Rufus seldom had at all sharply the feeling that he and his father were estranged, yet they must have been, and he must have felt it, for always during these quiet moments on the rock a part of his sense of complete contentment lay in the feeling that they were reconciled, that there was really no division, no estrangement, or none so strong, anyhow, that it could mean much, by comparison with the unity that was so firm and assured, here. He felt that although his father loved their home and loved all of them, he was more lonely than the contentment of this family love could help; that it even increased his loneliness, or made it hard for him not to be lonely.I've been at a loss about having these kinds of "insights" into people I have known the way that young Rufus does. Thinking too much, or maybe it is needing too much to feel at place. I would do it too. I would think that Rufus was thinking these things to understand why his father had to drink whisky, why he had to take such a long time about getting home, almost as if he didn't want to be there. Sometimes the things you think make it too easy to walk away, to feel less lonely apart.He told me because I wasn't there and he wanted to tell somebody and thought I would want to know and I do. But not if he hates them. And he does. He hates them just like opening a furnace door but he doesn't want them to know it. He doesn't want them to know it because he doesn't want to hurt their feelings. He doesn't want them to know it because he knows they love him and he thinks he loves them. He doesn't want them to know it because he loves them. But how can he love them if he hates them so? How can he hate them if he loves them? Is he mad at them because they can say their prayers and he doesn't? He could if he wanted to, why doesn't he? And them too for saying them.The ending of Rufus taking a walk with his Uncle Andrew and going over and over in his mind if his Uncle hates or loves his family reminds me of the hurt and suspicion shared by older members of his family. It has hurt too much to not take those tentative steps into optimism and I got hurt again so I lose and three steps back into it's their fault. I thought this was well done by Agee in placing Rufus in this (this is the only word for it) family.And looking at himself now, he neither despised himself nor felt pity for himself, nor blamed others for whatever they might feel about him. He knew that they probably didn't the incredibly mean, contemptuous things of him that he was apt to imagine they did. He knew that he couldn't ever really know what they thought, that his extreme quickness to think that he knew was just another of his dreams. He was sure, though, that whatever they might think, it couldn't be very good, because there wasn't any very good thing to think of. But he felt that whatever they thought, they were just, as he was almost never just. I had selected a few other passages to "hook" my review on. Several of them were about Ralph, the self-hating and alcoholic brother. He's a father, a son and a husband. He is in a lot of pain, helpless to his own mental hell hole of not being what anyone needs. I can relate to a lot through him about the pain of making it worse. My own closest relationship lost to a deathbed was not like this, exactly, but I was all too aware that I was an outsider where others were far more important to the dying. I remember thinking a lot about if I was making it worse for everyone else, imposing on their last special time together. My mother did, as it happens, later rail at me for being "too cold". So I did do it wrong (her reaction to my sisters was the opposite complaint. They also did it wrong). When faced with death this family were afraid of not being good enough for each other, or for survival afterwards. If they all loved him, they all felt something. It was too sad that Ralph couldn't feel sad as his son but all the shame as her son. Useless. I don't know if any of them would be afraid of death for themselves when faced with it. It was hard enough to cope with who was left and the hole that was left from the dead.There was an underlying theme throughout about deciding what another person is thinking or feeling. I've become afraid of doing this unless you can bring some kind of kindness to it, as young Rufus did (it's possible he would have been let down if he had grown up under the alcoholism and allowed his hopes to continually go up. I'm still afraid of doing that with family members and I'm an adult). The underbelly of this is if you are going to be up to the task of