James Agee's reputation as a novelist

I don't know what's kept me from reading James Agee's novel A Death in the Family (1957 - 2 years posthumous); in fact, I did start to read it about a thousand years ago, as my parents had a copy and I picked it up in h.s or maybe younger and could not make sense of it. I was too young and inexperienced a reader, as it's not the easiest book to read even today, in part because the editors made some weird decisions about unfinished sections that Agee left on the table on his death. The novel begins with a long chapter - from among the unfinished fragments - that paints a picture of the small city - Knoxville, Tenn. - in which and when (1915) the novel is set: a working-class neighborhood, all the dads watering their lawns on a summer evening, etc. It's a nice piece but hard to see where it's headed and I'm not sure it even belongs in the novel except perhaps as a post-script/supplement. After that chapter the novel begins its due course, focusing on a young (6-8 year old) boy (obviously based on Agee) whos father gets a call in the middle of the night and is summoned to what he believes may be the deathbed of his father (the boy's grandfather) in a rural town in north Tennessee. The novel is most effective as a period piece: the description of the town of Knoxville in the days of few automobiles, all-night diners, difficult traveling conditions (the father's crossing a river by one-man ferry is a terrific scene for the deep past and a long-gone way of life), an assumption of racial prejudice and segregation (a subtext, not yet developed in the novel - about 1/3 through). The novel reminds me of other great Southern period pieces: Carson McCullers's most of all, but also William Styron, and perhaps Peter Taylor. With its forays into what was then experimental form, though, it feels a little quaint: the aforementioned opening segment is an homage Thomas Wolfe, a writer whose reputation has steadily declined. Agee was a multi-talented writer, probably best known today as the first great American film critic and as one of the first documentary journalist (for his landmark book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men). Death in the Family remains a remarkable one-off, though we can't help but think he would be better known as a novelist had he lived to write more fiction.