Creative Nonfiction (Course Guide / Lisa Heise)

James Agee won the Pulitzer prize for his posthumously published autobiographical novel A Death in the Family (1957), a book that uses his characteristic blend of lyrical, elevated prose and prose-poetry to ruminate about his father's death in a car accident, when the son was only six years old. | from Encyclopedia of Life Writing: Autobiographical and Biographical Forms | Credo Reference (Library Database)

PDF Link. A biography is provided on American author James Agee whose works provide a vision of hope, longing and sufferings. Information about the author's life, his literary styles and the themes and characteristics of his works is offered. An overview of some of the works of Agee is also presented including the novels "The Morning Watch," "A Death in the Family," and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." | Critical Survey of American Literature. 12/1/2016, p16-21. 6p | Academic Search Premiere (EBSCO) (Library Database)

Poet, novelist, and activist James Rufus Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was six years old when his father, a postal worker, died in a car accident. After his father’s death, Agee attended boarding schools before earning an AB at Harvard University, where he edited the literary magazine, The Harvard Advocate. He worked as a journalist for Fortune magazine until 1939. In the 1940s, he wrote some of the first serious film criticism for The Nation and Time. | Poetry Foundation Website

PDF Link. An excerpt from the book "A Death in the Family" by James Agee is presented. | Lapham's Quarterly. Fall2013, Vol. 6 Issue 4, p139-143. 5p. | Literary Reference Center Plus (EBSCO) (Library Database)

PDF Link. The article reprints several articles from previous issues published during 1945-1955. Entries include a February 15, 1947 article by James Agee on the movie "It's a Wonderful Life." | Nation. 4/6/2015, Vol. 300 Issue 14, p96-101. 6p | MasterFILE Complete (EBSCO) (Library Database)

Writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans published their unique masterpiece, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in 1941, five years after they visited rural Alabama on assignment for Fortune magazine. At first glance, the text presents itself as documentary nonfiction. This genre, popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s, aimed to reveal the plight of those impoverished by the worldwide economic downturn to middle-class readers who would, hopefully, feel empathy and take some action to help those less fortunate than themselves. Agee and Evans's text, however, breaks with its literary kin through Agee's self-consciousness and minutely detailed prose and through Evans's disconcerting, captionless photographs. |from The Literature of Propaganda | Credo Reference (Library Database)