threedemons's review against another edition
4.0
The writing is beautiful, but the structure and the straight informative style are not my cup of tea. Thank god for the new journalism movement...
gingerholli's review against another edition
5.0
I was fascinated by this article that turns out was never included in the magazine it was intended for.
bjr2022's review against another edition
4.0
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich states that since 2009, 95 percent of economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent net worth. In 2017, an Oxfam study found that eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race.
Cotton Tenants is a report on tenant farmers in the 1930s in Moundville, Alabama—with photos. I skimmed the detailed economic explanation of tenant farming, but picked up enough to realize that this is a look at wealth inequality in a microcosm—the precursor to what is still going on. In Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders writes, “A job is more than a ‘job.’ It is more than just making an income. A job is, in an important sense, how we relate to the world in which we live.” And he has many suggestions about how to create meaningful, sustaining work (one of which is to make workers into owners), none of which apply to tenant farmers. Until reading Cotton Tenants, it never occurred to me that in large part the economy is rigged because workers are responsible for creating products that don’t sustain them, but only sustain the owners of their businesses. Tenant farmers growing primarily cotton on the landowner’s property, instead of food, can’t eat properly! So Agee’s report has some current relevance.
Robert Reich is a better source of the current statistics and explanations about how it’s all working in 2018 (especially his videos), but this book is worth reading for Agee’s descriptions of people. For writers who want to expand their notions about observing and reporting on people, this is a master class. And Walker Evans’s photos are superb.
Note: This book really is a hybrid report and brilliantly articulate response to the report, written on assignment but never published by Fortune magazine. It’s called a “masterpiece,” but I think Fortune was right to kill it. It’s not a magazine story. Imagine lists of notes written with lots of beautifully crafted descriptions. The literary writing is inspired, the jaundiced analysis is funny, and conclusions are so vivid you can feel Agee grunting (“. . . it is quite as fair to observe that ignorance and slovenliness and the tradition itself are the inevitable products of just one thing: poverty. The music can go all sorts of places, but it comes out here.”). But I suggest skimming whenever you feel like it and savoring Walker Evans’s photographs.
For a comprehensive review of this book, see Howard’s review.
Cotton Tenants is a report on tenant farmers in the 1930s in Moundville, Alabama—with photos. I skimmed the detailed economic explanation of tenant farming, but picked up enough to realize that this is a look at wealth inequality in a microcosm—the precursor to what is still going on. In Our Revolution, Bernie Sanders writes, “A job is more than a ‘job.’ It is more than just making an income. A job is, in an important sense, how we relate to the world in which we live.” And he has many suggestions about how to create meaningful, sustaining work (one of which is to make workers into owners), none of which apply to tenant farmers. Until reading Cotton Tenants, it never occurred to me that in large part the economy is rigged because workers are responsible for creating products that don’t sustain them, but only sustain the owners of their businesses. Tenant farmers growing primarily cotton on the landowner’s property, instead of food, can’t eat properly! So Agee’s report has some current relevance.
Robert Reich is a better source of the current statistics and explanations about how it’s all working in 2018 (especially his videos), but this book is worth reading for Agee’s descriptions of people. For writers who want to expand their notions about observing and reporting on people, this is a master class. And Walker Evans’s photos are superb.
Note: This book really is a hybrid report and brilliantly articulate response to the report, written on assignment but never published by Fortune magazine. It’s called a “masterpiece,” but I think Fortune was right to kill it. It’s not a magazine story. Imagine lists of notes written with lots of beautifully crafted descriptions. The literary writing is inspired, the jaundiced analysis is funny, and conclusions are so vivid you can feel Agee grunting (“. . . it is quite as fair to observe that ignorance and slovenliness and the tradition itself are the inevitable products of just one thing: poverty. The music can go all sorts of places, but it comes out here.”). But I suggest skimming whenever you feel like it and savoring Walker Evans’s photographs.
For a comprehensive review of this book, see Howard’s review.
laurenbdavis's review against another edition
5.0
It's James Agee and Walker Evans, for heaven's sake, so it could hardly be less than 5 stars. This is the piece Agee eventually turned into Forbes, after being hired to write about sharecroppers. It was never published, although Agee's masterpiece, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, was later published. This long read piece came out a couple of years ago and although it doesn't have the near-manic incendiary fire of FAMOUS MEN, it is a gut-wrenching unforgettable read. Agee's compassion and despair are on every page and Evans's photographs retain every ounce of their soul-searing power. If you haven't read FAMOUS MEN, you might wish to start here, and then graduate to the larger work. This is a far more controlled piece and does without some of the passages in FAMOUS MEN I suspect Agree wrote drunk. Each has its own incandescent beauty, however, and each deserves to be widely read, especially in these days when understanding the 'other' and compassion seem in low supply.
pussreboots's review against another edition
3.0
Cotton Tenants: Three Families by James Agee is a collection of essays on the life of tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama. These are the leftovers, found in the author's estate, from his Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).
http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comments_10/cotton_tenants.html
http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comments_10/cotton_tenants.html
apermal2's review against another edition
5.0
I loved it. such a great piece of writing about an important part our past. also about human nature.
mlytylr's review against another edition
5.0
words by a great american novelist, photos by a legend. brilliant. exactly what you wish every piece of longform journalism was like. takes an unequivocal & unflinching moral stand on poverty, which is probably the reason it wasn't published during their lifetimes -- but is also the reason it is so impressive & memorable ...
A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.
A civilization which for any reason puts a human life at a disadvantage; or a civilization which can exist only by putting human life at a disadvantage; is worthy neither of the name nor of continuance. And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea.
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