everything. Family, death, life, love. Maybe you aren't strong enough. People would hurt as they were being loved. The little daughter, Catherine, is rejected by her mother for how closeness is perceived. Her young son, Rufus, feels like a liar because he can't talk to his father anymore. He's a liar because his mother misunderstands his intentions in being closer. He's not a liar but no one can tell him because he can't tell anyone. It's hard being as alone as Catherine and Rufus. I felt the pain of being young acutely. He could be in the heavens watching him forever, never telling his son what he can do to make it better. He'll never wave at Catherine again. If someone could tell Rufus that it wasn't evil when he could get accepted by the bullies (that was one of the best bullying descriptions I have ever read. Some boys would be nicer if only they were alone. How nothing he could do would have changed it. He was littler and he was there). If their mother could only remember every time that they needed to know she still loved them. If only they never grow up to read into her that she doesn't love them.Mary has faith in God. Maybe Aunt Hannah does have faith in God and maybe she doesn't. I think she's too afraid to not have it. There's a drift between Mary and her father. Brother Andrew, as well. There was a drift when Jay was still alive that she would have to put her faith in God that it was the right thing. If only they could put their faith in someone who doesn't put their faith where they do. I've read complaints about their tear over religion. I felt that it only highlighted further that everyone thought they knew what everyone else was thinking (or not thinking).Jay dies coming home from visiting his father who might not have been as close to the door of death as Ralph suggested on the phone (my heart would go out to a Ralph thinking of the guilt he'll have for the rest of his days over this one). He may or may not have been drinking. This is how my father and one of my grandfathers died (as a kid I feared the apologies for the deaths of someones we were far better off without). Also, an uncle. A few more to alcohol or drug related deaths. They were also from Tennessee where A Death in the Family is set. I kind of had to try not to think about that too much. It was strange visiting graves of dead relatives that I had never met and trying to think of something to say. I probably imagined thoughts of judgement because I am regrettably a lot like Ralph in my worse moments. I guess I relate more to Ralph than to Rufus because the young kid hasn't had time to pile on the shame of a life time of failed attempts to be there for family in times of trouble. The death of my grandfather was horrible. He had two cancer scares before the third finally killed him. He asked my mom to assist him in suicide. The aftermath of my mother dealing with his death is one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with in my life. I was twenty-one. I can only say that it was true to me this book about how death can ravage a family far more than only losing one member. Death is expected. That you can lose what you didn't know you had with the living? It's living with drifts and more lonely than the family love hiding something lonely that Rufus described. There's no right thing to do, right? I've seen films and read stories about a new born baby taking the place of the deceased and I cried bull shit. The right thing to do is not to take inventory of what you or anyone else is doing and talk about it? At least not at some point. My mother bought this book for me, actually. I don't think she's ever read it (she has a need for me to read all southern authors since I was quite young. I'll find out years later she never read the book she had so urgently pressed on me). I get to feeling lost about ever breaking out of that Ralph cyclone of your worst nightmare mind reading. How do you forget about the drift, when you didn't get that love you needed, the suspicion that they don't really love you? It hurt a lot to read about little Catherine and Rufus doing it too. A Death in the Family is a heartbreaker of a book. Freaking perfect too. Every one of them was prey to the same thing. Dying happens to everyone. Does this happen to everyone too?Agee died before he finished writing his book. The word in the graveyard says it is autobiographical. If Rufus can grow up to feel how they all feel.... Maybe you just gotta imagine the good parts. Even Ralph knows they probably aren't thinking those hateful things about him. There's hope for family, right, if that's true?
