James Agee

A Vista of Perfection Agee
The self-dissatisfied life and art of James Agee by Adam Kirsch

James Rufus Agee (November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S. His autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family (1957), won the author a posthumous Pulitzer Prize.

The African Queen (youtube) scripted by J. A.

Poets of Cambridge

Reason, Magic, Skill and Love,
Frankly, I think poorly of.
Flesh and Figment, Brain and Breath.
All are parodies of Death.
Death alone can’t paint it true;
Only Death can say for sure;
Who but Death can sing to you?
Death my dearest, sparse and pure.
Life is but a sorrowing haze
Through which we grope; and our five senses,
Trammeling snares. In all our way
Artists put their subtle fences:
Telling us that Life is All;
Cheating us with hints of glory;
Charming us. We fail, we fall
Stupefied, and buy their story.

James Agee the dangerous edge

“the marvel of Agee’s description of Orson Welles playing Rochester in Jane Eyre, “his eyes glinting in the Rembrandt gloom, at every chance, like side-orders of jelly.” Such a phrase was “unprecedented and inimitable” .

A Famous Man (New Yorker David Denby)

Let us now praise

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