>> in the he drew the assignment.

at his request he provided with a documentary photographer she barely knew , a walker evans whose previous work in the self had drawn goodness. moved the two of them spent two months in hale county with three different families and they produced by a magazine standards in the myth and powerful piece of work, at a 90 page page, 30,000 word manuscript and more than 50 images. for reasons that remain the subject of debate and speculation to this day "fortune" magazine never ran the manuscript. five years later james agee and evans repurchased the manuscript into the 471 page book, "now let us praise famous men" which was

published by a code mayor flynn -- who in mifflin five years after fortune turn down the manuscripts. it quickly with debt of print after selling only 600 copies. it won some praise but was criticized of the cacophonous and clashing styles of presentation the end indicted age 45 of a heart attack described as an alcoholic to smoker, serial merrier who lives a life of self neglect it sounds like a journalist. [laughter]

he won a pulitzer prize for the autobiographical book a death in the family, he had been dead three years. but there is life after death for "now let us praise famous men" nearly 20 years after it failed to ignite ignite, in 1960 was courageously republished to a much different reception. it hit american readers to from the in was in the book bag of students all over the country but the original manuscript remained unpublished and resided in greenwich village in a basement agee's papers for years and tell his daughter donated the papers to the university of tennessee. the manuscript is now published by millhouse zaph

lorraine and an excerpt in the last several months it is on sale here later i will stop there in introduce our guest who will tell you the rest of the story and we will save time of your questions. john is the editor of "cotton tenants" we owe him a great deal of gratitude for the presence of the book today. the baff third magazine is a digital printer noll of criticism of his 25th year they purchased the magazine two years ago and he runs it from cambridge massachusetts. he has his ph.d. in intellectual history is and is the editor of three books of cultural criticism. born and raised in gettysburg of the mason-dixon line and just to show you how he still has geographical confusion, he

claims he is very much a southerner. [laughter] >> q davis associate professor, author of the making of james agee out in 2008 and editor of a new style of the addition of "now let us praise famous men" that will be coming down next year i believe. currently he is working on in addition of agee's letters. having lived across the street in the shadow of her home, the masters at the university of alabama and a ph.d. at university of tennessee where the agee's papers are house. his course title. ♪ to sign up. southern literature in black and white. freaks.

rednecks, hillbillies the in georgia crackers the south in the representation from the bottom of. [laughter] chip is a transplanted atlantic and in massachusetts studied under harry callahan at the rhode island school of design in has been making photographs for more than five decades. two years ago the museum brought special attention to chips work in an exhibit that has 64 of his prints for the watershed period his transition not only to digitally generate images but also color. you will know why he is here to discuss walker evans, he wrote a volume of a generation that other and expressive photography the parochial way. serious for a review was done the black-and-white

color was vulgar. the shape of the image was dictated by the format of the camera as croping was not acceptable. i have abandoned the arbitrary rules and continue to open my mind to the potential of new technologies after 35 years in the darkroom i have moved into the digital realm. digital technology not only changed the apparatus but it gina shall i gave viewed the world and how i express what i see. these are our panelists in we would start with john to give you the first word. to talk about "fortune" magazine in the 1930's on the cusp of the depression the gladius with different business journalism like archibald, a james agee, in "the donald", tell us about

that period of time a and segue into "cotton tenants". >> i was just chewing over your idea that he was a journalist. i think it was because he was a poet. as a journalist a lot of the people that this -- was a staff of "fortune" magazine was introduced the week of the stock market crash they did not think of themselves as journalist either before or after. he founded "time" magazine 1923 in and these scenes

were very important in the twenties with opinion and news especially in the rural areas a and reader's digest is founded at this time with a completely different demographic. the yorker was founded at this time. then "life" magazine in 1936 was a curious hybrid to look at it as a simplification to provide risk summaries for his audience and very busy people upwardly mobile but specifically as is an effort to reach business executives and managers.

think of agee's journalism the people he was writing for they were business people. the prescription -- subscription numbers were good. he came to "fortune" magazine right out of harvard 1932 that in december he got the recommendation from his friend from mcdonald who later was the champion of agee's work after a suffered neglect. agee made adjustments in and macdonell did as well.

