“A life of high genius and sell-doom''— lames Dickey PENGUIN BOOKS JAM ES AGEE: A LIFE Laurence Bergreen was educated at Harvard. He has con­ tributed to numerous publications, including TheNew York Times and Newsweek, and has taught at the New School for Social Research. He has written one previous book, Look Now, Pay Later: The Rise of Network Broadcasting. JAM ES AGEE A Life Laurence Bergreen PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Limited, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182—190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published in the United States of America by E.P Dutton, Inc., 1984 Published in Penguin Books 1985 Copyright © Laurence Bergreen, 1984 All rights reserved LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Bergreen, Laurence. James Agee. Reprint. Originally published: New York: Dutton, 1984. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Agee,James, 1909-1955—biography. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. I. Title. [PS3501.G35Z59 1985] 818'.5209 [B] 85-539 ISBN o 14 00.8064 3 All quotations from James Agee’s personal papers and copyrighted work reprinted by kind permission of the James Agee Trust, David McDowell, Trustee. “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson, from Collected Poems, reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Copy­ right 1940, renewed © 1968. Also reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, London, England.. “America Was Promises” by Archibald MacLeish, from New and Collected Poems 1917-1976, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Copy­ right © 1978 by Archibald MacLeish. “A Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire of a Child in London” by Dylan Thomas, from Collected Poems, reprinted by permission of New Directions Pub­ lishing Corporation, New York, N.Y. Copyright 1945 by the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Also reprinted by permission J. M. Dent, London, England. Printed in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia Set in Garamond Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or other­ wise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. To Betsy and Nicky CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix PART ONE 1. A Death in the Family 3 2. Strange Rites 20 3. First Loves 34 4. Of Harvard and Hoboes 56 5. One Grand Time to Be Maudlin 79 vn CONTENTS PART TWO 6. Empire 1 1 3 7. Voyage 131 8. Spies 158 9. Passion 183 10. The Reluctant Radical 211 11. The Captive Poet 237 12. In the Dark 262 13. A Dangerous Man 288 PART THREE 14. The Opportunist 319 15. The Girl with the Golden Eyes 339 16. Saints 367 17. Full Circle 389 POSTMORTEM 408 NOTES 410 BIBLIOGRAPHY 446 INDEX 455 viu ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to David McDowell, Trustee of the James Agee Trust, for granting me unrestricted access to and permission to quote from Agee’s writing, both published and unpublished. Rarely has there been a more autobiographical writer than Agee. He was, if anything, even more objective and factual in his “fiction” than in his journalism and made little or no attempt to disguise events about which he wrote. Both his letters and my interviews with those who knew him have confirmed the accuracy of his novels and stories, which I have treated accordingly. Compre­ hensive notes on my sources can be found at the end of the book. Agee loved to write letters, but only the celebrated letters to Father Flye and a handful of others have been published. In writing IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS this biography I consulted and quoted from hundreds more; they have shed much light on previously ignored aspects of Agee’s varied life and career. The mother lode of unpublished letters—as well as stories, screenplays, notebooks, and poetry—is located at the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. I have drawn heavily on this large and rich collection, and I wish to express my appreciation to the HRC staff, especially Cathy Henderson, for unfailing assistance, courtesy, and patience. Other unpublished Agee material, primarily letters, is scat­ tered across the country in various libraries and archives. Much of it has only recently come to light, and in many instances I have had the privilege of being the first to make use of it. I thank Sam Gill of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Margaret Herrick Library for guiding me to the John Huston papers; the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where Peter Brown and Bland Blackford located Agee’s last screenplay; the Columbia University Oral History Collection and Rare Book and Manuscript Library; the Hamilton College Library and especially Frank Lorenz, who placed at my disposal a wealth of Agee letters and manuscripts included in the Saunders family papers; Harvard University’s Alumni Records Office and the assistance of Mrs. Wu; the Hough­ ton Library of Harvard University, where Susan Halpert and Rod­ ney Dennis helped me; Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloom­ ington, Indiana, where Saundra Taylor gave me access to the Frank Taylor papers; the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection of the Public Library in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I absorbed much local history and color; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., where Paul T. Heffron obligingly unearthed uncatalogued letters and notes from Agee to Archibald MacLeish; Peter Galassi of the Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Photography; the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library and in particular Walter Zervas of Special Collections, who cut through the red tape binding Agee’s uncatalogued letters to Robert Fitzgerald; the Phillips Exe­ ter Academy Library, where archivist Ed Desrochers facilitated my research; Princeton University’s Firestone Library; the James Agee Memorial Library at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee; the Time Inc. ar­ chives, where Elaine Felsher and Cheryl Wacher found no request of mine too large or small to fill; Twentieth Century-Fox Pictures and Les Gerber, who directed me to several unpublished screen- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS plays and treatments by Agee; Wesleyan University’s Saudek- Omnibus Collection and the assistance of Elizabeth Swaim and Jeanette Basinger; and last but not least, Yale University’s Sterling Library, where Judith Schiff expedited my inquiries into the Agee correspondence in the Dwight Macdonald papers. Some of Agee’s letters remain in private hands. My thanks to Tamara Comstock, Mrs. Howard Doughty, Alma Mailman Neu­ man, and James Stern for sharing theirs with me. This biography owes much to my interviews with numerous friends, relatives, and colleagues of Agee. I am particularly grateful to Alma Mailman Neuman and to Mia Agee for answering my questions about their marriages. No less helpful in their interviews were Nan Abell, who was unstinting with both her hospitality in Greenwich and her photographic memory; Jay Grayson Agee; Dr. Oliver Agee, who furnished me with the invaluable Record of the Agee Family; Mary Ahern; Esther Bear; Paul Brooks; Tamara Com­ stock; Marguerite Courtney; Brad Darrach; Mrs. F. W. Dupee; Robert Fitzgerald; Father James Harold Flye, now nearly a century old and still flourishing; W. M. Frohock; Clement Greenberg; Paul Gregory; Eunice Jessup; Richard E. Harrison; John Huston, who took time out of an exceedingly busy schedule to talk; Christopher Isherwood; Alfred Kazin; Ilse Lahn; Jay Leyda; Helen Levitt; Kath­ erine Ling-Mullins, Agee’s niece; the late Dwight Macdonald, who in his zeal to help paid no heed to his failing health; Ivan Moffat; Alice S. Morris; Osgood Nichols; Mary O’Gorman; William Phil­ lips; Selden Rodman; Edith Phillips Russell; Terry Sanders; Robert Saudek, who long ago said he could tell me some interesting stories about his friend and college roommate James Agee and kept his promise; B. F. Skinner; Perrin Stryker; Howard Taubman; Frank Taylor; Diana Trilling; Archer Winsten; and Dwight Whitney. Still others were kind enough to answer my inquiries by letter: Malcolm Cowley; John Goodbody; the late Archibald MacLeish; Bernard Schoenfeld; James Stern; and, last, Irvine Upham, who responded with extraordinary thoroughness and insight. I am also indebted to the following: Jeffrey Apter; Mary Barno; Christopher Caldwell; Mell Cohen, who ably assisted in the search for photographs; James Laughlin; the Reverend Franklin Martin; Jim Menick; the Museum of Broadcasting; the National Council on Alcoholism; Mary Newman, for her transcription of XI