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- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
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- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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Tag Archives: James Agee
2016 Books Read
I’ve enjoyed myself this year with reading. I have finally bounced back from 2009 and 2010, when I was so out of my mind that I could barely read anymore. (Larry McMurtry describes a similar thing happening to him post-heart … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Baz Luhrmann, books read, Camille Paglia, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, David Thomson, East of Eden, Elia Kazan, Elvis Presley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Horton Foote, James Agee, James Salter, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Steinbeck, Katherine Dunn, Mark Danielewski, Nick Tosches, Pauline Kael, Robert Kaplan, Shane Leslie, Stephen King, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, The Great Gatsby, William Faulkner
19 Comments
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
— The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman A re-read. It’s so definitive that any book covering the same period (and there are libraries full of them) must reference it. One of her real gifts as a writer is giving … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged James Agee, Mark Danielewski, stuff I've been reading, Tennessee Williams, war, WWII
4 Comments
A Death In The Family: Restored
Fascinating article about the new edition of James Agee’s Death in the Family – just released. When James Agee died in 1955, he left behind a mostly finished manuscript of A Death in the Family, something he had been working … Continue reading
The Books: “A Death in the Family” (James Agee)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: James Agee’s haunting evocative posthumously published novel A Death in the Family is next on the shelf. I have a long history with this book. I remember when I was in high school seeing some … Continue reading
David Thomson: James Agee
“He was far from reliable — he could write off Kane as a reservoir of hackneyed tricks, and he was of the opinion that Chaplin and Huston were without equal in America. But he wrote like someone who had not … Continue reading
Happy Birthday, Walker Evans
Biography of Walker Evans here. Below you will find a bunch of his photographs – interspersed with one of my favorite paragraphs from his collaboration with the brilliant James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Some of the photographs … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day
Tagged art, James Agee, Walker Evans
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James Agee on silent comedy
James Agee wrote a piece for Life magazine called “Comedy’s Greatest Era” which appeared on September 3, 1949. It was Agee’s tribute to the masters of silent films – the Charlie Chaplins, the Buster Keatons, and more. If you are … Continue reading
Un-guessed quote # 6 – This has now been guessed
Update: This is from James Agee’s amazing collaboration with Walker Evans “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” Here is this one. The clue I gave for this one is BRILLIANT, I have to say. I am QUITE proud of it. … Continue reading
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
This is an excerpt from James Agee’s amazing book “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

