Orwell went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with "some notion of writing newspaper articles." He realized almost immediately, however, that his position as a neutral observer was not one he could sustain. Orwell found that moral issues involved in the struggle --freedom vs. oppression, as he saw it-- made it impossible for him to maintain nonpartisanship. He could not sit in a Barcelona hotel writing news articles while others fought an enemy that he, too, was willing to risk his life to defeat. Sometimes, he noted, "one is practically obliged to take sides." He joined a militia to fight fascism. "At that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do" (16).

James Agee and photographer Walker Evens traveled to Alabama in the summer of 1936 to do a piece for Fortune magazine on impoverished sharecroppers. For Agee, the moral validity of his position was immediately called into question.

Why do these writer's not see their journalistic roles as legitimate? Wouldn't committed journalists view their personal feelings about the subject as irrelevant to its greater meaning? By the 1930s, journalism had become "solidly entrenched in the information model of reporting" (Connery, 1992, xiii). The common conviction was that deliberate detachment frees information from bias, that only by putting aside prejudices can truth be revealed. It was precisely with this concept of journalism that Orwell and Agee clashed. Detachment, they felt, lost its value when faced with issues of such gravity as war, poverty and, in Agee's words, "Human Divinity."

Orwell became a journalist, his wife Sonia wrote, "because he wanted to be effective, to raise his voice against the folly, stupidity and despair he saw and felt" (S. Orwell, 1: xvi). By abandoning his post in Barcelona and joining the militia to fight, Orwell seems to indicate that fighting was more effective than writing. As far as newspaper articles went, I think that was what he thought. The newspapers, with their detachment and objectivity, had done little to get at what Orwell saw as the reality of the Spanish conflict. Journalists were too far removed to see what was going on, and they were too wrapped up in their own politics, though still professing disinterestedness, to admit what was going on.

It might appear that Homage to Catalonia was written only once Orwell had outlived his usefulness as a soldier, that the book was of secondary importance. No one can be sure that he will be able to write a book after a war; one may not survive. Given that Orwell was wounded in the throat in Spain, Homage to Catalonia came close to never having been written. "The bullet went through my neck from front to back but skidded round both the carotid artery and the backbone in the most remarkable way" (1968, 1: 281), he wrote. "It was a miracle it did not kill me" (1: 279). Writing Homage to Catalonia was as much a part of Orwell's effort in Spain as what he did with a rifle (ultimately, much more). He emerged from Spain...

The book was more than an afterthought, though. Orwell always intended to write a book about the war and worked on it throughout his time at the front. Though this is not explicit in the book itself, an introduction to the work by Orwell's one-time commanding officer seems to verify it:

Orwell always intended to write a book about the war and was a bloody scribbler throughout. Orwell wanted to write and to act at the same time, to do both at once and for one to be the other. Thus he wrote as a participant and as an activist. He believed, contrary to conventional journalism's theory, that by revealing one's bias in essentially political issues, such as war, an author can more honestly deal with his subject. "It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes, and consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan" (210). As Orwell saw it, "in an period like our own," writing about political issues was unavoidable.

Orwell felt he could reveal his own politics and perspective, and thereby provide a more accurate report of the war. As he wrote, "I saw only what was happening in my immediate neighborhood, but I saw and heard quite enough to be able to contradict many of the lies that have been circulated" (139). While erasing some of the boundaries of neutrality, Orwell by no means abolished the border between himself and his subject. Although he was a participant in the events he described, he tried to maintain a degree of detachment. Homage to Catalonia could not be called propaganda, except perhaps as a further lie by those whose lies it reveals. Orwell does not write about only what he wanted to see or what would be beneficial for his side. While acknowledging his partisanship, Orwell wanted to be as precise as possible.

Homage to Catalonia was meant to be immediately relevant, to describe something newsworthy, and, as an in-depth examination of the war, to be relevant as history. But Orwell wrote not as a recorder, but in reaction to those who claimed to be recorders. As he said, "I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing" (1968, 1: 6). To this pursuit, he devoted entire sections of Homage to Catalonia. For example, chapter five begins:

Over all, Orwell spent relatively little time contradicting lies compared to the great effort he went through to describe vividly and movingly the war's everyday happenings as he experienced them. Orwell had much more in mind than setting the facts straight. Homage to Catalonia "is, of course, a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts" (1968, 1:6).

Like Twain and Hemingway, Orwell wanted to describe his experience so that the reader might be able to see it, as if with his own eyes. He recreates the sense and image that are the essential part of the experience.

