"On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there... They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they are very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine,... with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in the summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, no will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am."
In 1996, I managed to get tickets for my wife and I and a couple of friends to the sold out R.E.M. concert here at Thompson-Boling Arena. To this day, R.E.M. remains one of the best live bands I've seen, and we were all really stoked for the show. About halfway through an incredible first set, the lead singer, Michael Stipe, walked to the front of the stage with a book in his hand and proceeded to tell the audience how fortunate we all were to live here, as one of the most beautiful pieces of American literature ever put to paper was written about Knoxville. He then proceeded to read James Agee's passage "Knoxville Summer 1915" to the suddenly very sober audience. When a few overzealous fans yelled out as he began to read, he simply told them to be quiet and then started over. I was stunned.
I'd always loved "Knoxville Summer 1915", the prologue to Agee's posthumously published "A Death in the Family". The short passage had actually been later cobbled in by the publisher as an introduction to Agee's tragic autobiographical novel about the sudden loss of his father, but it always did seem to me to mesh with the novel perfectly. Having grown up in Knoxville, and being intimately familiar with the Fort Sanders neighborhood where Agee lived as a child, I always felt he captured the texture of the subject matter perfectly. And now, here was the lead singer of what was, at the time, arguably the best rock band in the world, quietly reading the passage to a crowd of thousands just a mile or two from where Agee was raised. It was truly an incredible thing.
Today I work just across the viaduct from Agee's old neighborhood, and one of my favorite things to do on a bright spring day is to walk up through the old Fort Sanders community to grab lunch at the Falafel Hut. Knoxville developers, ever consistent in their drive to destroy the significant in favor of the mundane, tore down Agee's home several years ago to build a parking lot; and the recent addition of several huge student housing projects have greatly diminished the charm of the old neighborhood. However, it's still a poignant feeling as I cross the viaduct and ascend the hill into Fort Sanders; walking along the same sidewalks traversed by a young boy and the father he so admired on their last night together- nearly 100 years ago.
