Modern Preservation and Agee’s Choice of Inclusivity

During our class trip to the Lilly, we discussed the purpose of saving and preserving historical texts, and why they are still valuable today. This was a question I had not really considered before, and just assumed that it was interesting to be able to view an original copy of a popular and/or much loved book—it was simply a sentimental thing. And while this is very much true in many cases, (I have saved many books from my childhood up until the present for the sake of their sentimental value to me), I thought our discussion on this topic was really interesting; that we save books because the actual book and its annotations or marks or ripped pages tells its own story, one that may be completely separate from a “new” copy of the actual piece of literature.

In addition to allowing contemporary readers and viewers to experience the art that may have been a part of the book and the artists who contributed to the work, it provides insight into the way the literature was perceived upon its original publication, and explains what the reader found to be important in the text, and gives details about the life of the reader (who also is, or will be, a historical figure, whether or not he or she is famous).

This mindset of total inclusivity in regard to literature seems very much similar to the way in which Agee viewed his own work. We have discussed in class how at times, the book contains so much detail to the point where his sentences (or entire paragraphs) seem superfluous. A reader would need to spend enormous amounts of time in order to take in everything that Agee tries to project in his writing—in some ways, it just seems to be too much. But on the other hand, Agee felt that if he left anything out, it could have been something that would have been indispensable to one’s understanding of the situation—a detail that while some readers may have simply skimmed over and paid no attention to, others would have taken it as the difference between a work of insignificance and a work documenting the inhumanity of the lives of real people. Just as Agee had to make this choice or what to include in his writing, modern readers and book-collectors must choose what to preserve and save. And while it may seem excessive, it may also make a significant, indispensible difference in a modern understanding of historical literature and the times in which they were written.