The audience, yet again

No theorizing today, just a quote from the last paragraph of the preface of the very interesting Let us now praise famous men.

b2ae06e288a21332797b8fcfada672afHere it is: “This is a book only by necessity. More seriously, it is an effort in human actuality in which the reader is no less centrally involved than the authors and those of whom they tell.Those who wich actively to participate in the subject, in whatever degree of understanding, friendship, or hostility, are invited to address the authors in care of the publishers. In material that is used, privately or publicly, names will be withheld on request.”

I am wondering whether anyone ever wrote to the authors/the publisher and what did he wrote?

4 thoughts on “The audience, yet again

    1. In a book co-authored by Walker Evans? Come on Clement, you can do better than that!

  1. @ Clément: FYI, Walker Evans was one of the photographers of the Farm Security Administration, hired by Roy Stryker and Rexford Tugwell to take pictures of rural poverty during the Depression. Other famous FSA photographers include Jack Delano, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein … and Dorothea Lange. This picture, featuring Allie Mae Burroughs is considered a symbol of the Great Depression. Evans’s coauthor, James Agee, won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 1958 (he died in 1955). Thanks to the Prize, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men eventually gained public recognition, in contrast with Agee’s scant reputation during his lifetime.

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