Do you want to hear a joke? Too bad. I just read James Agee’s A Death in the Family and it’s so damn depressing that all I want to do is sit in a dark closet and tremble with existential angst. This is the kind of novel that makes me want to weep into my whiskey, but that would only tighten the spiral of depression. If you’re going to take anything while reading this book, it should certainly be cocaine.**Do not take cocaine while reading this book. Or probably any other book. The best way to describe the deep melancholy here is to take the first ten minutes of Up, multiply that by ten million, and then have a soccer player kick you in the groin. It feels like that. Death is pervasive here. Even this novel’s genesis is shrouded by the long sleep. Agee was just 45 when he died of a sudden heart attack. A Death in the Family was not yet complete. The editor David McDowell took the rough manuscript, shaped it into a piece of fiction, and published it to great acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize in 1958. This is important to mention because there is some controversy over the finished product. The version of A Death in the Family that I read is the Pulitzer-winning McDowell-produced work. A University of Tennessee professor named Michael Lofaro published a “Restored Author’s Text” in 2007. Lofaro evidently reconstructed his more “authentic” version by removing the McDowell opening (a sort of prologue titled “Knoxville: 1915” that was actually a previously-published Agee story), putting the book back into pure chronological order (rather than McDowell’s interspersed flashbacks), and adding chapters that McDowell removed.McDowell claimed that he hewed to Agee’s original manuscript with a few minor exceptions. He admittedly added the Knoxville: 1915 sequence as an opening, though it was not originally part of A Death in the Family. He also took several sequences that lay outside the manuscript’s timeline and placed them – rather haphazardly – into the main timeline. These are the flashbacks that Lofaro dislikes so much. In the McDowell text, these flashbacks are set off in italics and are written in such a different style – hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious – that they might as well have been excised completely. I’m not too interested in the inside literary baseball. All I know is the version I read is the one that’s come to us as an American classic. That’s enough for me. Agee’s book wouldn’t be the first gem that’s been polished to greatness by a talented editor. In short, I don’t care how much McDowell mucked around with the manuscript; whatever he did worked. (Assuming his intent was to place me into a grand funk). Anyway, back to the sad stuff. As the title promises, this is a tightly focused (aside from the flashbacks), semi-autobiographical tale centered on the Follett family, and the death of its paterfamilias, Jay Follett. The story spans only a few days. It begins with Jay alive at home. He gets a call from his alcoholic brother, warning that their father is at death’s (so much death!) door. He rushes to be at his father’s side, and on the return trip, is killed in a single-car accident. Agee explores the loss of Jay through his wife, Mary (heavily reliant on her faith), his son (and Agee surrogate) Rufus, and daughter Catherine. There is also Joel and Catherine Lynch, Mary’s mother and father (the father a deftly drawn skeptic), and Mary’s Aunt Hannah (a pragmatic emotional support). Even peripheral characters like Jay’s brother Ralph are given wonderfully humanizing touches, which is testament to Agee’s ability to write skillfully but efficiently (the McDowell version is just 310 pages). Agee’s prose is beautifully simple (with the exception of the overwritten-and-under-punctuated italicized sequences) and perceptive. For example, early on, there is this marvelous little scene where Mary cooks Jay breakfast shortly before his death. Agee notes such tiny, intimate details that I had the subtly uncomfortable feeling I was spying on these two characters. Much of the book is like this. There are no complex set pieces. There are no emotional fireworks. (There are also no literal fireworks, for you firework fans out there). This is a novel of small insights and observations. About death, in case I haven’t made that abundantly clear.When fiction deals with grief, it usually does so in the way that fiction deals with everything: formulaically. Novels have certain rules. There are character arcs. There is rising action, a climax, and falling action. When books or movies deal with death, they usually follow a survivor who travels a cathartic road to redemption. That does not happen here. There is no plot to speak of, only a series of events occurring one after another over the course of a couple days. (Once again, the italicized flashbacks notwithstanding. If you haven’t picked up on this yet, I’m not a fan). There is no grand moment when Mary or Rufus comes to some détente with death, and realizes that they’re going to be okay. There is only loss, and grief, and the way the world stands suffocatingly still in its wake. Built into the narrative is a dialectic of faith verses reason. Mary is the believer. She immediately turns to prayer, and to God, as a source of the strength she needs to endure. Her father, Joel, is the secular humanist, who comes to her with pragmatic and practical advice. “[Y]ou’re going to need every ounce of common sense you’ve got,” he said. “Just spunk won’t be enough; you’ve got to have gumption. You’ve got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You’ve got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of howl about it. You’ve got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they’ve come through it and that you will too. You’ll bear it because there isn’t any choice – except to go to pieces.Agee doesn’t take a strong position on this age-old argument. Instead his position seems to be that the universe is so large and cold and indifferent that the presence of God doesn’t even matter. That death is so powerful that we might as well be adrift in an empty cosmos. Like I said, this isn’t the cheeriest of books. It was, in fact, the most troubling thing I read this Halloween season. A Death in the Family is a classic that I really wouldn’t recommend to anyone. This doesn’t make me an ostrich, willfully blind to inevitability. Death is a reality. Experienced by all. However, I’m not sure how much of life should be spent dwelling on it. It comes soon enough without a literary primer.
