AGEE PROJECT

JAMES RUFUS AGEE

I now “possess” and “know” Alma’s face and a Brooklyn street in 1938 as if they were a part of me, as much as my hand, the same as one of the tenant houses from memory. I have an idea that in the course of “teaching” either children or adults I’d want that everyone would draw, for a long time, from photographs and from nature first, just as patiently and accurately as they were able; who wanted to learn and “see” the world.

James Agee, Letter to Father Frye, January 13, 1939

But it is of these evenings, I speak.

Supper was at six and was over by half past… The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream spray, the nozzle wet in the hand, the water trickling the right forearm and peeled-back cuff, and the water whishing out a long loose and low curved and so gentle a sound. First an insane noise of violence in the nozzle, then the irregular sound of adjustment, then the smoothing into steadiness and a pitch accurately tuned to the size and style of stream as any violin… Meantime from low in the dark, just outside the swaying horizons of the hoses, conveying always grass in the damp of dew and its strong green-black smear of smell, the regular yet spaced noises of the crickets, each a sweet cold silver noise three-noted, like the slipping each time of three matched links of a small chain.

James Agee, Knoxville: Summer of 1915

47 PROJECTS

Agee's Guggenheim application (1937) was an elaborate outline for 47 proposed projects – he did not receive the fellowship. These 47 points are items that have significance to our discipline and are ripe for investigation:

** embodies the tennessee aesthetic / a southerner that sees himself as a spy among the south / produced work that challenged representational boundaries / joyce’s ulysses - in search of a new language / connections to samuel barber / interest in film as writer and critic - academy award winner and a notable film critic / amazing writer: amazing writer / phenomenological currents / strong interest in architecture and its literary equivalent - bone pine / obsessed with night as a frame of reference / exposes his own creative process - artistic conscience 101 / acknowledges the nature of photography and the role of the image in concert with writing - walker evans / writes at length on art verse science / was in search of ‘TRUTH’ - the veritas that was inscribed on the portals into Harvard's campus / his primary oeuvre occurs at an important historic period for the south and for the country - starts with TVA and concludes following the dropping of the atomic bomb and the mccarthy hearings / the myth of the promising young man / the myth of the great american novel / had a tenacious mean streak / organizational structure of LUNPFM is hejduk-like / organizational structure alla calvino – LUNPFM six books of sirach: book of ecclesiastics / religion vs. intellect and the role of myth / used surrealist techniques in his writing - action writing / wanted to create a contemporary encyclopedie / describes architecture and landscape as a second skin - does not differentiate between the body and the physical realm / comparative analysis with such directors as malick, tarkovsky, and coppola / comparison of night to tanizaki / summer, 1915 has been a launching point for all my seminars, lectures, and studios / image as propaganda: the FSA-OWI photo collection at the LOC / passive and active audiences / the role of unpaid agitators / desperately wanted his writing to be ‘alive’ / his correspondence provides unique access into the mind of the quintessential struggling artist / essay on ‘modern architecture’ / literary process - connection to music / proust and ‘states of consciousness / writing as an instrument for studying, questioning, and suggestion / role of teaching and the institution of higher learning / two kinds of artists – bishop and saint / autobiographical fiction / conscious desire to straddle the boundary between life and art / drawing as the way to ‘see’ / freud and psychoanalysis / mechanical eye verse human eye / discrimination and equality / agricultural poetry / at twenty he writes, he’d “do anything on earth to become a really great writer” / was a staunch believer that “everything that is, is holy” / …