Shelby Foote - 1916
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Tennessee State University, Tennessee
Read other essays on Shelby Foote written by Tennessee student Kimberly Bryant, and Mississippi students Suzsan Deville and Robert Gardner.
I. Biography
Foote was born into a distinguished Southern family in Greenville, Mississippi, a city recognized as the cultural and literary center of the Delta region. As a young boy, he
moved frequently throughout the region with his parents. When his father died suddenly in 1924, Foote and his mother returned to Greenville, where he later met the writer William
Alexander Percy and become close friends with his nephew Walker Percy. Foote attended the University of North Carolina in 1935. There he wrote his first stories for the school's literary journal Carolina Magazine
but spent most of his time independently reading modern and classical literature. He dropped out of college in 1937 to write his first novel, a work derivative of James Joyce which was rejected by publishers. In 1939 Foote
entered the Mississippi National Guard and was sent to Northern Ireland. After leaving the military base without permission to meet his girlfriend in Belfast, Foote was court martialed
and discharged from the army in 1944. He returned to the United States and worked briefly as a reporter in New York City before enlisting in the United States Marine Corps in 1945.
Following his release that year, he returned to Mississippi, where he worked various jobs and continued to pursue his writing interests. II. Literary Works and Critics
Foote drew upon the draft of his unpublished novel for his first short story, "Flood Burial", which was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1946. Portions of the book were also
reworked for his first published novel, Tournament. Devoted to maintaining a strict writing schedule, Foote entered a highly prolific period between 1946 and 1954, publishing four novels and a short fiction collection. Following the success of his historical novel Shiloh, he was contacted to write a brief history of the Civil War in 1954. The Civil War as the most impressive study of that
conflict yet written, some detractors have questioned the intellectual merit of the work, maintaining that because Foote concentrated on military aspect of the war, he ignored
important political, social, and economic factors. Other critics have focused on the comprehensiveness of Foote's work, while predominantly focused on the battle and the
men who fought them, is so far reaching in scope that all events of the war are incorporated into the narrative. Foote did not intend to advance a thesis in writing The Civil War, but
rather, in the tradition of such great narrative historian. In his historical novel Shiloh, Foote dramatically recounts the circumstances surrounding
the crucial Civil War battle of Shiloh by interweaving a series of monologues spoken by Confederate and Union narrators who convey various perspective on the battle. Shiloh had frequently been compared to Stephen Crane's
The Red Badge of Courage for its graphic fictional treatment of modern warfare, and several critics consider Foote's work a more complex depiction of the multitudinous aspects of the war.
Commentators have recognized Foote's ability to create memorable characterizations of both fictional and historical figures of the battle, frequently citing Nathan Bedford Forest
as the novels's hero. Recounting the moving description of Forest's final efforts to defeat his Northern enemy, Thomas H. Landes wrote: "In this episode Foote transcends the view
of modern war as a mass movement of faceless bodies and pushes the action of the novel toward the level of pure epic, the creation of a mythic hero who embodies the ultimate
virtues valued by society" (Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol.75, page 228-30). III. Literary Works The principle works of Shelby Foote are: Tournament (novel) 1949
IV. Influences Born during the Jazz age when money was abundant, and growing up during the Great Depression when money was not a scarce, there was much for Foote to write about. He
lived in the heart of the South where cotton plantations thrived, where the depression hit hard, and where the prospect and excitement of war always is in the air. Foote was born on
November 17,1916, in Greenville, Mississippi his childhood memories are spread thinly through a series of towns including Jackson, Vicksburg, Pensacola and Mobile. IV. Awards and Honors
Some books that Shelby wrote are Follow Me Down, Love in a Dry Season September, The Civil War, Chickamuga. Foote has won several awards such as Charles Frankel award in
1988, and the St. Louis literary award in 1992. This essay was submitted by a student of Judith Broadbent, a teacher at Tennessee State University in Tennessee.
Follow Me Down (novel) 1950
Love in a Dry Season (novel) 1951
Shiloh (novel) 1952
Jordan County (short stories) 1954
The Civil War: A Narrative. 3 Vols. (history) 1958-74
September September (novel) 1978