Member-only story
“The most ecstatic piece of writing ever composed about an American summer.”
Written in 90 minutes
Time Magazine called James Agee’s prose-poem , Knoxville, Summer 1915, “the most ecstatic piece of writing ever composed about an American summer.” It is a remarkable piece, written by Agee when he was only 28 in the year 1938. It is printed here in its entirety for educational purposes.
Agee was a poet but is perhaps most well known for his screenplays, The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter and his novel, A Death in the Family, published posthumously.
I first came upon James Agee’s rapturous ode to American summers when I was a story editor at Paramount in the late 1970s. Years earlier, Paramount had purchased the film rights to the Pulitzer-prize winning play, Look Homeward Angel, based on Thomas Wolfe’s novel of the same name.
It was a mystery as to why the Agee prose-poem was included in the old file but there was a paper clipped note dated 1959 attached to it from George Roy Hill, the acclaimed director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. The penciled note said, “Heartbeat”.
When I called him up and asked George about the note, he laughed. “I thought that Agee piece was the heartbeat of America. I was trying to get the job as the director for the…
