English Department Events
Inaugural volume of the Complete Works of James Agee—a modern critical edition of A Death in the Family, edited by Mike Lofaro--appears this November
Congratulations to Mike Lofaro, a Professor of American literature in the department on the appearance of his modern critical edition of Knoxville native James Agee’s A Death in the Family. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is being released this November as the first volume of the University of Tennessee Press's scholarly edition of The Works of James Agee. Congratulations to Mike!
The University of Tennessee Press’s description of the volume gives a good idea of its focus and its difference from the novel first published in 1957:
This volume provides, for the first time, a modern critical edition of Agee's manuscript, a novel based upon his childhood and his attempts to understand the death of his father. The new introduction is a revealing nightmare rather than an idyllic reverie; the book includes ten and one-third previously omitted chapters, substitutes three finished chapters for erroneously printed drafts, and is divided into forty-five chapters rather than twenty; it is chronological and has no flashback chapters; real names of people and places are used, as are more regional speech patterns; and young Rufus (based on young James), his father, and their deep and caring relationship are far more fully developed. All are changes that showcase the intended autobiographical realism of the novel.
This comprehensive edition also provides the reader with an introductory essay, a way to read the McDowell edition from it for purposes of comparison, Agee's draft of his memories of his father's death, unfinished letters to his parents, manuscript variants, and textual notes which document each part of the reconstruction. The edition has received the approval of the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association.
Wonderfully evocative, this exciting reconstruction of A Death in the Family provides a firmer sense of Agee's achievement as a writer of creative non-fiction and presents his literary genius to a new generation of readers.
Mike is also the general editor of the complete works project: volumes on other work by Agee--like Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, his collected screenplays, his collected film reviews and commentary, his poetry, and his non-fiction essays--will be appearing in the coming years.