Death In The Family, A - James Agee [0]
“The work of a writer whose power with English words can make you gasp.”
Alfred Kasin, The New York Times
“James Agee has reminded us of human weakness and human strength, and reminded us that human beings can be brave and kind and tender when fate deals its heavy blows. This story has nobility, a quality in human nature not often emphasized in contemporary writing.”
San Francisco Call Bulletin
“His descriptions of people, places and scenes, are not only accurate but deeply poetic and moving.”
Chicago Sun Times
“Such a novel as this belongs with things to be cherished always.”
The Cleveland Press
James Agee
A DEATH
IN THE
FAMILY
Complete and Unabridged
AN AVON BOOK
AVON BOOKS
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
572 Madison Avenue
New York 22, N.Y.
Copyright © 1938, 1956
by The James Agee Trust.
Chapter 8 and part of Chapter 13,
Copyright © 1957,
by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc,
Copyright © 1957,
by The James Agee Trust.
All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with
McDowell, Obolensky, Inc.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Avon Edition
First printing, February, 1959
Eleventh printing, August, 1963
Acknowledgment is here made to
The Partisan Review, i.e. The Cambridge Review,
The New Yorker Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar,
in which portions of this novel first appeared.
THE TRUSTEES
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
To all persons
to whom these presents may come
greeting
be it known that
JAMES AGEE
has been awarded
THE PULITZER PRIZE
IN LETTERS
FICTION
for
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
in accordance with the provisions of the statutes of the University governing such award.
In witness whereof we have caused this certificate to be signed by the President of the University and our corporate seal to be hereto affixed in the City of New York on the fifth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifty eight.
Grayson Kirk
PRESIDENT
A NOTE ON THIS BOOK
James Agee died suddenly May 16, 1955. This novel, upon which he had been working for many years, is presented here exactly as he wrote it. There has been no re-writing, and nothing has been eliminated except for a few cases of first-draft material which he later re-worked at greater length, and one section of seven-odd pages which the editors were unable satisfactorily to fit into the body of the novel.
The ending of A Death in the Family had been reached sometime before Agee’s death, and the only editorial problem involved the placing of several scenes outside the time span of the basic story. It was finally decided to print these in italics and to put them after Parts I and II. It seemed presumptuous to try to guess where he might have inserted them. This arrangement also obviated the necessity of the editors having to compose any transitional material. The short section Knoxville: Summer of 1915, which serves as a sort of prologue, has been added. It was not a part of the manuscript which Agee left, but the editors would certainly have urged him to include it in the final draft.
How much polishing or re-writing he might have done is impossible to guess, for he was a tireless and painstaking writer. However, in the opinion of the editors and of the publisher, A Death in the Family is a near-perfect work of art. The title, like all the rest of the book, is James Agee’s own.
Contents
Contents
Knoxville: Summer 1915
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter […]
Chapter […]
Chapter […]
PART II
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter […]
Chapter […]
Chapter […]
PART III
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
About the Author
A Death
in the
Family
Knoxville: Summer 1915
We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It