A masterpiece revisited

At the time of his death of a heart attack at 45, James Agee had published relatively little of his own creative work. Known more for his insightful movie reviews and film adaptations, Agee had produced a novella, a volume of poetry and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," a study of Alabama sharecroppers. He left behind the manuscript of a novel he'd been working on for more than a decade, which editor David McDowell published as "A Death in the Family." Appearing in 1957 -- two years after Agee died -- "A Death in the Family" received great acclaim and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. A lyrical, perfectly calibrated and deeply moving account of a man's death and its effects on his family, it still stands -- more than 50 years after its publication -- as one of the most beautiful of American novels.

Now, editor Michael A. Lofaro has incorporated recently recovered material and rearranged existing chapters in "A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author's Text." Much of this material became available to scholars in 2002, after a change in the directorship of the James Agee Trust. Motivated by McDowell's claim in the original introduction that Agee's novel was "presented . . . exactly as he wrote it," Lofaro sets out to correct the "degradation" of Agee's original manuscript from McDowell's "editorial decisions, inaccuracy, and deception." He includes more than 10 additional chapters, replaces substitute versions of three additional chapters and reinserts scenes that appeared as flashbacks in McDowell's version into the beginning of the story. Lofaro also removes the famous prologue "Knoxville: Summer, 1915" -- a previously published set piece that McDowell acknowledges he added to the manuscript -- and replaces it with a new introduction, a nightmare sequence. The result is a longer and drastically different book.

Reconstructing Agee's novel is a questionable undertaking, not least because the existing novel is a masterpiece. It centers on the family of Jay Follet -- based on Agee's father -- who is killed in a car accident on his way home from his parents' house. Beginning with the gorgeous prologue, the novel brilliantly weaves together the points of view of Jay's wife, brother, in-laws and 6-year-old son, Rufus. In coming to terms with this unexpected death, the surviving characters grapple with family, faith, tensions between rural and urban existence, and the challenges and rewards of human interaction.