around 1932 through 1934 extending through 1936 was henry, it was unusual in that believe that they should sir point to be an end to business. that there should be of point to it. in had the of my in a sense of led business journalism could be about. it in 1934 it is hard to defend business. he had a hoover conception but in the midst of the great depression it was almost impossible for any honest person to take that

line. so the writers began to see the signs of the country. so writing about the munitions industry they ran a piece about the tennessee valley authority which they said was among the best things that had ever been printed. a hint he mentions mcdonald because there is a point to the entry of the biography but in this respect it is important. macdonald wrote a three or four part series of u.s. steel for fortune it was the subject of a great deal of controversy around the office.

previous to that they have done other profiles and "fortune" magazine invented the corporate profile corporations the executives to about one to anybody to know what they we're doing. it was a caste system and they did not want anybody looking even the friendly person so the news editors would have a long profile then show the subject and present them with we will run this. that is how they got that off the ground. the profile that mcdonald was a great team was a little hard. with the fourth installment with a little bit too far. if political changes happening at the time that with the office politics

that agee gets the assignment and 306. by the time he finished writing it up all, there was a follow up over the next 18 months. i am not quite sure that we have a good second stage of ideas. >> he comes from a political viewpoint and you can see it as he is writing a. i would like you to show us the poet of james agee into a little reading to set it up anyway that you like. >> i will read a little bit that says where agee says what is he is doing. i would say it is not quite a political viewpoint but the passage is a moral charter of the rest he says in the introduction.

>> a civilization for rigid the reason puts the lie at the disadvantage. where civilization that can exist only by putting him alive at a disadvantage is were the neither of the name nor the continuance. in the human being is nurtured in the advantage that his crew from the disadvantage of other human beings. and that they should remain as it is, the human being by definition only. having much more in common with the bedbugs, tapeworm bedbugs, tapeworm, mckee answer, and the scavengers of the deep sea. >> then follows the instructions to "the reader" >> if we hold such drust to be self-evident and inescapable and more serious inquiry certainly were immediate ban in the others, then of any honest or corporate neece on negative a perkiness proceed to our story of what happens with human life a and under

certain unfavorable circumstances, the circumstances out of which that "cotton tenants" is born and under which he stevens up into his distorted shape year and beanies reach he declines in to death. the fact the circumstances are specialization is of the huge agency and all racial second stanza of poverty. but continuously and entirely consumed of the effort to build the system itself, through profoundly hard and atrophy in the course of that effort, that it can be life at all only by biological criticism. this should not be viewed in can only sharpen our concerns. we would be dishonest with the thought to ameliorate the thought of "cotton tenants" alone that any problem would never would be solved and we would be fools to cover ourselves with the

of reflection that the south is a backward country. our story however is limited. we will tell you of the three living families chosen with all possible care to represent the half and 9 million human beings who are than the farmers of the cotton belt. those are the of the fields and a half-brother of law come the day live that bills hill in dale county west central alabama. they work for the brothers temperatures of watson and did more who lived in a small town highway miles north of them. we shall begin with the old-line between the tenant and the landowner whereby a

burroughs and his wife and their four children live. that is the end of the introduction. >> you get a flavor of his writing style there. if you would, if you note as much about james agee as anyone around. tell us who he was a and did he himself had conflicts about doing this in exposing these people to national criticism or approval or whenever it would be. >> one of the things agee was trying to remedy was the idea that world poverty -- rural poverty was the poster child for the depression and walker evans had a job to go out to take propaganda pitchers been to go back and

show them happy after the new deal in the agee was resting against the tradition as a poster child that is what he was working against. now, when he went to the self in 1936, his first inclination was to appease of union organizing in the south i have a quote from his notebook where he describes he writes a was intensely interested to learn all i could about the union isn't here is might she its. i intended to write three pieces first the family than the generalized peaceful it

