Entomology

Javais heard very positive reviews of this book and the introduction and preface have sharpened my expectations: this is not a novel but a testimony, a story of three families with small white farmers who grow cotton in southern lAmérique in years 30. The text by James Agee is accompanied by photographs of Walkers Evans, making the story even more poignant because these men, women and children have a face, a look, and descriptions of their living environment are more reality. I started enthusiastically in reading, drawing a card at the beginning as directed by the author to visualize the space where these families live, making the go back and forth between text and pictures to best approach them.

For J Agee, this report was a deep shock and his testimony is interspersed with personal reflections, is a reflection of his feelings and reactions, or political reflections, marked by a deep pessimism about the human being and existence. These cuts give a hand sometimes a little discursive text which one can get used. My disappointment is not coming from there.

My frustration came from thoroughly inhuman character of the narrative. There are only a few passages that are real scenes, with their demotion load (the sleeping family, Demma departure and the meeting with the families, in the first photo shoot). Everything else is an analytical description, factual, scientific and finally disembodied and cold places, Clothing, for, not knitted from The power supply of léducation, labor. Of course, details and annotations actually reflect the pain and fatigue of a repetitive physical work (cotton collection session), poverty (clothes sewn into bags of flour). While Agee loose sometimes and delivers beautiful descriptions and beautiful moments of poetry. But what lénumération debris fell under the stairs outside the house, the contents of the drawers? Agee seems to have doubted his ability to convey what he saw and perceived and therefore chose to give us everything, with the coldness of a entomologist and disorder would not be able to sort and prioritize its comments.

Be informed by opening this unique testimony he didnt breath and humanity of a Steinbeck novel.