pseudonym Actual Location Hobe's Hill Mills Hill Cookstown Moundville, Alabama Centerboro, Alabama Greensboro, Alabama Cherokee City, Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama Radio adaptation[edit] In 1966 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired the 135-minute dramatic feature,[5] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, George Whalley's adaptation of the book. The broadcast was produced by John Reeves, who has written about the radio production.[6] References[edit] ^ Giles Oakley (1997). The Devil's Music. Da Capo Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-306-80743-5. ^ Agee, James; Evans, Walker (1969). Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families. Houghton Mifflin. ^ Everett, Horace and Copland, Aaron, "The Tender Land: An Opera in Two Acts: Synopsis" (Spring 1954). Tempo (New Ser.), 31: pp. 10, 12-16. ^ "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and Walker Evans". Davidsimon.com. April 16, 2011. ^ "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men | George Whalley". Georgewhalley.ca. ^ "If This Is A Man | George Whalley". Georgewhalley.ca. External links[edit] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Houghton Mifflin (2001). ISBN 0-618-12749-6 Fortune Magazine's David Whitford returns to Hale County Alabama Maharidge, D. and Williamson, M.(1989). And their children after them : the legacy of Let us now praise famous men. New York: Pantheon. 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. A Grand Lady and Some Famous Men - Some brief notes on the sequel, with modern-day photographs, by the Marion Military Institute's Archivist Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Let_Us_Now_Praise_Famous_Men&oldid=1002054684" Categories: 1941 non-fiction books Photographic collections and books Houghton Mifflin books Alabama culture Non-fiction books about the Great Depression Dust Bowl New Deal in Alabama Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Articles needing additional references from February 2010 All articles needing additional references Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Deutsch Français Edit links This page was last edited on 22 January 2021, at 16:48 (UTC). 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