James Agee‘s posthumously published novel A Death in the Family was radically altered and reordered by David McDowell — a “misguided” New York editor, according to Michael Lofaro, a professor at The University of Tennessee. A recent Associated Press dispatch by Elizabeth Davis reports that Agee was 99 percent finished with the book before “McDowell took pieces of the novel and arranged them in a way he thought would appeal to the 1950s audience.” The reordering got critical acclaim — Agee’s novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1958, making him the first author to receive the award posthumously. Lofaro, who recently edited a scholarly volume of Agee’s unfinished poems, essays, and other work — including the notebooks that Agee kept while working on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, plans to reset the novel according to Agee’s original intentions, organizing the novel chronologically and shortening the novel’s long chapters — Agee planned 44 short chapters; the current edition has only 20. Agee’s oldest daughter Deedee Agee, supports the project, saying that “It’s kind of interesting to have the two [editions] stand on their own and for people to be able to compare them.” The new edition will be part of the 10 volume The Works of James Agee, which will be published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2007.