Letters of James Agee to Father Flye by James Agee

In one of the later letters of celebrated writer James Agee to his lifelong confidant Father Flye, Agee mentions Montaigne's essay on his near-perfect, myth-grade friendship with La Boétie, telling Flye that while 'I have never known anyone, and never expect to, to whom Montaigne's wonderful essay on friendship could completely apply ... I never expect a relationship dearer to me ... that I have nearly all my life had with you.' It's a remark that's characteristic of the entire collection: loving and open, yet pessimistic and self-pitying.

After Agee's father died, Father Flye, whom he met around age ten at boarding school, became a paternal surrogate. They wrote to each another between 1925, when Agee was in his mid-teens, and 1955, the year of his death. From the beginning, Agee treated Flye as a kind of mirror: the letters are closer to an elongated self-study than a correspondence.

But they're fascinating because the self being studied is contradictory and multitudinous. Agee may have considered himself a failure, but his body of work tells a different story entirely. At the same time, though, the letters show an alcoholic and slothful man reckless with his gifts. You're left wondering whether the work of Agee's we do have might have only been the tip of his talent's iceberg.