all of the governmental efforts to do something about it that i was quite sure i could beautifully hang themselves in third in the strait union peace with a couple of organizers going back to mushroom into a history. said in the very beginning the first person was an organizer working with labor defense in she put him in touch with a communist organizer in this city. he met with them several times and talks about meeting with those who are enemies of the enemies that is who he is talking about. of the first night he

actually went to the all black communist sharecropper's union was founded to hear a speech by a liberal comrade. so when he went to the south he was in the context of the communist party organizing. over the next five years his attitudes changed. but u.k. and see that conflict which begins with the'' from the communist manifesto but a footnote reads they mislead those who would be misled by them. so with agee you get that point and counterpoint. >> you saying the of families are really actors of the

play he is trying to right for the purpose of the indian seeing a cause? >> the cause is not the right word because i think he did himself would be hard pressed to say what cause he is abusing. he thought if he published this article in "fortune" he would strike a blow against the establishment and fortune is a part of that is probably a big part of the reason why they did not publish its. he saw himself does this by recruited by the communist party and even though he agrees with their goals he declined to join because he felt as a writer, he could write or be revolutionary in he could not commit fully to bombing the cotton depot in the south. so the cause is complicated.

>> let's talk about walker evans. where did he come out or you verge from as a photographer? what do we know about him at the time that agee and him are connecting? >> he was a well educated very erudite and unsophisticated man who can battle of the middle west, which to harvard and then went to paris to the school of paris. that means all of the lessons that paris could teachers and preferred the presence of poets' it preferred to read the western classic but also exposed he knew picasso a and the visual world was changing at that particular time with modernism had begun to happen.

and he was very susceptible to that. and was exposed to a new aesthetic that ultimately was reflected the way he used the camera because he saw that as one of the true modern methodologies. so more readily to eliminate the president's -- presents that it was so pure in the descriptive power that it was not distracted by that ego presence of the artist that made it. of course, that is itself deceptive and because his artistry was there in plain sight. he knew how to keep his own shadow out of the pictures

so to speak. he did not see himself as a documentary photographer but liked to work in the style and felt the camera could not possibly be so indifferent, so objective because the things that you point the camera at which was the skill of the photographer is what makes the picture it is not the process of photography but a selection and the pictures are fully realize. this was not always the case of course, he did his first bono s.a. work in havana a few years before this but he had begun working throughout the south by the time he got to hale county he was there one year and photographed

tyler -- tennessee, alabama, georgia what of my very favorite pictures was done 1 mile from here i wish to was a title but it is a wonderful picture with carole lombard with a black guy he photographed to new orleans by the time he got to hale county he developed a sense of what the self look like and what i tried to glean is how much time agee spent in the south it in total almost two years so what you see from paying this man is very similar site the gm already settled on the methodology to do that but the things that he chose carefully to

include in the photographs had their own spiritual power to them and by selecting the images carefully they transcended the subjects to a higher level of significance. >> tell us of the technology of the time. what about the camera? >> at that point there were two kinds of cameras a p&o camera in deviate negative is the aid by 10-inch which was a real machine. it was within it was made in chicago i used to myself so they are warm and friendly actually a mechanical device

in people were drawn to it and not try and buy it but larger and cumbersome and slow. as it turns out as a child he collected postcards. there has been some scuttlebutt how much influence he had from photographs of places that other people had taken that he studied all of his childhood we don't know how bad to detracts from his reputation but he had an affinity of a graphical element rupee and the object that was of the culture a and he had no interest a and stated so and felt that

would get in the way to obstruct his intention. >> one thing i am curious about we heard the point of view and the eight gold that of where james agee was coming from to present the families. did walker evans also, was he trying to reflect what he saw a or was he a provocateur who were? >> right thing he was trying to ennoble what he saw. it is a deliberate process a collapsed object that you set up and down and down to make certain aesthetic decision in of where to place it and compose the images the and it is inherently formal and

particularly an architectural use the buildings or the churches dilapidated as they have been frequently had structural integrity or gravitas to the object as described in the subject a and treated people the same way. not exactly with the same kind of treatment if you go back to one of his heroes was the french parisian photographer in he talks about up on wall street and two works the format very direct work and pretentious on the artistry of the strength of the subject as well. >> did you feel there was a harmony?

