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From the Writer’s Almanac 11/17/2013**

It’s the birthday of American novelist and historian Shelby Foote, born in Greenville, Mississippi (1916). He was a successful novelist when, in 1952, he accepted the suggestion of his publisher to write a short history of the Civil War to complement his novel Shiloh (1952). Foote is best known for his trilogy, The Civil War: A Narrative.

He grew up on the Mississippi-Yazoo Delta, once a great swamp filled with alligators and water moccasin snakes. As a teenager, Foote sold poems to magazines for 50 cents apiece. He was editor of the high school paper and liked to give the principal a hard time. When Foote applied to attend college at Chapel Hill, the principal wrote a letter saying not to let Foote into their school under any circumstances. Foote got in his car and drove to North Carolina to register anyway and they let him in. He was a literary prodigy there along with his classmate Walker Percy, who was his best friend for 60 years.

When Foote was 19 years old, he and Walker Percy were planning to drive from Foote’s hometown, Greenville, Mississippi, through William Faulkner’s hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. Foote suggested they stop in Oxford and try to meet him. Percy waited in the car while Foote went up the cedar tree-lined walkway to Faulkner’s house. He was greeted in the yard by three hounds, two fox terriers, and a Dalmatian. Soon, a small man, barefoot and wearing just a pair of shorts, appeared and asked Foote what he wanted. “Could you tell me where to find a copy of Marble Faun, Mr. Faulkner?” Foote asked. Faulkner was gruff and told him to contact his agent. Faulkner later befriended Foote, who walked Faulkner around the Civil War battlefields of Shiloh.

Foote once told Faulkner on one of their outings: “You know, I have every right to be a better writer than you. Your literary idols were Joseph Conrad and Sherwood Anderson. Mine are Marcel Proust and you. My writers are better than yours.”

Foote spent the last 25 years of his life working on an epic novel about Mississippi called Two Gates to the City. It remained unfinished when he died in 2006.

https://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php%3Fdate=2013%252F11%252F17.html

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