Doubled Structure

The section describing the Ricketts' fireplace is about aesthetics. Agee gives the motivation for posting so many "attractive pieces of paper" on the wall by the fireplace as the fact that the Ricketts are "more actively fod of pretty things that the other families are." Agee substantiates his claim that the aesthetics of this house are as important as the rest by giving this section so much weight. While the Grudger house receives 60 pages of the book, Agee condenses the Rickett house to only eight pages. Even though the fireplace section is short, it occupies a full quarter of the description of the Rickett's house.

Agee structures this section similarly to his whole book. He begins with the images: describing in detail all the advertisements, magazine covers, and calendars which adorn the wall. Then he moves to words: the ad copy and captions and names of months. Like presenting the Walker photos first without caption and then the text of the book, Agee has divorced the media. This doubled, microcosmic structure highlights the re-presentational act of aesthetics in general, and Agee's own writing in particular.

Agee is always very concerned about the validity of his enterprise of writing about the tenant farmers, and in particular the danger of his reader aestheticizing Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. On first reading, I suspected Agee of using the doubled structure to comment on his own failure to present an unaestheticized version of the tenant family's condition.

However, in the next section of the book, "Notes," he gives us a treatise on 'Beauty' which celebrates which does not go along with the self-deprecation tack I've begun to expect from Agee. In this section, he insists that we not ignore the beauty of the houses. He even says that this aesthetic is "at least as important a part of the fact as the [economic and human] abomination itself." But then he goes further, saying that this "unintentional" work is no less aesthetic than an intentional work art (implying 'such as this book itself') because in reality the intentional work is not really very intentional. Here he again links his own artistic act with that of the houses, and does not demonize it, but rather argues for its necessity.