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

[RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>]

Hello fellow Percy folks,

There is a fascinating hour-long CSPAN interview of Shelby Foote on YouTube that was conducted not long after the publication of The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, edited by Jay Tolson, in 1997. Below is a brief description of the book. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5ToRmgT-R4

How I love that lovely Southern accent Shelby Foote has! The documentary reminds me of the first experience of reading their letters. Reading their responses to each other through the years, the mix of topics they engaged in, the love and respect they had for each other, was such a privilege. 

I think of how Will Barrett wandered to Civil War battlegrounds while in his fugues, and later how he used a cave previously used by the Confederate army for his grand experiment in The Second Coming. Certainly all Southerners of their time were haunted by that war, but I wonder to what degree Percy’s references to the Civil War in his novels and essays reflect discussions they had together.

Now that I live in Virginia, I’m surrounded by the vestiges of that war, though of course many statues have come down. I’ve traveled often to Gettysburg, and after my first trip there, I read Foote’s section on Gettysburg aloud to my family. Of all the Civil War history I’ve read, Foote is my go to, perhaps a bit out of affection but more out of respect for the stellar scholarship he did. 

I wonder if anyone else has any comments about their letters in the collection or about Foote’s Civil War masterpiece or even about the Ken Burns series on the Civil War, which features Foote.

Best wishes,

Rhonda

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The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (W.W. Norton, 1997)

In the late 1940s, Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, friends since their teenage years in Greenville, Mississippi, began a correspondence that would last until Percy’s death in 1990. Their letters provide a rich record of an enduring literary and personal friendship. Walker Percy, winner of the National Book Award, wrote six novels and two volumes of philosophical writing. Shelby Foote’s reputation rests less on his five works of fiction than his massive three-volume narrative history of the Civil War that he started in the early 1950s and completed in 1974. In their letters Percy and Foote openly discuss their ambitions, artistic doubts, and personal problems with intelligence, good-natured ribbing, and a large dose of self-mockery. https://documentarystudies.duke.edu/books/correspondence-shelby-foote-and-walker-percy