Volume 28, Number 12 · July 16, 1981
Growing Up East German
By Robert Coles
Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany
by Joel Agee
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 324 pp., $14.95
James Agee was a writer of strong talent and many interests, but when he died at forty-five he was by no means the master of his discerning, anguished intellect, not to mention his tempestuous emotions. Even at Harvard he had called attention to himself by the way he lived as well as by his abilities. Until heart disease slowed him down (and eventually killed him) he was much talked about as an insomniac, hard-drinking poet, novelist, and critic, and he was also well known as a film scriptwriter and essayist. An iconoclast, a rule-breaker, a performer, he was a visionary barely able to keep ahead of his own demons. Many of those who admired his prose viewed his life with pity or outright disapproval, thinking of the waste, the promise only partially fulfilled.
Review, 2097 words
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