were they contrast? >> the other model was deranged differently here we did not try to reach the same type of harmony. perhaps we should have. but we didn't. we're not sure what would have happened if it would have been published of what was becoming of the photos if they would have had captions. we were left in the dark how to produce this. so i in your state and that they do. >> host: talk about agee's writing style period he was

writing, so why it didn't resonate with the cable out 1941 but it did 20 years later? >> looking at the typescript of first it was apparently recognizably agee if you read any of agee you have a sense of the beauty of his prose and it makes you feel grateful id have the sense of love for the author. that is my experience with agee once you find. something about his writing that is remarkable in light of his reputation, he was really able to right is a very different for mold and prove himself a master

whether poetry or in this case, a magazine journalism. perhaps if you don't remember that "cotton tenants" is the magazine article 37 the words bringing it forward as a book it was intended as an article. with a first read it the second thing i thought, i don't think agee thought of himself as a journalist but the book shows he was a master of magazine journalism to perfect the 30,000 word essays. >> could you say that "now let us praise famous men" is the extended adaptation of "cotton tenants" or much, much more?

>> much, much more. it has made its way one way or the other. but what is missing is the long meditations on every table under the sun. agee said that content is only the nominal subject of "now let us praise famous men" the real subject is certain normal predicaments is what he tries to capture and goes through all sorts of irritation. >> trying to ennoble the sharecroppers you can see the pain in his face and it how she is represented and you can tell she had bad

teeth. it hurts for her to become a poster child for poverty but one thing that is interesting is agee, for all of his protestations on behalf of the sharecroppers never really let them speak for themselves. there are very few moments they're given their own voice. similarly if the first day there there when the of burroughs heard about it, with home, based, put on their best clothes a and came over to have their portraits taken. there is a very nice portrait with the hair combed, a clean, nice clothes, a smiling, standing there and i spit in the portrait. that is not in "now let us praise famous men" the burroughs wanted to be presented as a clean and happy family and agee writes

about the it tends to make the house pretty to have the middle class decency and to that was denied them in "now let us praise famous men" so what of the tensions in the book is between the of representation that agee knows is flawed and the cuban beings behind it. >> that may be the artifice they were not accustomed to being photographed now today people rehearse their poses you know, that if you have a facebook pager. [laughter] they all do this and look the same but in those days it was the uncommon experience. one photographer who had the studio in iowa took pictures

of farm community people who did not have a sense of what was happening busted there to present themselves to the care rigged people like evans probably would have preferred that interaction to one where they tried to gussie themselves up to become something other than what they were. >> host: one question that baffles me in "now let us praise famous men" walker evans writes the four word or the introduction in rates at about james agee and though one thing he says in 1938 the new york publisher agreed to publish the expanded version the manuscript'' on condition that certain words be deleted which are illegal in massachusetts''. [laughter] what possible words could have been the of the bill in massachusetts but not an a legal liberals? do we know anything about that? >> everything is legal in

massachusetts. [laughter] >> that is what i thought. >> the other version of the passage will be in mind. it is the word you think. >> so how do you explain that "now let us praise famous men" did not catch on the first time but it did the second? >> for one being published august 1941, people had depression fatigued by that time. the social security administration and photographs had been published, others were published, you have seen their faces, and and people were sick of it and to that is "now let us praise famous men" the attempt to make you to see them again for the first time but the of the problem is world war ii we

entered december 1941 after that nobody cared about sharecroppers. in 1960 veto died 1955 death in the family published 57 with the pulitzer in in 1958 down a renewed interest now screenplays published in now "now let us praise famous men" was reissued in 1962. suddenly he was giving a lot of attention but what is interesting about agee he is just as famous what he did not right because he was seen as an artist you failed to produce the words that was expected of him that people to it that aside a failure in said -- gm said

because he would not compromise his principles that he did too much integrity and the system destroyed him so people saw him as a romantic and noble failure. as one critic put it he was someone who was willing to live without armor and those people that read "now let us praise famous men" in the of the '60s were drawn to the idea of integrity and living without compromise in the armor. a member of the student nonviolent coordinating committee am part of freedom summer in 1963 this is what she wrote about in my new edition in said i carried this book around with the one pair of jeans.

