and i too am lying there. first we were sitting
up, then one of us lay down, and then we all lay
down, on our stomachs, or on our sides, or on
our backs, and they have kept on talking. They
are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of
nothing in particular, of nothing at all in par-
ticular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and
alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweet-
ness, and they seem very near. all my people
are larger bodies than mine, quiet, with voices
gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleep-
ing birds. One is an artist, he is living at home.
One is a musician, she is living at home. One is
my mother who is good to me. One is my father
who is good to me. By some chance, here they
are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the
sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts,
on the grass, in a summer evening, among the
sounds of the night. may God bless my people,
my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
oh, remember them kindly in their time of trou-
ble; and in the hour of their taking away.
From a death in the family. Having graduated
from Harvard University in 1932, the Knoxville
native began writing for time and fortune. It was
an unpublished story for the latter, about sharecroppers
in Alabama, that he and Walker Evans turned into
let Us now Praise famous men in 1941. Agee was
a film critic—he championed the “great, sad, motionless
face” of Buster Keaton—as well as a scriptwriter on
films such as The african Queen. a death in the
family won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958, three years
after his death.
