James Agee (1909–1955) received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his autobiographical novel A Death in the Family. A poet, journalist, and screenwriter, he is perhaps best known as one of the most influential film critics of the 1940s, as well as for his screenplay The African Queen. With photographer Walker Evans, he produced Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, an exploration of sharecroppers. A hard drinker and smoker, he died of heart failure in New York City before realizing much of his current acclaim.

Near a Church

An Essay

by James Agee

It was a good enough church from the moment the curve opened and we saw it that I slowed a little and we kept our eyes on it. But as we came even with it the light so held it that it shocked us with its goodness straight through the body, so that at the same instant we said Jesus. I put on the brakes and backed the car slowly, watching the light on the building, until we were at the same apex, and we sat still for a couple of minutes at least before getting out, studying in arrest what had hit us so hard as we slowed past its perpendicular.

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