Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

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Associated Press / 29 June 2005

Civil War historian Shelby Foote dies

By Woody Baird

Memphis, Tenn. - With his pointy gray beard, soft Southern accent and
gentlemanly carriage, Shelby Foote seemed to have stepped straight out
of a Mathew Brady photograph.

It was that style, coupled with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Civil
War, that turned him into a national celebrity after he lent his
observations on the conflict for Ken Burns' 1990 "Civil War" series.

"We had planned to film 30 or 40 historians. Shelby Foote was in it 89
times or something like that. The next closest was seven or eight times,"
Burns said.

Foote, who wrote a three-volume history of the Civil War and six novels
before the Burns documentary, was remembered Tuesday as a gifted
storyteller. He died Monday night at 88.

"He had a gift for presenting vivid portraits of personalities, from
privates in the ranks to generals and politicians. And he had a gift for
character, for the apt quotation, for the dramatic event, for the story
behind the story," said James M. McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
Civil War historian. "He could also write a crackling good narrative of a
campaign or a battle."

Though a native Southerner, Foote did not favor the South in his history
or novels and was not counted among those Southern historians who
regard the Civil War as the great Lost Cause.

He publicly criticized segregationist politicians and abruptly abandoned
a move to the Alabama coast in the 1960s because of the racist attitudes
he found there.

"He was a Southerner of great intellect who took up the issue of the
Civil War as a writer with huge sanity and sympathy," said Pulitzer
Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, a friend and fellow Mississippi
native.

Early in his career, Foote took up the habit of writing by hand with an
old-fashioned dipped pen, and he continued that practice throughout his
life. Foote said writing by hand helped him slow down to a manageable
pace and was more personal than using a typewriter.

Foote was born Nov. 7, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., a small Delta town
with a literary bent. Walker Percy was a boyhood and lifelong friend,
and Foote, as a young man, served as a "jackleg reporter" for the
crusading editor Hodding Carter on The Delta Star. As a young man,
Foote got to know William Faulkner.

Foote attended the University of North Carolina for two years and served
in World War II, though he never saw combat.

After the war, he went back to Greenville to write commercials for a
radio station. "Then I sold my first story to the Saturday Evening Post. I
quit my job and haven't had another one since," he said.

His first novel, "Tournament," was started before the war and published
in 1949. Then came "Follow Me Down" in 1950, "Love in a Dry
Season" in 1951, "Shiloh" in 1952 and "Jordan County" in 1954.

That same year, Random House asked him to write a single-volume
history of the Civil War. He took the job, but it grew into a
three-volume, 3,000-page project finally finished in 1974.

In 1999, the Modern Library ranked that work, "The Civil War: A
Narrative," as No. 15 on its list of the century's 100 best
English-language works of nonfiction.

"Narrative history is the kind that comes closest to telling the truth. You
can never get to the truth, but that's your goal," Foote once said.

His final novel, "September, September," published in 1978, tells the
story of an ignorant white couple who kidnap the son of a rich black
businessman in the 1950s. It became the basis for a TV move starring
fellow Memphis resident Cybill Shepherd.

After Burns' 11-hour PBS series, Foote would say that being a celebrity
made him uneasy, and he worried it might detract from the seriousness
of his work.

"This Civil War stuff is driving me crazy. I thought I had my discharge,"
he told the AP in 1990. "People keep wanting me to come somewhere
and speak and I enjoy it. But I disapprove of it."

In addition to his wife, Gwyn, he is survived by a daughter, Margaret
Shelby, and a son, Huger Lee. A graveside service is planned in
Memphis on Thursday.

ON THE NET

PBS: http://www.pbs.org/civilwar

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