A Death in the Family

Buy this if only for the unofficial introduction - Knoxville: Summer 1915. Added posthumously, these are 5 or 6 short pages of the most transcendental, beautiful prose i have ever read. Then again you could just Google it.

James Agee's autobiographical novel A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, published posthumously in 1957 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize the following year, remains an American classic. In a nearly perfect treatise on how a family reacts to the death of a family member, Agee in beautiful, transparent prose as good as anything Christopher Isherwood or Truman Capote ever wrote, has given the world a novel that remains timeless. The story of course has universal appeal and touches everyone who reads it as all of us have lost or will lose a family member. It ultimately is about everything that matters. In 1915, Jay Follet at the age of 36 is killed in a freak automobile accident near Knoxville, Tennessee. Agee lets us see inside the minds of his wife, his children, his parents, his brother-in-law et al. as each character grapples with this new hole in his or her life, trying to grasp the loss and make sense of it. Jay's wife Mary and her Christian faith are contrasted with the indifference of the organized church in the character of Father Jackson who refuses to read the complete burial service over Jay because he had not been baptised. In a beautiful passage near the end of the novel Andrew, Mary's brother, describes the burial to the six-year-old Rufus (based on Agee) when a "perfectly magnicent butterfly" settled on the coffin. Andrew believes that "that butterfly has got more of God in him than Jackson [the priest] will ever see for the rest of eternity." Mary's father, perhaps as only a loving parent can, gives her hard but honest advice: "It's bad enough right now, but it's going to take a while to sink in. . . It'll be so much worse you'll think it's more than you can bear. Or any other human being. And worse than that, you'll have to go through it alone, because there isn't a thing on earth any of us can do to help, beyond blind animal sympathy." The novel opens with a prose poem "Knoxville: Summer 1915", later set to music by Samuel Barber. There are additional, similar lyrical prose pieces, usually seen through the eyes of Rufus, interspersed between the three divisions of the novel. Agee is a master at capturing the language and dialect of East Tennessee where children go snipe-hunting, they "waked up," and adults use expressions such as "bless his heart" and "poor old soul." With the recent publication by The Library of America of two volumes of practically all of the works of Agee, this great writer should reach a much wider reading audience he so richly deserves.

Agee, who gave us the words to Walker Evans' photoessay "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" and the script for the African Queen, was a genius. Like may geniuses he was erratic. I cannot read Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. I find it Joycian in all the worst senses of that word. But A Death in the Family is a different story. If you read this and have the courage to really let it sink into you, you will feel the extraordinary pain of a family torn apart by a pedestrian but tragic event - an automobile crash. The shock hits you. The grief overcomes you. You feel the loss. In short, you understand. That is what all artists strive to do and what Agee stunningly succeeds at here. The beauty here is the beauty of truth, mainlined slowly into your being. This is a book that can and probably will change the reader. Several reviews have mentioned the breathtaking prelude "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" and some mention the Samuel Barber soprano version of this. To me that Barber piece ranks as one of the great American musical moments. That two such enormous accomplishments should derive from one small book is a tribute to the power and brilliance of James Agee at his finest.

This book is one of those classics you've never heard of. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958. I've had it on my shelf for a while. I probably would have had a completely different perspective on it had I read it six months ago. Recently, one of my best friends died in a freak bike accident. I'm not sure what made me decide to read this book now-if I was looking for insight, answers, or just trying to relive it again. I definitely relived it. I suppose anyone who has ever lost a loved one suddenly could relate to many parts of this story. But for me, the book was eerily similar to my own experience. It's about a man, Jay Follett, a father of two, who dies one night in a car crash. Through the eyes of Jay's wife, his son, and his brother, Agee paints an incredibly moving picture of a family struggling under the weight of Jay's death. By switching views, he blends innocence, anger, tenderness, and love in a way that, somehow, conveys all these emotions at once. I feel like I lived this story two months ago, and everything about it rang true to me. There were no answers to help explain anything, but this book is a beautiful articulation of what it's like to suddenly have life turned inside out in the worst way. And the opening chapter is one of the most touching I have ever read.

I am currently "re-reading" this book in audio, by Recorded Books, Inc. The reading, by Mark Hammer, is superb. But what I really want to say is that, as a writer, I was shocked to realize that this book was a great influence on my own writing. I first read it when I was in my early twenties; now I am fifty and it is as exquisite as ever, and influencing me just as much as it did in my youth.It is the mysterious, hushed intimacy of the book; the perfect dialogue of grieving people; the child's view of huge loss; the minute-by-minute telling of a story that must unfold slowly. Wow. I recommend it highly to all those who love literature. Just one warning: lay in a store of tissues. It's a two-box-er, at least.

My interest in this book came about after seeing a performance of Samuel Barber's opera "Knoxville Summer of 1915". Before the performance there was reading from "A Death in the Family" the book for which the opera was named. A few days later I purchased the book. When I began reading I immediately understood why Agee's writing would inspire such a beautiful piece of music. No, the book is not perfect. It is tedious and repetitive in spots and some parts just don't work, but it is some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read. Agee does a wonderful job of capturing the world from a child's point of view: the almost dream-like descriptions of the Rufus' environment; the love and trust he has invested in his parents,in God and in the world; the sleepy sense that time is moving slowly for him etc. I believe the book is well worth the read despite the rough spots. As another reviewer pointed out the book was unfinished at the time of the author's death, and I believe this certainly accounts for many of the rough spots. It also offers a unique chance to see a published novel as somewhat of a work in progress and to learn something about the writing process. This is one of my most cherished books.