Mr. Agee
and
The New Yorker
JAMES GROSSMAN
SOME TIME ago Mr. Agee wrote in the
PARTISAN
REviEw* about
the pseudo-folk art in plays like
Carmen Jones, Oklahoma,
the Robeson
Othello.
Mr. Agee disliked the plays so much that, as he went on to say,
he had not seen them. I read the piece hastily and do not remember it
ve1y well but it seemed to state a sound and interesting theory, even if
one might disagree on details, something I was not inclined to do because
I had seen none of the plays myself.
Mr. Agee's criticism is always good and it was therefore pleasant
to see this particular piece discussed in
The New Yorker.
But it was
quite surprising that the discussion was not at all about his views–
whether, say,
Othello
is folk art, and if such, pseudo-but entirely on
the point that Mr. Agee had not seen the work on which he was ex–
pressing an opinion. Although there was some recognition of the ad–
vantage Mr. Agee had over his colleagues in being able to polish his
writing while they were busily attending the theatre, the general tone
was disapproving: Mr. Agee's procedure was unfair and somehow wrong.
I am not sure why; I heard
The New Yorker
paragraph read several
times but always with so strong an effect on others present that I could
never be sure of its exact meaning. Each person who read it made it
sound like a proof of something he had always suspected but had never
dared to say himself: Intellectuals were fakes, and now at last one was
being caught in the act.
This effect need not concern us for certainly it was not intended;
in any event the life of the mind has managed to take care of itself,
precariously enough it is true, for thousands of years and will somehow
survive this blow. The real point of interest, and it is the subject of the
present inquiry, is how any one, whether amusingly or unamusingly,
could come to the conclusion that because a man had not seen certain
plays he should not write about them.
Mr. Agee's actual procedure was scientific in the extreme. He had
heard the opinion of friends who had liked the plays and of friends who
had not liked them. That is, although he had not been there he had seen
h.is
object from two separate and known points of view and had placed
it accordingly. This is the precise method used in map making. How
often we were told in trigonometry class that if ever we wanted to map
*See Spring, 1944 issue, p.219.
