Bright Young Things discussion

Let the discussions begin...

I wanted to comment on how much I am enjoying this book (when I remember to pick it up). I'm still in this first third of this book. And there haven't been any actual deaths yet. Although I bet plenty of people would like to throttle Ralph.

I was reading on the commute home this evening about the trip young Rufus takes shopping with his great-aunt. And I loved how descriptive Agee was about the store, with baskets of merchandise flying overhead. And the boy gets tongue-tied when he is actually going to given a gift and he gets to choose the cap.

This reads like a long narrative prose poem. I hadn't read it in decades and when I picked it up again I thought I had forgotten most of the "action." However, I hadn't, as there really isn't much action, just the "event". The quality of the prose, the expression of love and loss, and above all family, is communicated with clarity and emotional honesty. It was hard not to tear up. This won Agee a Pulitzer (and when it was later adapted for the stage it won the Pulitzer for Drama too).

I was beginning to think that nobody was even reading this one....So glad to see some discussion!

I am absolutely taken with this one-it's so intense. You're right, Ivan, it does read like a long narrative prose poem. Agee's voice is clearly heard and seen via this emotional journey Rufus takes us on. I wonder why, since most of Rufus' personal accounts and experiences have mirrored Agee's life, he uses Rufus as a vehicle to deliver us to his truth (so to speak)? Perhaps the experience of losing his father, at the time, was still to raw an emotion...I'm not sure?

From what I can gather this, and his other fiction, is autobiographical in nature. Unfortunately, his emotional state is something he was never questioned about, as this novel was published postumously there were no author interviews we can reference.

Agee had a very bad heart, had several heart attacks before dying of a final attack in a taxi at the age of 45. He only wrote one other short novel - The Morning Watch - and a smattering of short stories; the remainder of his work was non-fiction and criticism. He did contribute to the scripts of two classic films: The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.

Yes, I guess, that is what my question should have been...is it intentional, or not, for Agee to have written fiction with an autobiographical nature vs writing it as a non-fiction piece? It's interesting because if it were a non-fiction novel, I think, I would feel differently about "A Death in the Family-" it would not have had the same effect on me, wouldn't have been as emotionally involved.

so, if this was a memoir you wouldn't feel so attached to it, emotionally speaking? as i said, i'm not very far - the mother just received the phone call - but i generally get more attached when i know it is real.

What's the old adage?: writer's write what they know. Drawing from "real life" experiences is an age old practice. Fictionalizing events from life allows the author the freedom to explore, embellish and invent; just look at Waugh and Mitford and Capote and......

Well, I just finished it. I thought it was great. I liked the way he invested himself in each character's thoughts and actions.

I didn't understand something though. Why did they have the priest (such as he was) come all the way from Chattanooga? Even today, that is a lengthy ride. Didn't they have any priests in Knoxville? I know there was probably still a lot of anti-Catholicism in 1915, but surely they could have found a priest closer to hand.

And I think one reason this is an emotional book is perhaps that it reminds people in their own lives of people who have died. I was seven or eight when my grandmother died. And I'm not certain that I got a satisfactory explanation to the whole thing at the time. But I do remember it made me fearful of going to sleep for the longest time - she died in her sleep.

I'm certain you are correct - this quite accurately plumbs the depths of loss and grief.