Agee, Again

Another day, another instance of dueling editions of a single work. Barely had the debate over Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love simmered down when word arrives of a new edition of James Agee's A Death in the Family. It's a bit more complicated than Carver, which involved a heavy-handed editor and a writer who agreed to heavy revisions, only to regret it later, and after he passed away his widow insisted on publishing his original manuscript of the book. In other words, Carver had every opportunity to publish his original vision of the book, but failed to do so.

In Agee's case, he died before the book was even completely finished, and it fell to his literary executor to stitch the pieces together into a finished book. (Shades of Kafka's The Trial and especially Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, two stitched-together, posthumously-published novels that left me greatly dissatisfied.)

In the piece I've linked to above, Will Blythe claims the new version trumps the original. Which puts me in a quandry: I had been considering reading the book as part of my Summer of Classics, but now I wonder if I should hold off until I can get my hands on the new edition. Or just put off reading either edition for a few more years, which I strongly suspect will be the result.