Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 31

JoumaliMnoftitel^^ 27 the book to reflect the unpredictability and chaotic nature of life. As in real life, characters in the book appeared, disappeared, and then reemerged later. Various scenes were repeated, and arguments were interr upted and resumed later. The book's structure was circular, with no definable beginning, middle, or end. "The result," Pells observed, "was an expressionistic tour de force in which the Reader—no longer a passive recipient of information but a partner in a dialogue with the author—was compelled to see and think about the world in radically new ways" (p. 247). Convinced that reality is pluralistic and that a documentarian should be aware of multiple perspectives in the search for truth, Agee experimented with novelistic techniques in his narrative. In fact, he disdained the traditional who, what, where, when, why, and how of journalism, citing its preoccupation with facts rather than truth: "Journalism can within its own limits be 'good' or 'bad,' 'true' or 'false,' but it is not the nature of journalism even to approach any less relative degree of truth" (Agee, 1941, p. 234). Instead, by calling upon the fiction writer's tools of imagery, descriptive narration, and multiple frames of reference, Agee sought a larger truth not evident in the mere compilation of facts. Like Wilson, Anderson, and Dreiser, Agee's goal was to come to terms with reality; however, Agee's experimentation with narrative form to achieve that goal was by far the boldest. For Agee, the language of reality had the creative resonance of music or poetry. He said the works of most naturalistic writers failed on this level by offering detailed descriptions of people and places in language incapable of placing value on what had been discovered. Thus, this language of reality had the capacity of liberating individuals and their settings from their stereotypical roles as societal symbols and metaphors. Agee, of course, examined the societal implications of the plight of the sharecroppers, but he strove to convey the impact of the Depression on individual tenant farmers. He was not interested in depicting the sharecroppers of the Thirties as a social category, or even in labeling them as victims. Instead, by fusing journalism with art—by combining Wilson, Anderson, and Dreiser's fascination with the gathering of social facts with the novelist's experiments with ways of perceiving reality— Agee paid homage to the resiliency of the human spirit in a decade of social disorder.