we passed around like cigarettes and wine "now let us praise famous men" was a type of bible for the freedom writers to achieve self and part of it was that it offered them a window into the mind of the south. it is about the same people who were trying to lynchpin in mississippi. part of it was these young, idealistic college students wanted to understand these people bought as abstractions or enemies but human beings. that is why the -- what agee accomplishes and also it shows them how to live without armor, live according to the principles without compromise. i think my freshman hate it. [laughter] because there are a couple every semester you did is

worth it and "now let us praise famous men" is a book you cannot get past the first few pages or it changes your life. i think in their early sixties there were people who wanted that change ian work eager for the stage a and t. levin spoke to that. >> agee reputation just like in the commercial he did live in new york and some of them talk to him in irving hall, goodman, new york intellectuals that were very much aware of what agee had accomplished with "now let us praise famous men" and kept his reputation and a life. in fact,, 1944 mcdonald published or made available

"now let us praise famous men" through his magazine called politics for subscribers so there was a small flame that connects the struggle of the 30's and 40's to the '60s. >> i want to go to the audience. raise your he and and we will have the microphone come to you. don't be shy. [laughter] end while we are waiting, i want to mention if you have an interest in this as you clearly do, it is worth noting we are about to see a leader resurgence or the opportunity for there to be one of evans and agee there is a whole slew of books coming out? >> the university of tennessee press is publishing the 11 volume scholarly volume of

teeeighteen complete works. i death in the family came out 2007 the complete journal will be published this fall. my edition comes out in the spring it will include a directed version of the 41 photographs and about 600 pages of manuscript material including unpublished chapters covering graphs, outlines, annotated version of "cotton tenants" in correspondence including two others of the original sharecropper's you and finally, there voice. that will be out and other volumes will include with movie reviews, short fiction

and poetry. >> there was ample opportunity to reverse yourself. >> come here if you don't mind. tell us the current state that they are aware this book is out in the manuscript is out? >> i think there is a provision from the grandson? about the book. >> the eppley east that it is out to talk about the difficult circumstances in which they live. >> of light to make a brief statement before a question. i live to 1936 through 1941 on 125-acre farm 3 miles

east which is now residential. we had a black tenant farmer and also for long my brother and i worked with this black for britain and on weekends and sometimes afterschool be raised horses, a mule, the cows, p.i.g.s., goats the whole animal farm portion of a chicken's and sold produce to the high-school. then they'd worked in the big house area and the tenant farmer, formed. we did not form cotton. was there any research at all of the black tenant farmer?

>> agee was sent to explicitly by "fortune" to find a representative family of whites. a hand in "now let us praise famous men" with the first couple of chapters the first two are about encounters with sharecropper's are brought into saying the end there is another to paragraph the church a and they asked if they could be left in the church did when agee approaches them from behind, but they run. so now he is very aware of the 6 million black sharecroppers in the south did he is not supposed to notice. that is in there but of course, with "cotton tenants" there is the appendix of the black sharecropper.

>> the other one is called the current land owners. -- the un-land owners to read that was not the intent of the assignment has been mickey says they think about the destitute sharecroppers of white sharecroppers take away the mule, the cow, the pig, and the shoes, then we will start to talk about the black sharecropper. >> they had so much less. another question? >> you said agee specifically ask for evans to go on the assignment with him even though he did not know him very well. why did he want to evince in what to do their relationship become once they work together?

