The Preamble
Agee’s remarkable versatility as a writer is on full display in this book. The Preamble is the first section of prose in the book is so stylistically different from other sections that it almost seems impossible to have been written by the same person. The dominant imagery here is lushly figurative full of metaphor and simile and a densely compact compendium of synonyms and allusion that all serves to underline the author’s complex state of mind relating to the relationship between human suffering, artistic rendering and commercial exploitation. As just one example of the elevated and often poetic accumulation of word to render palpable a state of mind, consider this excerpt and how distinctly out of context it would feel inserted into any other section:
“the fleet flush and flower and fainting of the human crop it raises; the virulent, insolent, deceitful, pitying, infinitesimal and frenzied running and searching, on this colossal peasant map, of two angry, futile and bottomless, botched and overcomplicated youthful intelligences in the service of an anger and of a love and of an undiscernible truth”
Clothing
The Preamble is clearly the work of a literary man expressing literary ideas in a literary way. By contrast, “Clothing” is the work of a literary man making concrete through language the lifestyle of much simpler people of much lesser means. The imagery here is direct, concrete and factual:
“Sunday, George Gudger: Freshly laundered cotton gauze underwear. Mercerized blue green socks, held up over his fist-like calves by scraps of pink and green gingham rag.”
But these mere listing of details which helps to convey not just the simplicity of their lives, but also the limitations of possibility and the economic hardship is accompanied by authorial observation that reveals the true limitation of literary excess which Agee felt was necessary to maintain the thematic imagery:
“Of overalls, you could say that they are the standard working garment in the country south, and that blue is the standard color. But you should add that old Sunday pants in varying degrees of decay are also perhaps half as much used”
"A Country Letter"
Contrary to expectations, the long section which is really the meat and potatoes of the book does not read like a letter. It is more like a combination of the musing of someone who is sitting down to write a family letter surrounded by presence both physical and mental of the subjects of the letter. A definite sense of streaming-of-consciousness is at work in the imagery. One could very literally picture in their mind the writer sitting down to contemplate deeply what it is he wants to write about in long, elegant constructed sentences. Then the emotions of this contemplation takes over and the construction becomes more fragmented and sharp-edged with the sense of poetry taken over by literal facts. This is the basic construction through the chapter as contemplative poetry gives way to a sudden emotional intrusion. Occasionally, the writer overhears snatches of dialogue or ambient sounds and the sentences reflect this shift in consciousness and attention. The imagery of each individual part of this long sequence coalesces to recreate not the experience of reading a letter but the even more wondrous experience of penetrating into the mind of someone struggling to write a letter.
Education
With the chapter dedicated to delineating the ruthlessly inadequate access to education that is simply considered a normal part of this rural area, Agee has once again shifted gears so completely that it almost seems like the work of another writer. The imagery here, however, is a familiar one: this is social reportage. This is journalism. Factual information is blended seamlessly in with personalized stories of the participants which is then leavened with opinion by an outside observer acting as social critic. It is Agree stripping his prose of the poetry of “The Preamble” but all the way down to the bare-knuckled scrutiny of detail as in “Clothing” while adhering to a more formally organized structure than “A Country Letter” to make the imagery of what schooling is like serve the purpose of fueling his call to action: that education is the key to opportunity and the lack of education is inextricably linked to the generation cycle of poverty.