Orwell is surely downplaying the significance of the aesthetic element of his writing. He seems to consider his literary instincts as though they were a nervous twitch or some other personal defect. He understated the importance of the aesthetic experience, perhaps, to focus attention on the informational part of the work. Nevertheless, his attention to color, movement and similar such "useless information" is what brings the work alive. It adds power and reality to his politics, and, most significantly, it brings an entirely other level to the work. Homage to Catalonia is about more than the Spanish Civil War, it is about war itself. Through his talents as an observer and as a writer, Orwell revealed not only his own experience but elements of an experience shared by millions of people throughout history. It is the so-called useless information that brings an eternal quality to the book. It is what makes it literary. To most readers the literary aspect of the book, Orwell's aesthetic experience, is ultimately the core of the work. And, despite statements of the contrary, that element of the work may also have been the heart of it for Orwell, too. A bit of proof is provided in a letter Orwell wrote to a friend to whom he had sent a couple pre-publication chapters:

When Homage to Catalonia was first published, it was criticised for including so much factual and political information. One critic ("whom I respect," said Orwell) asked, "'why did you put in all that stuff?...You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.'" Orwell responded, "What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise" (1:6). He could neither have written a book without addressing political and other immediate issues nor one that did not contain the aesthetic experience. For Orwell, in his life and in his writing, facts and sense were intertwined. One was an essential part of the other. This, it seems to me, must be written on the creed of any literary journalist.

* * *

Agee's experience of the lives and impoverishment of the Alabama sharecroppers brought the limitations and failings of conventional journalism into sharp focus. Agee was concerned much less with politics than Orwell and much more with emotion and spirituality. With Agee, the aesthetic experience Orwell valued becomes a spiritual experience as well as the driving force of the work. Agee believed that journalism could describe life only in the most limited sense.

Journalism, thought Agee, was inherently unable to provide insight into the many realms of understanding beyond the superficial answers to Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. For this, he said, journalism could be blamed "no more than a cow is to be blamed for not being a horse" (234). However, journalism declared that it was a horse, that detachment and objectivity do result in truth. Thus, because it claimed to do what it was fundamentally unable to do, Agee declared (in his usual biological terminology), "The very blood and semen of journalism, is a broad and successful form of lying. Remove that form of lying and you no longer have journalism" (235).

Perhaps more than any other literary journalist, Agee reached into the existential meaning of his subject and explored the deepest (and darkest) realms of human sense and emotions. To describe the entire experience (as much as any written language could), Agee approached his subjects in two ways. First, as a camera, he wanted language to convey as close to a photographic image as possible. Also, like exposed film, he was indiscriminate of the details he portrayed. He wrote not just about the important things but everything, every corner and every cupboard. "It is intended that this record and analysis be exhaustive, with no detail, however trivial it may seem, left untouched," he wrote. Agee wanted to transport his readers into the scene, for them to be aware of the textures, smells and tastes (xv). However, he also wished them to experience the scene on more than a visual level. Though he constantly acknowledged his inability to do it, Agee wanted to do more than words allowed:

To step beyond the written photograph, Agee approached his subject, as well as his readers, wearing his insides out. As well as taking a physical photograph of his subjects' lives, he took an emotional one. Truly to inspire some flicker of understanding in the reader's mind, Agee felt, he needed to expose a deeper human truth, a moral truth. It was a spiritual photograph, and Agee thought it was as an essential and real aspect of experience as any captured by a camera. In that meeting between himself and the sharecroppers, Agee saw a communion. Coming face to face with their poverty opened up a new realm, that of "human divinity."

Unable to present his reader with phials of odors and plates of food, Agee had to write. But how could one ever truly or justly describe another person? As the architect, Agee realized that he himself was unavoidably part of the story.

Therefore, Agee put aside almost any distinction between himself and his subjects. He erased nearly every line of detachment. The wretched sharecroppers, Agee saw, in their humanness, were no different from him. In fact, he saw that they were purer and closer to God than he ever could be. "Agee learns in Alabama that it is the naked who are truly clothed and the poor who shall inherit the kingdom" (Ashdown, 1992, 200). They were poor, dirty and ignorant, and yet, in that they existed and that they were human, Agee found that their lives and souls were as much a part of him as his own and of every person that might read his book.

Guilt struck the chord. Agee was moved to investigate human divinity by his guilt for not himself being one of the sharecroppers or some other sufferer. While inspiring him, guilt also crippled him. The intensity of his emotions led him to parade his own nakedness as if in penance for his own fortune, for his money and his education. He confessed his most personal thoughts and feelings --things most people would go great lengths to keep secret. It was his own "piece of the body torn out by the roots" that he put on display. He wanted to show that he, an educated and well-off young man, was not different from the tenant families, that he was equally wretched, even more. As one reviewer wrote, "we learn possibly as much about him (and the things about ourselves which he represents) as we do about the sharecroppers" (Lechlitner).

Agee's fault was that while expressing the sharecropper's wretchedness and humanity's inherently base nature through himself, he cast the tenant farmers themselves as orphaned angels, accenting their dignity, strength and beauty. Not surprisingly, Agee was criticised for sentimentalizing the poor, seeing only goodness in them, and obscuring them with the investigation of his own soul and his self-lacerating confessions (Ashdown, 200). "The author," wrote John C. Cort, "is in much more tragic condition than any exploited sharecropper" (Barson, 77).

