On this day in 1909 James Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Agee was a poet (Permit Me Voyage), an influential film critic (collected as Agee on Film), a social documentarist (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, based on his six weeks with Alabama sharecroppers), and a screenwriter (The African Queen), but he is best remembered for his autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family. The car crash which killed his father was probably caused by alcohol, but the family avoided saying so; this left young Rufus (James) alone with his unanswered questions and these final impressions ... FULL STORY »
