Is a version of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men that uses the real names of the people. Let us face it. Most people have come to know these famous people through the photographs of Walker Evans. True, in the splendid book, graced with your splendid, sometimes transcendent words, the Evans photographs bear no captions. No names. But the world changed. The Library of Congress, repository of all of the photographs of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), has digitized and placed online the entire FSA collection. And when Walker Evans put identifications to the Hale County images he used real names.
I know what Allie Mae Burroughs looks like because Walker Evans famously photographed her and gave us her name.
And Moundville and Greensboro and Tuscaloosa are real places, now as they were then.
I am not suggesting that we need an edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men without Gudgers and Ricketts and Woods but I would happily put up with parenthetical actual names just so I do not have to keep turning to the Wikipedia’s woefully inadequate list of pseudonyms and real names.
I comfort myself that I will always know who Squinchy is, even if I have to look up the squeaky little kids last name.
And that, Mr Agee, or “James” if you prefer, is my only suggestion for improvement to the splendid classic of American letters.
Waiting For Charlemagne 