This volume is designed in two intentions: as the beginning of a larger piece of work; and to stand of itself, independent of any such further work as may be done.
The title of this volume is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.
The tide of the work as a whole, this volume included, is Three Tenant Families.
The nominal subject is North American cotton tenantry as examined in the daily living of three representative white tenant families.
This prefatory material lays out the genesis and motivation of this highly unusual and unconventional work. Time, however, had made it somewhat obsolete. While the intention was for this to be part of a larger and more expansive series of work, in the end this was the only one which not only was completed, but undertaken. The use of the term “nominals subject” is fitting: the project turned out to be about far more than mere reportage or documentary journalism on the singular subject of tenant farmers in cotton country.
It seems to me curious, not to say obscene and thoroughly terrifying, that it could occur to an association of human beings drawn together through need and chance and for profit into a company, an organ of journalism, to pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings, an ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation of these lives before another group of human beings, in the name of science, of “honest journalism."
This statement illustrates much. First and foremost, it is an expression of the deep emotional and intellectual conflict battling with Agee over the very nature of this project. The structural incoherency of the whole is a testament to that conflict in that it mirrors the sense of confusion illustrated here by the author over what exactly he wants the book to accomplish. Secondly, this particular quote also successfully portrays the magnificent literary quality of the text. What is not revealed here is the versatility of that quality; the entire book does not read like this sentence. Many different section are written in many different styles, each peculiarly suited to the tone and theme. The tone here is one that provides a glimpse into an artist unsure of whether what he is going is art or commerce, insight or exploitation. The poetry shows the work of a man trying to wring art from an experience that at the time needs more than art as a response.
A man and a woman are drawn together upon a bed and there is a child and there are children:
First they are mouths, then they become auxiliary instruments of labor: later they are drawn away, and become the fathers and mothers of children, who shall be- come the fathers and mothers of children:
Their father and their mother before them were, in their time, the children each of different parents, who in their time were each children of parents:
Getting to know the people who live on and around the tenant farm, the writing style changes. Here is an example of the stylistic versatility. Gone is the lofted poetic quality and the imagery of psychic conflict. The language is now bare, stripped down and transformed into narrative. The matter-of-factness and the slight sense that artistry has been dulled by a quality of repetition is intentional: this is not just the story of the men, women and children appearing here, it has been the story of their grandparents and great-grandparents and gave no appearance at the time of not becoming the story of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Ricketts? They’re a bad lot. They’ve got Miller blood mixed up in them. The chil- dren are a bad problem in school.
Gudger? He’s a fair farmer. Fair cotton farmer, but he hain’t got a mite a sense.
How did we get caught? Why is it things always seem to go against us? Why is it there can’t ever be any pleasure in living?
Disconnected from context, disconnected from the identity and even disconnected from the punctuation of attribution, these quotes are drawn from the only section of that book that hands over exclusive voice to the characters. Criticism has been level toward the writer for a style that makes the farmers a collective symbol and in the process removes them of their singular identities, but the individual stories were not part of the intent outlined in the section from the preface quoted above. Keep in mind that this volume was originally supposed to be titled “The Tenant Farmers” as just one volume in a series. The subject is the farmer as a concept and the quotes mentioned above as well as others in this section reveal that individuality is not a paramount concern even among the individuals represented.
Gudger has no home, no land, no mule; none of the more important farming implements. He must get all these of his landlord. Boles, for his share of the corn and cotton, also advances him rations money during four months of the year, March through June, and his fertilizer.
Gudger pays him back with his labor and with the labor of his family.
Farming under capitalism is not what farming used to be in America. The whole point of running a farm and growing crops was to have subsistence for yourself or to produce revenue by selling to others. Gudger owns nothing so he produces nothing for himself and what he does harvest is already sold before it is reaped. He is merely a capitalist middle man between the resource and the consumer. Gudger is just one of many. It is a system with no opportunity for advancement but every opportunity for things to get more desperate.
All tenant houses have pretty strongly in common these characteristics: wood unpainted and weathered or once whitewashed and weathered; raised off the ground so that earth and daylight are clear under the whole of them; one of two or three of the simplest conceivable designs; hard bare dirt yard; either no shade or that of a bush; no trees near.
A good deal of the book is a factual accounting of exactly what life is like for the tenant farmers. This introduction of to what the living conditions is like is mere observation; a simple overview. This chapter will go into the small houses and provide excruciating detail that pulls no punches and makes no attempt to dramatize or overplay or underplay the impact of these conditions of living in America in the 20th century.
Saturday, Mrs. Gudger:
Face, hands, feet and legs are washed.
The hair is done up more tightly even than usual.
Black or white cotton stockings.
Black low-heeled slippers with strapped insteps and single buttons.
A freshly laundered cotton print dress held together high at the throat with a ten-cent brooch.
A short necklace of black glass beads.
A hat.
She has two pairs of stockings. She sometimes goes barelegged to Cookstown on Saturdays, but always wears stockings on Sundays.
The section titled “Clothing” is also a factual accounting and much of it—like this example—is Agee’s prose stripped of all style and presented as nothing but fact. The rest of the chapter is also spare and journalistic, but instead of a mere listing of facts introduces observation and opinion while still maintaining the objective prose of factual narrative.
