Why, in your opinion, should journalism students read this excerpt from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee? What is something valuable they can learn from it?
I think that journalism students can learn a lot from this excerpt. James Agee’s writing is clear and descriptive. He uses overalls as a symbol to show the working class of america. He uses three farmers as his subjects and describe their clothes in detail. In doing so, he illustrates the large amount of work that they have completed in their trade. Reading the story is like flipping through a stack of photographs. One thing that students can learn from Agee is his flawless use of description. He gives deep, picturesque details that show the reader what being a farmer must be like. He draws these from three farmers. Each has a separate story interwoven into the article. One very important detail was found in the “Shoes” section.
“Rickett’s shoes are boldly slashed open to accommodate as they scarcely can the years of pain in his feet. The worst of this pain is in the stirrup corns, a solid stripe of stony and excruciating pearls across the ball of each foot; for two years ago, he rode mules all of each day.”
This section is extremely telling of this farmer. In a few sentences, Agee was successful in representing the amount of physical pain that he endures to carry out his duties as a working man. The painful details are important to really tell the reader what farmers experience in their work. A few lines from this passage, he mentions that Ricketts now walks with a “nervous modification,” probably having to do with the damage that he inflicted on his feet.
I think that journalism students can learn a lot from this story, not just from Agee’s use of description, but from his listing style and use of metaphor in describing the work of a farmer.
I think the main reason for journalism students to read Agee's piece is empathy. The description in this piece, though they seem excruciatingly mundane, gets at the heart of the farming community. It shows the hardships of life, but indirectly. Agee's bond with the farmers made him not want to share their raw private emotions and thats why he wrote about their clothes instead. He found he could accomplish the same goal: showing the hard life of sharecroppers. I think empathy acts through the mundane nature of the story. it manages to be powerful and emotional without having human characters as protagonists. The characters in the story act as motivation as opposed to the subject.
I also agree with Cooper that journalism students can learn a thing or two about detail orientation thanks to Agee. His emphasis on one detail as opposed to another show importances and directs the reader's attention. This is something that most writers struggle with at some point in their writing careers.
I personally did not particularly care for the Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But that's not to say I didn't learn anything from it. It was an great example of how far you can push description. I love descriptive text especially when that text holds and alternative meaning. I think student journalist can learn a lot from this type of technique because it brings the allure that things are not what they seem. or maybe maybe i am thinking too much into the overalls. What i loved about it was that the article of clothing told more about the lower/middle class. Its an extreme example of show don't tell. Something that is constantly preached in class and should be continuously utilized, because it affects people more so. Even though this story could have been told as the farmer wakes up and tends to his crops, it is much more valuable the way Agee presented it.
I agree with Kristin in that the main reason for those studying journalism to read Agee's piece is developing empathy for others. Through Agee's remarkably detailed descriptions, the reader can see that Agee felt the farmer's suffering and circumstances more than the scope of a "normal" reporter. Like many of my classmates, I believe it is both Agee's attention to the details in this piece and the way he infuses every detail with genuine feeling and empathy that makes Let Us Now Praise Famous Men a necessity for journalism students to read.
I think something that journalists can learn from James Agee's writing is how to capture the essence of people by use of detail and description. Agee painstakingly describes the men's clothing and shoes, and in doing so, illuminates things about their character and life. He is using a unique form of journalism to tell a story. Agee is writing factual information, but his writing style is similar to prose. Therefore, I think another valuable lesson in Agee's work for aspiring journalists to learn is to not be afraid to be a little different, to not be afraid to use detail or metaphor or whatever you feel is the best way to tell a compelling, accurate story. His attention to the smallest parts of the men's appearance are being used to tell us about the long, hard years they have put in working as tenement farmers. Agee tells a simple yet meaningful story about human life and work; he writes as a man first, and a journalist second, and I do not think that it is a bad thing.