Yet Agee exposed himself in hopes of revealing something about the subject that could not be directly observed or told. He hoped that his readers would be able to relate to the poor farmers through his own emotions and in the same way. This passage, for example, is fairly typical. Agee says goodbye to one of the farmer's daughters, one he was particularly fond of:

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, as Agee himself admits, is a messy experiment. The book, he said, cannot "pretend to be anything more advanced than a series of careful but tentative, rudely experimental, and fragmentary renderings of some of the salient aspects of a real experience seen and remembered in its own terms" (246). It is, thus, best understood, or at least appreciated, in terms of its motives. Agee tried to break down all of the traditional boundaries of truth, of what it means to tell a story. He tried to write about the poor in terms of the whole of humanity, and he succeeded. Even readers turned off by Agee's sentimentality cannot help but be moved by vivid images he recreates and, at least on some level, feel some of the pangs Agee felt. "Any even moderately reflective and sensitive person" (234) will, undoubtedly, "more guiltily appreciate the next good meal he eats" (14). As Selden Rodman wrote: "It is because this guilt is shamelessly exposed in its most raw and unattractive shape, that Let Us Now Praise Famous Men will be spat upon --and years hence...read" (Barson, 78).

In many respects, it seems odd to compare Orwell and Agee. While they took some similar steps in their writing, their personalities are polar opposites. Orwell, as his wife described him, was "reserved and undemonstrative, very 'English' in the conventional use of the term although he was not secretive or inhibited" (S. Orwell, 1: xvi). In Homage to Catalonia Orwell "does not divert attention from Barcelona itself to the investigation of his own soul" (Seaton, 145). Though he wrote in the first person, his persona was removed. His emotions are present, but they are not declared (like Agee's). Orwell's self is expressed in his descriptions of what is happening around him. His impressions are written into the story rather than being as distinct as "this is how I feel." For example, Orwell's depiction of his rag tag regiment:

The strength of the passage is Orwell's personal impressions, in which his emotions are implicit. The vivid and sad irony of the mewing child soldiers who might be seen by the enemy as more of a joke than a threat (if an enemy plane had flown overhead, it surely would have mowed them down --kittens or not) could only be revealed through the workings of both a literary mind and personal experience. While Orwell's feelings are written into the work, his physical presence in the book seems mostly to be an explanation of how he saw what he did, to explain his perspective.

Hemingway wrote Green Hills of Africa to "compete with a work of the imagination." The rich world of the novel was his touchstone. Orwell and Agee wrote their nonfiction to compete with what they had actually experienced and seen. Their touchstone was reality, and this is why Agee stressed to his readers in the first chapter of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, "'Above all else: in God's name don't think of it as Art." To label something as Art, thought Agee, was to neutralize it, to banish it from reality to some cloudy shrine:

Of absolute vital importance to Agee's work was that it was real, not a creative interpretation. The author didn't just tap into intense emotion. He felt it. Orwell, too, wrote, "When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.'" He aims to reveal some "lie" or experience for the sake of its importance in the immediate world, not for its artistic possibilities. Among his drives in writing Homage to Catalonia, he wrote:

Art, in and of itself, is nothing. For a writer to sit down with no motive other than to produce art, is not only worthless, but impossible. What makes art is the substance behind or embodied by the medium. The writer begins with a subject, and, as Orwell wrote, "his subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in --at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own" (1:3). There must be something in the subject, perhaps political significance or beauty, that the writer thinks is important enough to put so much effort into revealing. "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness," wrote Orwell. "One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." For Orwell the demon was almost always a political conviction.

The spiritual aspect of Agee's book is comparable to the political elements of Orwell's work. Nonetheless, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men also has a political component. Of course, sympathizing with the poor and depicting them nobly, as Agee did, might be seen as a political gesture in and of itself, surely Orwell would have thought so, but Agee was more explicit about it than that.

For stepping outside of recognizable genres and for abiding by no conventions other than those which telling the truth led them to, Orwell and Agee paid a price. Orwell's story of "Fascism being imposed under the pretence of resisting Fascism" was blackballed by the "so-called anti-Fascist press in England," (1968, 1:281) and Orwell's publisher, with whom he was contracted to write, "refused to publish the book I am doing on Spain before a word of it was written" (1:285).

Likewise, Fortune magazine, which had assigned Agee to the sharecropper story, would not (probably could not) print what Agee turned in. After an expansion of the work in book form, the work was rejected by the publishers who had initially agreed to print it. Once the book was published it frequently got reviews like: "While their book is mainly the story of tenant farmers, the author has included a mass of unrelated, nonsensical material, some parts almost the ravings of a lunatic." (L.R. Etzkorn)

Homage to Catalonia and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men are works of art not despite their concern for the immediate, for politics and other current issues, but because of it. As Orwell wrote, "I could not have done otherwise" (1968, 1:6). Their passion for the present and hope for effecting change led them to the eternal. Homage to Catalonia, thus, is about war as a whole, capturing elements of an experience had by millions throughout history. Agee's work is about the condition of poverty, a similarly ubiquitous experience to war. These works are visions of life and humanity both through living eyes of flesh and the eternal eyes of human spirit.