I want to praise the great men
I want to praise the great men is a book with the text by the American writer James Agee and the photographs by the American photographer Walker Evans , which was first published in the USA in 1941. The German edition appeared in 1989. The title is the beginning of a passage in the book Jesus Sirach 44.1 Let us now praise the great men and our fathers who begat us .
background
The book I want to praise the big men was created on the basis of a contract the two men signed in 1936 to produce an article on the living conditions of white farmers in the southern United States as part of a project by the Farm Security Administration . It was the time of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs , which were introduced to aid the poorest segments of the population. Agee and Evans spent eight weeks that summer, mostly among three poverty-stricken white farming families, researching their article. They returned with Evan's collection of haunting images - sunken-faced families, adults and children huddled together in unadorned huts, dusty yards in front of them somewhere in the deep south during the Depression - and Agee's detailed notes.
As Agee notes in the foreword to the book, the original contract was to "produce a photographic and descriptive record of the daily life and environment of the average white farm tenant family." Although Agee was planning a multi-volume work entitled Three Farmer Families , as the Literary Encyclopedia shows , only the first volume, namely , I want to praise the great men, was written. Agee believed that a major work, though derived from journalism, would be "an independent introduction to the plight of human divinity."
description
The final book is a critically acclaimed work that leaves the traditional forms and boundaries of journalism of the day behind. By combining a factual account with passages of literary complexity and poetic beauty, Agee provides a complete picture, an accurate, meticulously researched, and detailed account of what he has seen. He combines this with an insight into his feelings while trying to capture his experiences and difficulties for a broad readership. In this way, he created a lasting portrait of an almost invisible group within the American population.
Although Agees and Evan's work never appeared as the planned magazine article , their work ultimately survived as it was as a highly original book. Agee's text is partly ethnographic, partly anthropological study and at the same time a novel-like, poetic, narrative text set in the huts and fields of Alabama. Evans black and white photographs , expressive and supporting the great poetics of the text, are included in the book as a portfolio without comment .
Basically, it is the story of three families, namely the Gudgers, the Woods and the Ricketts - pseudonyms for the Burroughs, the Tengles and the Fields - the book is also a consideration of observing, reporting, intruding and influencing.
James Agee
James Agee occasionally appears as a person in the narrative when puzzled over his role as a “spy” and intruder into the lives of these humble people. Elsewhere, when he makes simple inventories of a farmer's hut inventory or the poor clothes they wear on Sundays, he's completely forgotten. The strict division into books and chapters, the titles and the chapter headings, ranging from the banal (“clothing”) to the artful (as the “New York Times” uses), and the direct calls from Agees to the reader, humanity and to see greatness within these terrible living conditions, as well as his despair at the thought of being able to fulfill his self-imposed task or not, are part of the work.
meaning
Scholars have found that the book's sophisticated framework and rejection of traditional writing parallels the creative, nontraditional programs of the Roosevelt US government to preserve the dignity of poor families by helping them out of extreme poverty getting out, but risking paternalism and oppression . Agee argues with literary, political, and moral traditions that may not mean anything to the characters portrayed, but that may be important to a wider readership and in the larger context of studying the lives of others.
There is little doubt that the length and scenario , the unusual language and form that Agee uses, prices make the great men a standout book. The book has consistently received high praise and is considered a source of journalistic and literary innovation and inspiration in the United States.
Pseudonyms
Agee and Evans use pseudonyms throughout the book to disguise the identities of the three farming families. This convention is maintained in the following book, And Their Children After Them . However, Evans photos, which are kept in the Library of Congress in the American Memory Project department, bear the actual names of the people photographed.
| pseudonym | actual name |
| Gudger family | |
| George Gudger | Floyd Burroughs |
| Annie Mae (Woods) Gudger | Allie Mae Burroughs |
| George Gudger Jr. | Floyd Burroughs Jr. |
| Maggie Louise Gudger | Lucille Burroughs |
| Burt Westly Gudger | Charles Burroughs |
| Valley Few "Squinchy" Gudger | Othel Lee "Squeaky" Burroughs |
| Ricketts family | |
| Fred Garvrin Ricketts | Frank Tengle * |
| Sadie (Woods) Ricketts | Flora Bee Tengle |
| Margaret Ricketts | Elizabeth Tengle |
| Paralee Ricketts | Dora Mae Tengle |
| John Garvrin Ricketts | ??? Tengle |
| Richard Ricketts | William Tengle (not secured) |
| Flora Merry Lee Ricketts | Laura Minnie Lee Tengle |
| Katy Ricketts | Ida Ruth Tengle |
| Clair Bell Ricketts | ??? Tengle |
| Woods family | |
| Thomas Gallatin "Bud" Woods | Bud Fields |
| Ivy Woods | Lily Rogers Fields |
| Pearl Woods | ??? Fields |
| Thomas Woods | William Fields |
| Ellen Woods | ??? Fields |
| Other | |
| T. Hudson Margraves | Watson Tidmore (not secured) |
* It is unclear whether the surname Tengle or Tingle is spelled. The spelling of the Library of Congress is used here.
| pseudonym | actual place |
| Hobe's Hill | Mills Hill |
| Cookstown | Moundville |
| Centerboro, Alabama | Greensboro, Alabama |
| Cherokee City, Alabama | Tuscaloosa, Alabama |
literature
- James Agee, Walker Evans: I want to praise the great men: three tenant families. From the American. by Karin Graf. Schirmer-Mosel, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-88814-666-6 .
- James Agee, Walker Evans: I want to praise the great men. Three tenant families. Translated from the American and reviewed by Karin Graf. The Other Library, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8477-0344-0 .
- Michael Leicht: How Katie Tingle refused to pose properly and Walker Evans didn't resent it. A critical consideration of social documentary photography . transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-436-0 .
- Dale Maharidge, Michael Williamson: And their children after them. the legacy of "Let us now praise famous men": James Agee, Walker Evans and the rise and fall of cotton in the South. Pantheon Books, New York 1989, ISBN 0-394-57766-3 .