I think this piece is excellent for journalism students because James Agee shows a clear example of symbolism of the working class in America. His descriptions of the overalls and shoes, step by step take the reader into the life of a working class man in America, as his life slowly fades and he gets worn down just as his clothing. I think the section on shoes is a lot more powerful than the overalls, just for the old saying, "you don't know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes" and I think Agee shows that in this piece terrifically. Journalism students can learn so much in this piece about descriptions, metaphors and really making a reader think.
Journalism students can learn from the way Agee writes "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" because of the clarity and conciseness of his word choice. His sentences aren't bogged down with unnecessary words. They are simple and still convey and represent so much of the poverty and hardship faced by tenant farmers.
Agee calls overalls the "map of the working man." Some writers would end it there, utilizing a cliche and calling it done. But Agee takes the cliche and draws it out boldly as if to qualify and take ownership of the phrase. I think this is another think journalism students can learn from this piece. We can't just use language so liberally that it is easy. We must take ownership of the words and phrases we decide to use and be able to justify their use if our writing is going to mean anything.
Agee states that the "become flesh and bone" as do the shoes he describes. I think this is one of the most telling and important phrases in the piece.Agee legitimizes his description by showing that these people are their clothes and he used inventive language to fully convey that fact.
Journalism students kind of need to read this piece, and, I think, take this class before they're shipped out of college. But only right then. We spend the brunt of our time in school learning how to write in proper AP format, how to draft up stories, how to source properly, how to make sure that all our bases are covered, how to make sure we're not liable for any libelous stuff that we right - there's even a feature writing class where we learn the formula for constructing a nice, tidy feature piece. Stuff like that is virtually all we do.
But reading Agee, and most of the stuff that we cover in this class, reminds me of two things. First, you can't teach talent, just like you can't teach height in basketball. It's there or it's not there. There's no way anyone in a strata lower than Agee could write anything of this magnitude, with this sense of poetry and reverence. This piece bookends the class well; there are people out there who are this good, and these are the writers who will be remembered. They push it, they make you envious of what they can do with five pages and two thousand words. Anyone can write a news article if they know how. Not everyone can build a monument to short-form literature.
Journalism students, less distressingly, need this piece and this class to remind them that journalism can be used as a tool to shine a light and to provoke emotions without being bone-dry.
I think the excerpt from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is an important example of the power of journalism to illuminate parts of the human experience your average newspaper reader might not be familiar with. The sharecroppers Agee was writing about were slaving away to eek out the barest living; he describes them as more overworked farm animals humans use to meet their ends than as humans themselves. The person most likely to be reading a newspaper or nonfiction text, your average WASP working a 9-to-5 job (and probably a white male), can learn from Agee's text what it's like where the grass isn't quite so green--to borrow a phrase from Jacob Riis, "how the other half lives." I agree with everyone else that this excerpt is important to help both reader and writer to a better understanding of empathy: by describing in such minute detail the "uniform" of sorts of such a worker, Agee humanized these overworked 'animals'.
I also think that other writers can learn to be empathetic from Agee. It's one thing to write about something and another to actually stop and think about who you're writing about and what impact the article has on them. One of my friends who's a journalist once wrote an article about someone who was accused of a heinous crime and then a few days later found out that they committed suicide; even though maybe they did commit a crime, articles written about the person affected them. We need to remember that everyone we write about are people as well and are impacted by our words.
Agee is tremendously perceptive. His process is inductive. His observations pinpoint essence. If the point of journalism is to convey truth to the public so that they may make informed decisions, then Agee’s process and writing style should be pedestaled. His prose is poetic but real- he’s romantic about the right kinds of things, things that have true substance and symbolic meaning.
I think what this piece really emphasizes how the best journalists are the ones that are most empathetic and are the ones who are the smartest about how they show their empathy. Every word Agee put to page had thought behind it and it shows. He's so careful in how he describes and compares something as simple (and, really, awful and uncomfortable) as overalls with the difficult life of sharecroppers. A really great journalist doesn't just put all of the news that's fit to print in a story. A really great journalist forces you to feel empathy, regardless of whether or not what you're meant to feel empathetic about is relevant to you or not. And I think for journalism students this piece is vital because it shows that empathy is a necessary trait to do this job. To write and to write well, you must feel empathy for everything. If you can't, than you are going to struggle. One job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, which is something Agee excels in doing with this piece.
