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April 25, 2006

Agee and Farber, sitting at UT

Fred Brown of the Appalachian Journal reports on the James Agee Trust's gift to UT Knoxville, including a lost collaboration with fellow cricket Manny Farber [pictured]. A bounty of Agee notebooks, drafts and manuscripts were delivered to the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library last year. "The fresh news is that cache of Ageeana is now online via UT's Special Collections Web site. [This is at least a listing; there may be other links.] "Special Collections has four different sets of Agee collections, four manuscript groups and papers that span the period from 1930-1955 when he died at 45 in New York City from a heart attack... "The one piece I know to be nowhere else is an abortive screenplay collaboration with Manny Farber just after WW II entitled 'Furlough,' a project which was never completed but provided some of the experience for Agee's later screenplays. The correspondence is largely new as well." [O]ne of the more astounding finds in the Agee Trust Collection is a Civil War manuscript, written in Agee's almost unreadable and microscopic handwriting. The manuscript opens: All through the night and even by early morning smoke lingered on the long, devastated field. The mists were burned off long before noon, but the smoke would not be entirely dissolved before nightfall. Along one edge of the field, among scarred, stumbling trees near a deep ravine two soldiers lay in the deepest part of the ravine. They had lain where they fell, without sound or motion, since late the afternoon before." [More prose at the link.]

Posted by pride at April 25, 2006 10:15 PM

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Posted by: AHorbal at April 25, 2006 07:35 PM

Posted by: AHorbal at April 25, 2006 07:42 PM

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