Both are descendants of Mathieu Agee, the French Huguenot immigrant, about whom I have previously written. Mathieu's son, Anthony Agee, is the common ancestor. My son is descended from Anthony's son Matthew Agee, and James Rufus is descended from Anthony's son Isaac Godwin Agee. So the two Jameses are 5th cousins, twice removed.
In the early 1930's, he wrote for Henry Luce's Fortune Magazine covering topics ranging from the TVA to orchids. But it was his 1936 venture with photographer Walker Evans to document the lives of impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression that really set off his career. Their visual and oral history was eventually published in 1941 as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It sold only about 600 copies originally, but it has come to be recognized as a classic study of social injustice and Agee’s masterpiece.
In 1939, Agee became the book reviewer and later the film critic for Time Magazine and The Nation, becoming one of the foremost champions of film as art. The collections of his film reviews are considered some of the best film-related books ever written.
During his lifetime, Agee received only modest public recognition. The publication of A Death in the Family after his death and its subsequent award of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 sparked renewed attention and re-evaluation of his work.
James Rufus Agee was born in Knoxville TN 27 November 1909, son of James Hugh Agee and Laura Whitman Tyler. When James was six, his father died in an automobile accident, an event which had a profound impact on young Rufus, as he was then known. His telling of this story in his autobiographical work, A Death in the Family, earned him a posthumous Pulitzer for fiction in 1958.
After his father’s untimely death, Agee was sent to an Episcopal boarding school where he was introduced to classical literature and mentored by Father James Flye, who subsequently helped him win a place at Exeter Academy and later Harvard. In 1934, after graduation from Harvard, Agee published his only book of poetry, Permit Me Voyage.
In the Preface, Agee takes a poetic view of his writing. The text, he said, was meant to be read aloud. “It is suggested that the reader attend with his ear to what he takes off the page: for variations of tone, pace, shape and dynamics are here particularly unavailable to the eye alone, and with their loss, a good deal of meaning escapes.”
In the late 1940’s, Agee turned his hand to screenwriting. This career was impeded by his alcoholism, but he was credited as a screenwriter on two of the most respected films of the 1950’s: The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter.
James Agee had three fairly disastrous marriages and four children. His son Joel Agee became a writer and translator.
His hard-drinking, chain-smoking lifestyle undoubtedly contributed to his death from a heart attack in a New York City cab in 1955. Ironically, he died on the anniversary of his father’s death: May 16.
So let us remember James Agee with one of his best-known poems, once set to music by composer Samuel Barber.
Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.
Thank you Anne! I’d heard that we were related to James Agee but never knew how or if it was true. Now I know and appreciate your succinct description of his life… like so many Agees, too short.
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