I agree with Carolina, that I didn't particularly connect with Agee's style of writing in the piece, but that doesn't mean students can't learn by critiquing it. The piece is a strong example of how to show the reader, rather than tell. Agee allows us to understand status of social life by describing the poor people living on the land - in excruciating detail. It is an interesting parallel to Professor Good's preferred short and concise sentence structure. This semester has taught me so much with the reading and writing we have done as a group. I don't think it is often that you can look at something and honestly say you can't learn from it -even in a small way.
You always hear about journalists complaining, "I don't know what to write about," or, "I don't have anything interesting to write about," and I certainly have been guilty of this, but what Agee did was shut me up.
He spent two pages talking about overalls. Of course he uses the overalls as a representation of these working class sharecroppers and enacts his empathy to try and gain something from the experience, but more importantly, I don't think he wastes a single word.
I think journalist can forget it's not always what you write about, it's how you write about it. Agee just reaffirms this notion. His description could not be more detailed. However, Agee's piece shouldn't be a lesson to journalists, "Use detail! Let people taste your words," but an example of how to make a work of art. Words are not limited to the functions we've been taught in school. They go far beyond that. I think Agee's piece can be a valuable lesson in experimentation and affectivity.
I think the way Agee writes about the topic of poor sharecroppers is what makes this piece so special and worth reading and learning from. The way he describes things such as the overalls works as a really effective symbol to describe and almost validate the experiences of sharecroppers and their lives. His writing allows the reader to gain a much deeper perspective on this type of life and allows you to connect and feel something for it and the people in it. This is important because journalists always need to be able to be empathetic and put themselves in someone else's shoes and see things from their perspective. He really humanizes the people he is writing about and gives a certain authenticity and legitimacy to their work and lives.
15 comments:
I think that journalism students can learn a lot from this excerpt. James Agee’s writing is clear and descriptive. He uses overalls as a symbol to show the working class of america. He uses three farmers as his subjects and describe their clothes in detail. In doing so, he illustrates the large amount of work that they have completed in their trade. Reading the story is like flipping through a stack of photographs. One thing that students can learn from Agee is his flawless use of description. He gives deep, picturesque details that show the reader what being a farmer must be like. He draws these from three farmers. Each has a separate story interwoven into the article. One very important detail was found in the “Shoes” section.
“Rickett’s shoes are boldly slashed open to accommodate as they scarcely can the years of pain in his feet. The worst of this pain is in the stirrup corns, a solid stripe of stony and excruciating pearls across the ball of each foot; for two years ago, he rode mules all of each day.”
This section is extremely telling of this farmer. In a few sentences, Agee was successful in representing the amount of physical pain that he endures to carry out his duties as a working man. The painful details are important to really tell the reader what farmers experience in their work. A few lines from this passage, he mentions that Ricketts now walks with a “nervous modification,” probably having to do with the damage that he inflicted on his feet.
I think that journalism students can learn a lot from this story, not just from Agee’s use of description, but from his listing style and use of metaphor in describing the work of a farmer.
I think the main reason for journalism students to read Agee's piece is empathy. The description in this piece, though they seem excruciatingly mundane, gets at the heart of the farming community. It shows the hardships of life, but indirectly. Agee's bond with the farmers made him not want to share their raw private emotions and thats why he wrote about their clothes instead. He found he could accomplish the same goal: showing the hard life of sharecroppers. I think empathy acts through the mundane nature of the story. it manages to be powerful and emotional without having human characters as protagonists. The characters in the story act as motivation as opposed to the subject.
I also agree with Cooper that journalism students can learn a thing or two about detail orientation thanks to Agee. His emphasis on one detail as opposed to another show importances and directs the reader's attention. This is something that most writers struggle with at some point in their writing careers.
