Agee

When one starts to read "Let us Now Praise Famous Men," it is certainly a struggle to adapt to such a writing style. There is certainly an excess considering most of the pages consist of an individual sentence. Then as you read on, there is an understanding that is developed. I see now that this wordiness and excessive detail is not something that comes out of lack-of-skill, pompousness, or extravagance, but of passion. He points it out himself regarding how these people, being real, are more fantastical or extraordinary than any fictional character simply because they really exist and thus deserve much more than even he could provide. Now, step back for a moment and realize that this was just a journalistic assignment studying families of sharecroppers during the depression. He was legitimately passionate about these people and later in the third area of our assigned reading he even says flat-out that he felt (as they felt too) that he was one of them and as close to family as he could be. He even fell in love with one of the girls. Not in a journalistic fashion for her tragic story, but in a legitimate heart-felt way. This story is no way simple and all Agee could do is write and write and write because he felt that it was all necessary to try and describe the minute details required to create an understanding for the reader. It is just amazing to me to see that someone could take journalism that far and become that embedded in a story.