A Death in the Family | James Agee | A Sad Story with some Great Lines

A Death in the Family | James Agee | Beautiful prose

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A Death in the Family

	A Death in the Family James Agee Vintage, 1998 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 69 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Forty years after its original publication, James Agee's last novel seems, more than ever, an American classic. For in his lyrical, sorrowful account of a man's death and its impact on his family, Agee painstakingly created a small world of domestic happiness and then showed how quickly and casually it could be destroyed.

On a sultry summer night in 1915, Jay Follet leaves his house in Knoxville, Tennessee, to tend to his father, whom he believes is dying. The summons turns out to be a false alarm, but on his way back to his family, Jay has a car accident and is killed instantly. Dancing back and forth in time and braiding the viewpoints of Jay's wife, brother, and young son, Rufus, Agee creates an overwhelmingly powerful novel of innocence, tenderness, and loss that should be read aloud for the sheer music of its prose.

"An utterly individual and original book...one of the most deeply worked out expressions of human feeling that I have ever read."--Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review

"It is, in the full sense, poetry....The language of the book, at once luminous and discreet...remains in the mind."--New Republic

"People I know who read A Death in the Family forty years ago still talk about it. So do I. It is a great book, and I'm happy to see it done anew."--Andre Dubus, author of Dancing After Hours and Meditations From A Moveable Chair

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A Sad Story with some Great Lines

I don't normally like sad stories, but this novel had a so many beautiful lines that it deserves the high praise it has received. Here are a few of them--what passion!

I hope my efforts at finding these wonderful lines makes your reading of my review worthwhile:

"Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember, and you know how they feel, and its almost the same as if you were your own self again, as young as you could remember" (p. 94).

"'Look at me, Poll,' he said. She looked at him. `That's when you're going to need every ounce of common sense you've got,' he said. `Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is especially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitting your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come thought it and that you will too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice--except to go to pieces. You've got two children to take care of. And regardless of that you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him. You understand me'" (p. 148-149).

"One by one, million by million, in the prescience of dawn, every leaf in that part of the world was moved" (p. 201).

"On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there....They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds....By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away" (p. 15).

Highly recommended.

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Beautiful prose

I was kind of appalled to see only one review for what I consider to be one of the greatest novels ever written, so I thought I'd write another rousing endorsement for a book that is (literally) sheer poetry. If you read only ten works in your life, make this one of them; many parallels to James Still's "River of Earth" (another "coming of age" memoir), including the pure pleasure of reading the words as put together. All characterizations ring true, the "postcard" of a past now gone forever is unforgettable, and it's in parts quite funny (such as the young children's interpretations of what they don't quite understand being said and done around them). As explained in the prologue of the edition I found, Agee died before he'd finished refining the work; as a result, parts are left unassigned to a particular order. These were inserted, just as written, fairly skillfully after his death, although the italics got a bit tiresome to read. Overall, however, it works. Someone once said, "We read books to know we are not alone." If ever you've suffered a loss and as a result seen your happy world turn dark and changed forever, you'll relate to and find comfort (and company) in this book.

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The novel just doesn't miss a beat!

Pulitizer Prize winner, A Death In The Family is a most serious intoxicating read, not about the death of an individual, but the experiences of those who live, love and the commitment to faith in religion.

It is a tightly worded, well-described novel that doesn't miss a beat. The minds of of certain characters, their fears, their ideas, their issues, their mysteries, are all detailed, thoroughly. The narrative is filled with enough for the reader to completely grasp every detail, every thought, every step.

The main characters are important and we learn quickly who they are, do we care, do we connect, do we support, do we feel for them, do we disagree?

The basic theme in this novel religion first, death second. If your experience is to acquaint with the religious aspect, then here it is. But if you want to seek more on the aspects of death, love, family, you can absorb more than enough here. For sure, you can understand death anxiety, whether your own death or for a loved one.

Like any good literature, this is a lengthy novel that should require TWO readings. One may need to connect with the lengthy dream sequence (in italics). You may want a more thorough understanding of how the wife copes through religion or how a death can affect someone too young to understand.

The story involves a father of two, who en route to his own father's home because of illness, is killed in an accident. His wife Mary has absorbed herself into faith to cope, his son Rufus trying to understand the tauntings of playmates and the adult world, where the other family members explore different views.

It is said that James Agee died before completing editing and therefore, there lies some controversy on certain profound sections inserted. Also, this movie can never really become depicted on the screen with enough understanding. Movie making just cannot delve into ½ of what is told her. We feel in the story like we cannot in a movie. Just won't happen.....Rizzo

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Chonicling loss...

Loss can be experienced, but never fully understood, Perhaps some revelation may come from the tumult of feeling, yet the
chaotic jumble of diverse,conflicting emotions as a whole defies conscious, rational description. W. Somerset Maugham, someone who can be considered a master of introspective narrative, covered virtually the whole range of human emotion in "Of Human Bondage", yet failed to satisfactorarily explore grief over bereavement. Joan Didion in her Amazon.com Editors' Top Pick of 2005 nonfiction work "The Year of Magical Thinking" fell far short. Perhaps loss cannot be explained so much as put into perspective, either through the chronicling of its immediate impact, or its gradual dissipitation from consciousness.

Or perhaps I haven't read enough on the subject, a possibility which is admittedly as high as that of my conjectures being correct. However, "A Death in the Family" goes some way in remedying this deficit.

A Pulitzer Prize winner, "A Death in the Family" covers the short time span from just before the father of a family leaves on a journey in which he suddenly dies in a car accident, until his funeral.The thoughts and interactions between many characters central and peripheral to the incident, including his wife, their children, as well as the in-laws are painstakingly and vividly rendered, delining a portrait of - as the title plainly states - a death in the family.

Unable to come to grips with the enormity of grief, the widow's mind first turns to irreverent matters (the blasphemy of trying out a mourning veil in front of the mirror before the funeral) and then to finding solace in her religion. The narrative gist regarding religion on the part of the author registers as part bafflement,and part sheer anger and frustration at the what he percieves as docile, imbecilic submission to such obvious capriciousness. "God, if You exist, come here and let me spit in Your face.", he has one character think.

Such irreverency and inadequecy of mortal thought in face of something as unfathomable as death is convincing and uncontrived, as are the innocence of the dead man's children. ('Could I call myself a half-orphan?'wonders the son, thinking to impress his schoolmates.)

Reading such a novel gives one a sense of catharsis, as well as something like the euphoria one has in waking from a nightmare. But however vivid or realistic a written work may be, can it truly prepare one for loss?

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Speeding auto kills hick, Family deals with it well enough.

That's about the gist of it as the title implies. A Waltonesque tale of flowery passages describe the lives and dynamics of a turn of the century Southern family and the unexpected death of a recovering alcoholic father. The mother seeks solace in her religion and the young boy Rufus is conflicted primarily over his Negro sounding name and then his fathers death.This book is on alot of must read lists,best 50 books etc,and it even won a Pulitzer prize.Sorry, but I just don't see the big deal.There are lots of stuffy older relatives and in a flashback scene that was inserted into the book after the authors own death, the family visits an ancient, mummy of a great-great grandma way up in them thar hills who gets so excited the only sign that she is alive is that she urinates on herself.Religious hypocrisy is addressed over funeral rites with a 'lets get it over and get on with our lives' mentality.Some nice imagery, but all in all, not the great American novel I was expecting.I kept waiting for something spectacular to happen but the ending though sweet, was rather anti-climactic.Wish there was more to say but it left me flat.Read it because the lists say you should,that is, if they matter to you. They shouldn't,sometimes they are wrong, but it's your opinion that really matters in the end.

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