What do You think about A Death In The Family (1998)?
It is impossible for me to inject any levity into a review of A Death in the Family. No “headline” here, as has been my wont in other reviews. Yes, the pretext for the novel is a death in the family, but the subject matter is the experience of life.The best captured experience of life here is from the point of view of a 6-year-old boy in the context of the untimely death of his father. If someone were to ask me what it was like to be a little boy, I would refer them to this text. The reason is this. I myself have only a hazy recollection of the experience of childhood. Set piece images of various scenes. James Agee, however, transported me back into the midst of it all. It was a tremendously affecting experience.Rufus explores his dead father's morsechair. He sticks his finger in the ashtray. Retrieves it with a smudge of ash on it. Looks at it. Licks it off. It tastes of darkness.That passage, among others, required me to set the book aside and collect myself before driving on. It is a sad thing to admit that one's own personal recollection of childhood had to be informed by another, an author long dead.Nor is it necessary to be male for the book to have its affect. I have had the pleasure to discuss it with thoughtful women. The experience of early childhood is not so much a gender specific one. Before the injection of hormones forever divides the various genders, the experience of early childhood is a more universal one than the experience of later life.This is an extraordinary novel. A transforming one, and—I must use that word again—transporting one. It does not transport you to some exotic time or place. It transports you to an early era in your very own life.Organized religion takes a hit in this text. If you are one who cannot abide that, perhaps you should leave this novel alone.I am informed now that after serious research, an academic has put together a text that allegedly more closely approximates James Agee's intentions for the novel in its final form. The major alteration is the removal of the initial section with its portrayal of Knoxville prior to the father's death. Apparently, the 1938 publisher lifted this section whole from another work entirely and inserted here. That section was the only defect that I discerned in the original version. It did not belong. For once, my judgment was astute. I look forward to reading the renovated version, which I understand is considerably altered in other respects, also.Do not let the title, the superficially perceived subject matter of the novel, put you off. Do not miss the experience of this.
—Steve
So infinitely sad. These people are so completely presented in all their parts and thoughts, imperfections, each totally human thought as it occurs at the totally inappropriate moment. This is life on the page.--This was my thought when I was about half way through this novel. How was I to know that it was to become even more sad to the point of wishing I could explain to a child as I read the final page. Everything rings true. "Andrew," Mary broke in, "tell Mama. she's just dying to know what we're..." she trailed off. I must be out of my mind, she said to herself. Dying! And she began to think with and disgust of the way they had all been talking---herself most of all. How can we bear to chatter along in normal tones of voice! she thought; how can we even use ordinary words or say words at all! Who hasn't had this experience, those mixed feelings and that internal horror as you realize that language has cheated you, made you seem or feel insensitive or uncaring or unloving. Have you laughed at a wake! Agee knows human beings on the most basic level and he is able to bring them to life.The descriptions of Mary and the children saying goodbye to husband and father are precious and painful. The description and words of Father Jackson made me want to scratch the page. I've experienced a priest such as him and I hope they go the way of the dinosaurs quickly. Then there is Mr Starr, the picture of humility and humanity, who gives the children one last memory---the view of the dignified carrying of their father's casket from the house and all the mourners forming the cortege to follow him for the final ride. So much here. The passages of Rufus, longing to belong somewhere, I will definitely read again someday. There are too many to pick one or two for a review like this. The non-verbal nuances agee catches throughout the novel, This is truly real life.
