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September 27, 2005
Agee breaky heart: the life and death of a novelist and cricket
In the Boston Globe, English prof Alan Jacobs recaps the life of screenwriter and film cricket James Agee on the occasion of the publication of 2 volumes of his work in the Library of America, edited by Michael Sragow: "50 years ago... James Agee's heart stopped in a Manhattan taxicab as he was on the way to a doctor's office. He was only 44, but had already suffered several heart attacks. Despite his illness, he had managed to all but finish his novel, ''A Death in the Family," in which he recreated the inner world of a 6-year-old boy whose father dies suddenly, just as Agee's own had done. The book would be published in 1957; it won the Pulitzer Prize. Even among the remarkable characters of the New York intellectual scene of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Agee's energy and charm made him extraordinary. Not even the heart attacks had slowed the pace of his drinking, smoking, talking, or womanizing. Walker Evans, the photographer with whom Agee collaborated as a young man, would remember him as one who'worked in what looked like a rush and a rage, and as one whose ability to win the trust of others was worrying—or would have been, except that for Agee ''human beings were at least possibly immortal and literally sacred souls." [More nice detail at the link.]
Posted by pride at September 27, 2005 08:16 AM
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