Depression Classic Brought Poverty Into the Light

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-13/depression-classic-brought-poverty-into-the-light.html



In 2013, poverty isn’t hard to find in America -- from decayed inner cities to the camps of agricultural migrant workers. But unless you seek it out, it’s very easy to forget. We always prefer stories of great success - - Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett -- to the much more numerous, if less inspiring or reassuring, stories of failure.

The first task of a writer aiming to bring poverty out of the shadows, then, is simply to remind prosperous Americans that the poor exist -- not in the abstract, as statistics, but in all their humanity. No writer has ever committed himself more fully to this task than James Agee, in “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

In 1936, as the Depression stretched on and on, Fortune magazine decided to commission an article about the plight of sharecroppers in the South. Fortune, a sister magazine to Time, was part of the Henry Luce empire, and Luce was known for hiring serious and respected writers (though they often bitterly complained that he did not allow them to do their best work).

For the sharecropping assignment, the magazine chose Agee, a 27-year-old poet, to write the words and Walker Evans to take the pictures. The two men spent about a month in Alabama, getting to know three tenant families, sharing their homes and learning about their way of life. When they returned to New York and Agee filed his article, it was instantly rejected.

[raccoon]

1. k&r. nt

[Greybnk48]

2. I JUST finished reading "The Grapes of Wrath" last evening.

I don't know how I missed that one in the 60's and thereafter, but better late than never.

It's a life changing book, even at my age and knowing what I know. It never ceases to shock me the way we treat the poor in this country, and not much has changed since then. We have some safety nets, thank goodness, but we're heading right back in the direction of treating the poor like the people in that book. I feel infuriated and helpless at the same time.

[LiberalEsto]

3. “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” by Agee is a haunting book

His writing is almost poetry. Highly recommended reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Let-Now-Praise-Famous-Men/dp/0618127496