Close to midnight: A paean to James Agee.

As I returned the Harvard Business Journal to its slot on the magazine rack, I glimpsed an irresistible headline on the December issue of Harper's: "Enter the Ford: Lost fiction by James Agee."

James Agee is magical. His hypnotic prose elevates the most pedestrian to levels of highly charged symbolism. He writes of things I harbor distaste for, illiteracy and carnivals and rural accents, and he stirs in me sympathy and wonder. The South of Faulkner and O'Conner scandalized and repulsed me; Agee's mesmerizes me.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was as superb as its title would have it; A Death in the Family gorgeously executed. It is to the latter that the omitted chapters in Harper's belong. I stood amidst the magazines and soaked him in. I don't know how he does it, though I suspect the mind-mimicking run-on sentences have something to do with it. I don't know if analyzing and deconstructing his methods would destroy the delight of the whole. But I do know, especially this late at night, that to behold his work, to stand and savor it, inevitably leaves me in awe.