>> he was on assignment at that time. agee asked to get him in on the project and he was borrowed so evans was now working as a fortune at that time. apparently agee had a dislike for people like white who he thought was too pretentious and evans already developed a reputation to be as forthright straight shooter of literally almost like snapshooting. there was no which tend to to manipulate the the word through sentiment or other things like that that apparently is a quality that agee despised. >> yes. at time-life with the first

photograph of "life" magazine but that is what i came across. he did not like that kind of photography and was aware that evans did not do it that way. evans later wrote he did not the ink of what they did as a collaboration that they have their own thing to do a and win t. levin came around they reached an accord how we would be joined and as such the first edition of famous men had 50 pages of photographs. one picture per page, not to captioned so that you were had to work a little harder because there was no caption but after going through these 50 images in a specific sequence because it was important to evans how the story unfolded in how it

was laid out there and when you got to the end of the 50 images you came to the introduction of "famous men." they saw a separate but related roles that you were prepared at the emotional and visceral level by the photographs then of course, you would come back because they were alluded to the rating the people you were writing, it was all that stuff the first and foremost, in the purest sense to look at the photographs. >> considering we just passed an economic time as the great depression in talent was depicted later on

we have all sorts of issues that relate to very similar situations. is there a agee working today? >> i think one of the things is reasonable to hope is that in keeping these two men so would would remember the business part of it there doesn't seem to be many magazines left. they would publish long essays and for hard poets'

to right journalism a and paid them. agee had an office in the chrysler building. the offices are gone it is disorganized the media of magnet is much interested. it is a very good question. >> i fail to introduce myself earlier i spent 36 years in the newspaper business i now teach journalism at every in the book on the history of news coverage of the civil-rights movement in the self that is a way for me to say that i think we are in the state currently wear news organizations are not, by ian large, well we reporters to do their version of

journalism but i am not despaired. i have see there was in uptick of the number of on-line news organizations. ones that were once newspaper based and others not that are increased in the of long form journalism in their version in journalism. but did you say how are we covering the state's of the in the grinch of america today, i would say we year covering the politics very well a adjourned know what is going in the senate subcommittee in the judiciary committee but do we know what is going on in their lives and are we living with them to tell their story? the answer is no. that is a national problem not just down here. we don't see reporters in the field. we shall see them with the

teenager that is scared to death they will be stopped as jessica did in this town without a proper driver's license. we don't see them texting parents be careful i got caught on a traffic violation they may come after you. they think we will get back to that i think online highs multiple opportunities for deep reporting and i put forward to more of that. >> who is interested in reading about poor people? i know they should cultivate reporters or to get them

placed with the reports that come back to the editor of the major media. kid and you take the poverty out? it is a little bit uncomfortable. >> this very much as a book of four people. >> full disclosure my for repairs were sharecroppers in the '30's and 40's in alabama and mississippi. as were my grandparents i am interested of the article of his papers was a composed or pros and photographs? >> just the article. >> been where did the photography come from?

then was agee alone given the assignment then he selected the photographer and instructed him? and once they were on the job in alabama did they collaborate specifically about what they wanted photographed and when? >> i think they worked separately. agee chose to live with the families and evans stayed in the motel which was very telling but he also was more interested to keep a distance. he thought it was important to do that kind of working and he was a reserved may and as i understand it less likely to be in the trenches and his career as an artist which was for most in his mind because to years after the photographs were made in alabama, 1936, evans was the

first photographer ever to have a one-person show at the museum of modern art in new york in 1938 that included some of the hale county photographs so some of those were elevated almost immediately into the higher road of the pinnacle of the temples of our country. >> i would like to give john a the last word. to encounter them in the crypt -- many script itself? you know, it is his handwriting it was interesting to an awful. >> what was remarkable was it was a recognizable. it is a different genre of time but the impressive

recent to do the project it was easy. we did not have to do a lot of guesswork there remarks and every page of the of photocopied pages in and would have to 5150 the editing process was no more than to follow agee's instructions. discovery is not cory -- quite the right word but more what did we forget to ask about? >> what you have here is the last word from james agee and what he wanted the minister to say, the magazine article. >> that's right.

>> god forbid i should edit change these. [laughter] >> thank you very much. this has been wonderful. chip, thank you for this and hugh davis and john summers it has been wonderful. thank you very much. we will see you in the lobby [applause] . .