Does Anyone Know Famous Men That Knit?

Does anyone know from what part in Let us Now praise famous men this comes from?

• …how am I to speak of you as ‘tenant’ ‘farmers,’ as ‘representatives’ or your ‘class,’ as social integers in a criminal economy, or as individuals, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, and as my friends and as I ‘know’ you? Granted—more, insisted upon—that it is in all these particularities that each of you is that which he is; that particularities, and matters ordinary and obvious, are exactly themselves beyond designation of words, are the members of your sum total most obligatory to human searching of perception; nonetheless to name these things and fail to yield their stature, their meaning, their power of hurt, seems impious, seems criminal, seems impudent, seems traitorous in the deepest: and to do less badly seems impossible: yet in withholdings of specification I could betray you still worse.

• Answer:

  CAVEAT: There have been many editions and printings of James Agee's and Walker Evans' "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." I do not know which of the editions you are using; however, I believe that I can assist you. The edition that I am using and from which my answer is taken is a paperback edition published by Mariner Books in August, 2001. ANSWER: In the edition that I am using, the quote about which you ask is found in the section of the book titled "Colon." In that section, the quote appears on PAGES 88 and 89. The quote is part of a lengthy paragraph: the fourth full paragraph of "Colon"; and the quote consists of the closing 12 lines of that paragraph. On PAGE 88, the final 10 lines on the page read: "how am I to speak of you as ‘tenant’ ‘farmers,’ as ‘representatives’ or your ‘class,’ as social integers in a criminal economy, or as individuals, fathers, wives, sons, daughters, and as my friends and as I ‘know’ you? Granted —more, insisted upon—that it is in all these particularities that each of you is that which he is; that particularities, and matters ordinary and obvious, are exactly themselves beyond designation of words, are the members of your sum total most obligatory to human searching of per- ception; nonetheless to name these things and fail to yield their stature, [their] meaning, [their] power of hurt, seems impious, seems criminal, seems impu- dent, seems traitorous in the deepest: and to do less badly seems impos- On PAGE 89, the first two lines on the page end the quotation as follows: sible: yet in withholdings of specification I could betray you still worse." NOTE: Above, in the material from PAGE 88, you will see two instances in which I have placed the word "their" in brackets. This is to signal that these two words appear in the quotation as you have copied it; but that they do not appear in the text of the quotation in the edition that I am using. Good luck!