Description

“FOR JOHN HUSTON WITH A WORLD OF REGARD FROM JIM AGEE, WHO CAN’T WRITE INSCRIPTIONS”: VERY RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF AGEE AND EVANS’ MASTERPIECE LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, INSCRIBED BY JAMES AGREE TO FILM DIRECTOR JOHN HUSTON, HIS COLLABORATOR ON THE SCREENPLAY FOR THE AFRICAN QUEEN

AGEE, James and EVANS, Walker. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Three Tenant Families. Boston, 1941. Octavo, original black cloth, dust jacket, custom half morocco slipcase.

First edition, presentation/association copy, of one of the classic works to emerge from the Great Depression, combining Walker Evans’ poignant photography of poverty in the rural South with James Agee’s insightful and moving text, inscribed by James Agee to with American film director John Huston, with whom Agee collaborated in writing the screenplay for The African Queen: “For John Huston with a world of regard from Jim Agee, who can’t write inscriptions, May 1949.”

Sent to Alabama in 1936 with photographer Walker Evans to write a magazine article on tenant farming, James Agee quickly became consumed with the subject, ultimately writing almost 500 pages to accompany Evans’ 31 disturbing and beautiful photographs. The photographs, according to Agee, “are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative” and have over time become some of the most famous and unforgettable depictions of rural poverty. The combination of Agee’s sympathetic account and Evans’ remarkable photographs has made this one of the classic documentary works to emerge from the era of the Great Depression and one of the most admired works of our times. Published in a small edition—the book was not to be reissued until 1960—copies of the first edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men are extremely scarce and very desirable. Roth, 108-09. This rare and extremely desirable presentation/association copy is inscribed from James Agee to his collaborator on the screenplay for The African Queen, film director John Huston. In his classic critical essay on Huston, entitled “Undirectable Director”, and published in Life magazine on September 18, 1950, just a year after this inscription, Agee called Huston, “The most inventive director of his generation, Huston has done more to extend, invigorate and purify the essential idiom of American movies, the truly visual telling of stories, than anyone since the prime of D.W. Griffith. . . . he is one of the very few men in the world of movies who has shown himself to be worthy of the best. He has, in abundance, many of the human qualities which most men of talent lack. He is magnanimous, disinterested and fearless. . . To put it conservatively, there is nobody under 50 at work in movies, here or abroad, who can excel Huston in talent, inventiveness, intransigence, achievement or promise.” Huston had long respected Agee as a film critic and once referred to him as “the best motion-picture critic this country has ever had.” Agee had worked in that capacity for both Time and The Nation and he was an ardent supporter of Huston’s work. In his January 1948 review of Huston’s The Treasure of Sierra Madre for The Nation, Agee wrote, “I have no doubt at all that Huston, next only to Chaplin, is the most talented man working in American pictures, and that this is one of the movie talents in the world which is most excitingly capable of still further growth.” When the pair got together in 1950 to go hunting together, following the publication of the Life magazine article, Agee told Huston that he wanted to write for the movies. Huston knew that he wanted to make The African Queen, he had read all of Agee’s reviews, and he was confident that Agee would be an ideal collaborator. Agee and Huston went to work that winter. The movie that resulted was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Screenplay; it ultimately won the Oscar for Best Actor—Humphrey Bogart’s only Oscar. This scarce inscribed copy is evidence of a meaningful and productive friendship between two great artists. Agee rarely inscribed books, making this copy all the more valuable. In his autobiography, Huston said, “Jim Agee was a Poet of Truth—a man who cared nothing for his appearance, only his integrity. This he guarded as something more precious than his life. He carried this love of truth to the point of obsession. In Let Us Now Praise Famous Men his description of objects existed in a given arrangement with a circumscribed area; that was truth. Truth was worth telling.” Additionally, this copy has a laid-in bookplate with the text “From among the books of Artie Shaw.” The renowned jazz musician was also a well-known bibliophile. Book with a few minor spots cloth, dust jacket toned with a bit of wear and chipping. A very good copy, rare inscribed, with a magnificent association.