Table Of Content“A life of high genius and sell-doom''— lames Dickey
PENGUIN BOOKS
JAM ES AGEE: A LIFE
Laurence Bergreen was educated at Harvard. He has con
tributed to numerous publications, including TheNew York
Times and Newsweek, and has taught at the New School
for Social Research. He has written one previous book,
Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting.
JAM ES AGEE
A Life
Laurence Bergreen
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street,
New York, New York 10010, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England
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Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182—190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
First published in the United States of America by
E.P Dutton, Inc., 1984
Published in Penguin Books 1985
Copyright © Laurence Bergreen, 1984
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Bergreen, Laurence.
James Agee.
Reprint. Originally published: New York:
Dutton, 1984.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Agee,James, 1909-1955—biography. 2. Authors,
American—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
[PS3501.G35Z59 1985] 818'.5209 [B] 85-539
ISBN o 14 00.8064 3
All quotations from James Agee’s personal papers and copyrighted work
reprinted by kind permission of the James Agee Trust, David McDowell, Trustee.
“In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson,
from Collected Poems, reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Copy
right 1940, renewed © 1968. Also reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber,
London, England..
“America Was Promises” by Archibald MacLeish, from New and Collected
Poems 1917-1976, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Copy
right © 1978 by Archibald MacLeish.
“A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London” by Dylan
Thomas, from Collected Poems, reprinted by permission of New Directions Pub
lishing Corporation, New York, N.Y. Copyright 1945 by the Trustees for the
Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Also reprinted by permission J. M. Dent, London,
England.
Printed in the United States of America by
R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Set in Garamond
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or other
wise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
To Betsy and Nicky
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
PART ONE
1. A Death in the Family 3
2. Strange Rites 20
3. First Loves 34
4. Of Harvard and Hoboes 56
5. One Grand Time to Be Maudlin 79
vn
CONTENTS
PART TWO
6. Empire 1 1 3
7. Voyage 131
8. Spies 158
9. Passion 183
10. The Reluctant Radical 211
11. The Captive Poet 237
12. In the Dark 262
13. A Dangerous Man 288
PART THREE
14. The Opportunist 319
15. The Girl with the Golden Eyes 339
16. Saints 367
17. Full Circle 389
POSTMORTEM 408
NOTES 410
BIBLIOGRAPHY 446
INDEX 455
viu
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to David McDowell, Trustee of the James Agee Trust,
for granting me unrestricted access to and permission to quote from
Agee’s writing, both published and unpublished.
Rarely has there been a more autobiographical writer than
Agee. He was, if anything, even more objective and factual in his
“fiction” than in his journalism and made little or no attempt to
disguise events about which he wrote. Both his letters and my
interviews with those who knew him have confirmed the accuracy
of his novels and stories, which I have treated accordingly. Compre
hensive notes on my sources can be found at the end of the book.
Agee loved to write letters, but only the celebrated letters to
Father Flye and a handful of others have been published. In writing
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
this biography I consulted and quoted from hundreds more; they
have shed much light on previously ignored aspects of Agee’s
varied life and career. The mother lode of unpublished letters—as
well as stories, screenplays, notebooks, and poetry—is located at
the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at
Austin. I have drawn heavily on this large and rich collection, and
I wish to express my appreciation to the HRC staff, especially Cathy
Henderson, for unfailing assistance, courtesy, and patience.
Other unpublished Agee material, primarily letters, is scat
tered across the country in various libraries and archives. Much of
it has only recently come to light, and in many instances I have had
the privilege of being the first to make use of it. I thank Sam Gill
of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret
Herrick Library for guiding me to the John Huston papers; the
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where Peter Brown and Bland
Blackford located Agee’s last screenplay; the Columbia University
Oral History Collection and Rare Book and Manuscript Library;
the Hamilton College Library and especially Frank Lorenz, who
placed at my disposal a wealth of Agee letters and manuscripts
included in the Saunders family papers; Harvard University’s
Alumni Records Office and the assistance of Mrs. Wu; the Hough
ton Library of Harvard University, where Susan Halpert and Rod
ney Dennis helped me; Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloom
ington, Indiana, where Saundra Taylor gave me access to the Frank
Taylor papers; the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection of the
Public Library in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I absorbed much
local history and color; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.,
where Paul T. Heffron obligingly unearthed uncatalogued letters
and notes from Agee to Archibald MacLeish; Peter Galassi of the
Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Photography; the Berg
Collection of the New York Public Library and in particular Walter
Zervas of Special Collections, who cut through the red tape binding
Agee’s uncatalogued letters to Robert Fitzgerald; the Phillips Exe
ter Academy Library, where archivist Ed Desrochers facilitated my
research; Princeton University’s Firestone Library; the James Agee
Memorial Library at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee; the Time Inc. ar
chives, where Elaine Felsher and Cheryl Wacher found no request
of mine too large or small to fill; Twentieth Century-Fox Pictures
and Les Gerber, who directed me to several unpublished screen-
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
plays and treatments by Agee; Wesleyan University’s Saudek-
Omnibus Collection and the assistance of Elizabeth Swaim and
Jeanette Basinger; and last but not least, Yale University’s Sterling
Library, where Judith Schiff expedited my inquiries into the Agee
correspondence in the Dwight Macdonald papers.
Some of Agee’s letters remain in private hands. My thanks to
Tamara Comstock, Mrs. Howard Doughty, Alma Mailman Neu
man, and James Stern for sharing theirs with me.
This biography owes much to my interviews with numerous
friends, relatives, and colleagues of Agee. I am particularly grateful
to Alma Mailman Neuman and to Mia Agee for answering my
questions about their marriages. No less helpful in their interviews
were Nan Abell, who was unstinting with both her hospitality in
Greenwich and her photographic memory; Jay Grayson Agee; Dr.
Oliver Agee, who furnished me with the invaluable Record of the
Agee Family; Mary Ahern; Esther Bear; Paul Brooks; Tamara Com
stock; Marguerite Courtney; Brad Darrach; Mrs. F. W. Dupee;
Robert Fitzgerald; Father James Harold Flye, now nearly a century
old and still flourishing; W. M. Frohock; Clement Greenberg; Paul
Gregory; Eunice Jessup; Richard E. Harrison; John Huston, who
took time out of an exceedingly busy schedule to talk; Christopher
Isherwood; Alfred Kazin; Ilse Lahn; Jay Leyda; Helen Levitt; Kath
erine Ling-Mullins, Agee’s niece; the late Dwight Macdonald, who
in his zeal to help paid no heed to his failing health; Ivan Moffat;
Alice S. Morris; Osgood Nichols; Mary O’Gorman; William Phil
lips; Selden Rodman; Edith Phillips Russell; Terry Sanders; Robert
Saudek, who long ago said he could tell me some interesting stories
about his friend and college roommate James Agee and kept his
promise; B. F. Skinner; Perrin Stryker; Howard Taubman; Frank
Taylor; Diana Trilling; Archer Winsten; and Dwight Whitney.
Still others were kind enough to answer my inquiries by letter:
Malcolm Cowley; John Goodbody; the late Archibald MacLeish;
Bernard Schoenfeld; James Stern; and, last, Irvine Upham, who
responded with extraordinary thoroughness and insight.
I am also indebted to the following: Jeffrey Apter; Mary
Barno; Christopher Caldwell; Mell Cohen, who ably assisted in the
search for photographs; James Laughlin; the Reverend Franklin
Martin; Jim Menick; the Museum of Broadcasting; the National
Council on Alcoholism; Mary Newman, for her transcription of
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