There were a few reasons why Now Let Us Praise Famous Men seemed unlike any other book I had read (probably to the delight of Agee), one of which were the pages that listed all of the characters of the book. I was shocked to see that Agee had listed himself and Evans as “spies” and at first did not realize the negative connotation with that word, believing it to imply it was a romantic way of documenting “truth” without anyone knowing. The problem is that everyone knew Agee and Evans were outsiders, or at least, “others”. One line that still sticks with me is “Their faces were… utterly without understanding; and they had to stand now and hear what I was saying, because in that country no negro walks away from a white man, or even appears not to listen while he is talking,” (42) Agee is very aware of the power dynamic immediately placed on those whom he interacts with, and to some extent that does prevent a completely accurate picture of those he tries to describe, at least at the beginning of interactions, but quite possibly does not ever go away. Looking at these images then does feel invasive, but also feels as if there is something unnatural created by the mere act of asking to document someone’s life. When returning to the idea of unknowable histories, they are such because there is no right way to insert ourselves back into that narrative without ourselves experiencing all of the experiences that those we study have gone through. Agee even says that the people he writes about only have meaning through him, and finding a way to change that is still a question which has no right answers.