by James Agee and Walker Evans

James Agee (1909-55) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Hugh and Laura Agee. His father died when Agee was 16, a traumatic event in the young man’s life. From then on, Agee felt that he identified more intensely with his father’s rural farming background than with his mother’s more educated, bourgeois sensibility. His schooling with an Episcopalian order brought out a strong religious commitment in Agee. Afterward he attended Harvard University, where he gained experience in college journalism that led to employment with Henry R. Luce’s new Fortune magazine in 1933. Agee married three times in ten years, engaging in the kind of dissolute lifestyle common to New York writers and journalists at that time, becoming over attached to drinking, smoking, and very late nights. Cultivating a distinct appearance, he...