I personally did not particularly care for the Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But that's not to say I didn't learn anything from it. It was an great example of how far you can push description. I love descriptive text especially when that text holds and alternative meaning. I think student journalist can learn a lot from this type of technique because it brings the allure that things are not what they seem. or maybe maybe i am thinking too much into the overalls. What i loved about it was that the article of clothing told more about the lower/middle class. Its an extreme example of show don't tell. Something that is constantly preached in class and should be continuously utilized, because it affects people more so. Even though this story could have been told as the farmer wakes up and tends to his crops, it is much more valuable the way Agee presented it.
I agree with Kristin in that the main reason for those studying journalism to read Agee's piece is developing empathy for others. Through Agee's remarkably detailed descriptions, the reader can see that Agee felt the farmer's suffering and circumstances more than the scope of a "normal" reporter. Like many of my classmates, I believe it is both Agee's attention to the details in this piece and the way he infuses every detail with genuine feeling and empathy that makes Let Us Now Praise Famous Men a necessity for journalism students to read.
I think something that journalists can learn from James Agee's writing is how to capture the essence of people by use of detail and description. Agee painstakingly describes the men's clothing and shoes, and in doing so, illuminates things about their character and life. He is using a unique form of journalism to tell a story. Agee is writing factual information, but his writing style is similar to prose. Therefore, I think another valuable lesson in Agee's work for aspiring journalists to learn is to not be afraid to be a little different, to not be afraid to use detail or metaphor or whatever you feel is the best way to tell a compelling, accurate story. His attention to the smallest parts of the men's appearance are being used to tell us about the long, hard years they have put in working as tenement farmers. Agee tells a simple yet meaningful story about human life and work; he writes as a man first, and a journalist second, and I do not think that it is a bad thing.
I think this piece is excellent for journalism students because James Agee shows a clear example of symbolism of the working class in America. His descriptions of the overalls and shoes, step by step take the reader into the life of a working class man in America, as his life slowly fades and he gets worn down just as his clothing. I think the section on shoes is a lot more powerful than the overalls, just for the old saying, "you don't know a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes" and I think Agee shows that in this piece terrifically. Journalism students can learn so much in this piece about descriptions, metaphors and really making a reader think.
Journalism students can learn from the way Agee writes "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" because of the clarity and conciseness of his word choice. His sentences aren't bogged down with unnecessary words. They are simple and still convey and represent so much of the poverty and hardship faced by tenant farmers.
Agee calls overalls the "map of the working man." Some writers would end it there, utilizing a cliche and calling it done. But Agee takes the cliche and draws it out boldly as if to qualify and take ownership of the phrase. I think this is another think journalism students can learn from this piece. We can't just use language so liberally that it is easy. We must take ownership of the words and phrases we decide to use and be able to justify their use if our writing is going to mean anything.
Agee states that the "become flesh and bone" as do the shoes he describes. I think this is one of the most telling and important phrases in the piece.Agee legitimizes his description by showing that these people are their clothes and he used inventive language to fully convey that fact.
Journalism students kind of need to read this piece, and, I think, take this class before they're shipped out of college. But only right then.
We spend the brunt of our time in school learning how to write in proper AP format, how to draft up stories, how to source properly, how to make sure that all our bases are covered, how to make sure we're not liable for any libelous stuff that we right - there's even a feature writing class where we learn the formula for constructing a nice, tidy feature piece. Stuff like that is virtually all we do.
But reading Agee, and most of the stuff that we cover in this class, reminds me of two things. First, you can't teach talent, just like you can't teach height in basketball. It's there or it's not there. There's no way anyone in a strata lower than Agee could write anything of this magnitude, with this sense of poetry and reverence. This piece bookends the class well; there are people out there who are this good, and these are the writers who will be remembered. They push it, they make you envious of what they can do with five pages and two thousand words. Anyone can write a news article if they know how. Not everyone can build a monument to short-form literature.
