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By Root 1049 0

old-fashioned ring, I mean that Agee believed in and—what is rarer—was interested in good and evil. Lots of writers are fascinated by evil and write copiously about it, but they are bored by virtue; this not only limits their scope but prevents a satisfactory account of evil, which can no more be comprehended apart from good than light can be comprehended apart from darkness. Jay Follet is a good husband and father, Mary is a good wife and mother, and their goodness is expressed in concrete action, as is the evil in the boys who humiliate their son or the lack of “character” Jay’s brother, Ralph, shows in a family crisis. (Character is another old-fashioned quality that interested Agee.) The theme is the confrontation of love, which I take to be life carried to its highest possible reach, and death, as the negation of life and yet a necessary part of it.

Admittedly, the book has its longueurs, and very long longueurs they are sometimes, but for the most part it is wonderfully alive. For besides his technical skill, his originality and integrity of vision, Agee had a humorous eye for human behavior. The nuances of the husband-and-wife relationship come out in a series of everyday actions: Mary peppering the eggs to Jay’s taste; Jay straightening up the covers of the bed (“She’ll be glad of that, he thought, very well pleased with the looks of it”); Mary insisting on getting up at three in the morning to cook breakfast for her husband, and his mixed reaction: “He liked night lunchrooms and had not been in one since Rufus was born. He was very faintly disappointed. But still more, he was warmed by the simplicity with which she got up for him, thoroughly awake.” The bondage and the binding of marriage are both there. This is realism, but of a higher order than we have become accustomed to, since it includes those positive aspects of human relations which are so difficult to describe today without appearing sentimental. The uneasiness the Victorians felt in the presence of the base we feel in the presence of the noble. It is to Agee’s credit that he didn’t feel uneasy.

This livelier, more novelistic side of Agee appears in such episodes as the scene in which Aunt Hannah takes Rufus shopping for his first cap (up to then he had been allowed only babyish hats):

He submitted so painfully conservative a choice, the first time, that she smelled the fear and hypocrisy behind it, and said carefully, “That is very nice, but suppose we look at some more, first.” She saw the genteel dark serge, with the all but invisible visor, which she was sure would please Mary most, but she doubted whether she would speak of it; and once Rufus felt that she really meant not to interfere, his tastes surprised her. He tried still to be careful, more out of courtesy, she felt, then meeching, but it was clear to her that his heart was set on a thunderous fleecy check in jade green, canary yellow, black and white, which stuck out inches to either side above his ears and had a great scoop of a visor beneath which his face was all but lost. It was a cap, she reflected, which even a colored sport might think a little loud, and she was painfully tempted to interfere. Mary would have conniption fits....But she was switched if she was going to boss him! “That’s very nice,” she said, as little drily as she could manage. “But think about it. Rufus. You’ll be wearing it a long time, you know, with all sorts of clothes.” But it was impossible for him to think about anything except the cap; he could even imagine how tough it was going to look after it had been kicked around a little. “You’re very sure you like it,” Aunt Hannah said.

“Oh, yes,” said Rufus.

“Better than this one?” Hannah indicated the discreet serge.

“Oh, yes,” said Rufus, scarcely hearing her.

“Or this one?” she said, holding up a sharp little checkerboard.

“I think I like it best of all,” Rufus said.

“Very well, you shall have it,” said Aunt Hannah, turning to the cool clerk.

Agee was a very American writer, and this passage, in its humor, its sensitivity to boyhood, its directness of approach,