—Sue
This book starts out gentle and familiar with the description of a father and young son at the movie house watching Charlie Chaplin. It is a silent film of course and the words not spoken are acted out on the screen as they are in life. But in life there is not the Chaplinesque exaggeration. As both a father and a son, I am touched by the obvious bond that exists. And as I understand that the words are reflecting back on events of many years ago, I am drawn in by the skill of the author who places the hand of the father “on the top of [the] bare head” of the son. Words are not required to convey the message of connection.Similarly, the quiet interaction between mother and father, husband and wife, later in the middle of the dark night is filled with meaning, much unspoken but riveting. We will look back on those as the “final” moments of relationships that continue on beyond death without conclusion. She saw the freshened bed. Why, the dear, she thought, smiling, and got in. She was never to realize his intention of holding the warmth in for her; for that had sometime since departed from the bed. But as the story moves along, the positive silence becomes the silence that separates as much as brings together. Agee explores the things unsaid between wife and husband, the failures to communicate, the distress of the unsaid in human relationships. And then the time that things could have been said passes unexpectedly. The world is irrevocably changed – not automatically for the better or worse – just different forever.This book has old tyme religion. People pray for Thy will to be done. Mother talks with children about God’s plan and why God “let the dogs get in” to kill the rabbits. Answering the “whys” about God to a young child has to be one of the hardest things to understand in the book. I just take it with a grain of salt in my non-God brain. Mom is just a devout Catholic, right? She has faith that will see her through, right? We will see as the story unfolds that this is not quite true.Normally, much focus on religion would be a turn-off for me. But in a book about how a family reacts to a death, the differences in how individuals with and without religion deal with death seems, if not almost mandatory, at least not surprising. A lot of space is devoted to what is going on inside people’s heads and I find the writing quietly captivating.I found Chapter 12 is especially interesting as the family deals with loss: All of the people in the house feel a strange presence, and they become convinced that it is Jay’s spirit, come home one last time. Only Joel Lynch, Mary’s father, is skeptical about whether they have experienced a true supernatural event. Source: http://www.enotes.com/topics/death-fa... The flashbacks to the childhood of Rufus are meaningful and nostalgic for me. I remember my early elementary school days and the adventure of walking the eight blocks from home to school. The connection of Rufus to his father in his youth raises tender feelings in my heart. The recollections are often quiet and gentle on the page. Even the parts where the older boys are teasing Rufus seem like a calm recollection of a memorable time.Rufus remembers his father by seeing the morsechair his father used: He still looked at the chair. With a sense of deep stealth and secrecy he finally went over and stood beside it. After a few moments, and after listening most intently, to be sure that nobody was near, he smelled of the chair, its deep hallowed seat, the arms, the back. There was only a cold smell of tobacco and, high along the back, a faint smell of hair. He thought of the ash tray on the weighted strap on the arm; it was empty. He ran his finger inside it; there was only a dim smudge of ash. There was nothing like enough to keep in his pocket or wrap up in a paper. He looked at his finger for a moment and licked it; his tongue tasted of darkness. The words are magic.In Chapter 17 Father Jackson, the Catholic priest, comes to the house before the funeral. In this story, he is the representative of the church, of God on earth. And a poor representative he is as he is exposed by author Agee as officious and unfeeling as he interacts with both children and adults. My negative feelings about organized religion make it easy for me to dislike him as a character. He seems like he would be a negative presence even if the reader was positively disposed to religion. His impact on the mother is summarized in what, for me, is a key sentence in the book. The fact that this is experienced by the children seems critical to me. And they felt that though everything was better for their mother than it had been a few minutes before, it was far worse in one way. For before, she had at least been questioning, however gently. But now she was wholly defeated and entranced, and the transition to prayer was the moment and mark of her surrender. “Wholly defeated and entranced” is a stunning word combination.Then we attend the funeral and Rufus takes the walk with Andrew and hears the story about the butterfly, a story that represents for the child Rufus the complexity of the world. This is a five star ending to what is for me a three star book. The book has much beauty in its words, but for me it has many more words than it needs. It goes on too long. I thought this book could have been more complete with somewhat less.
—Larry Bassett