Journalism students, less distressingly, need this piece and this class to remind them that journalism can be used as a tool to shine a light and to provoke emotions without being bone-dry.
I think the excerpt from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is an important example of the power of journalism to illuminate parts of the human experience your average newspaper reader might not be familiar with. The sharecroppers Agee was writing about were slaving away to eek out the barest living; he describes them as more overworked farm animals humans use to meet their ends than as humans themselves. The person most likely to be reading a newspaper or nonfiction text, your average WASP working a 9-to-5 job (and probably a white male), can learn from Agee's text what it's like where the grass isn't quite so green--to borrow a phrase from Jacob Riis, "how the other half lives." I agree with everyone else that this excerpt is important to help both reader and writer to a better understanding of empathy: by describing in such minute detail the "uniform" of sorts of such a worker, Agee humanized these overworked 'animals'.
I also think that other writers can learn to be empathetic from Agee. It's one thing to write about something and another to actually stop and think about who you're writing about and what impact the article has on them. One of my friends who's a journalist once wrote an article about someone who was accused of a heinous crime and then a few days later found out that they committed suicide; even though maybe they did commit a crime, articles written about the person affected them. We need to remember that everyone we write about are people as well and are impacted by our words.
Agee is tremendously perceptive. His process is inductive. His observations pinpoint essence. If the point of journalism is to convey truth to the public so that they may make informed decisions, then Agee’s process and writing style should be pedestaled.
His prose is poetic but real- he’s romantic about the right kinds of things, things that have true substance and symbolic meaning.
I think what this piece really emphasizes how the best journalists are the ones that are most empathetic and are the ones who are the smartest about how they show their empathy. Every word Agee put to page had thought behind it and it shows. He's so careful in how he describes and compares something as simple (and, really, awful and uncomfortable) as overalls with the difficult life of sharecroppers. A really great journalist doesn't just put all of the news that's fit to print in a story. A really great journalist forces you to feel empathy, regardless of whether or not what you're meant to feel empathetic about is relevant to you or not. And I think for journalism students this piece is vital because it shows that empathy is a necessary trait to do this job. To write and to write well, you must feel empathy for everything. If you can't, than you are going to struggle. One job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, which is something Agee excels in doing with this piece.
I agree with Carolina, that I didn't particularly connect with Agee's style of writing in the piece, but that doesn't mean students can't learn by critiquing it. The piece is a strong example of how to show the reader, rather than tell. Agee allows us to understand status of social life by describing the poor people living on the land - in excruciating detail. It is an interesting parallel to Professor Good's preferred short and concise sentence structure. This semester has taught me so much with the reading and writing we have done as a group. I don't think it is often that you can look at something and honestly say you can't learn from it -even in a small way.
You always hear about journalists complaining, "I don't know what to write about," or, "I don't have anything interesting to write about," and I certainly have been guilty of this, but what Agee did was shut me up.
He spent two pages talking about overalls. Of course he uses the overalls as a representation of these working class sharecroppers and enacts his empathy to try and gain something from the experience, but more importantly, I don't think he wastes a single word.
I think journalist can forget it's not always what you write about, it's how you write about it. Agee just reaffirms this notion. His description could not be more detailed. However, Agee's piece shouldn't be a lesson to journalists, "Use detail! Let people taste your words," but an example of how to make a work of art. Words are not limited to the functions we've been taught in school. They go far beyond that. I think Agee's piece can be a valuable lesson in experimentation and affectivity.
I think the way Agee writes about the topic of poor sharecroppers is what makes this piece so special and worth reading and learning from. The way he describes things such as the overalls works as a really effective symbol to describe and almost validate the experiences of sharecroppers and their lives. His writing allows the reader to gain a much deeper perspective on this type of life and allows you to connect and feel something for it and the people in it. This is important because journalists always need to be able to be empathetic and put themselves in someone else's shoes and see things from their perspective. He really humanizes the people he is writing about and gives a certain authenticity and legitimacy to their work and lives.
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