Agee, James - āˈjē, 1909–55, American writer, b. Knoxville, Tenn., grad. Harvard, 1932. He was a writer for Fortune magazine, a movie critic for Time and The Nation, and a film scriptwriter. His best-known work is the posthumously published novel A Death in the Family (1957; Pulitzer Prize), which recounts in poetic prose the tragic impact of a man's death on his wife and family. Agee's other works include Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a prose commentary on tenant farmers in the South in the 1930s; a novel, The Morning Watch (1954); a collection of reviews, comments, and scripts, Agee on Film (2 vol., 1958–60); a collection of letters to a former teacher, Letters of James Agee to Father Flye (1962); Collected Poems (1968); and Collected Short Prose (1969).
See biography by L. Bergreen (1984); study by P. H. Ohlin (1966). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved. |