Шелби Фоут: Жизнь и творчество американского историка и писателя

American writer, historian and journalist (1916–2005)

Shelby Dade Foote Jr. (November 17, 1916 – June 27, 2005) was an American writer, historian and journalist. Although he primarily viewed himself as a novelist, he is now best known for his authorship of The Civil War: A Narrative, a three volume history of the American Civil War. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the Old South to the Civil Rights era of the New South. Foote was little known to the general public until his appearance in Ken Burns's PBS documentary The Civil War in 1990, where he introduced a generation of Americans to a war that he believed was "central to all our lives". Foote did all his writing by hand with a nib pen, later transcribing the result into a typewritten copy. While Foote's work was mostly well received during his lifetime, it has been criticized by professional historians and academics in the 21st century. His maternal grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna. Foote was raised in his father's and maternal grandmother's Episcopal faith, though he attended synagogue each Saturday with his mother until the age of eleven. As his father advanced through the executive ranks of Armour and Company, the family lived in Greenville, Jackson, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, as well as Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama. Foote's father died in Mobile when Foote was five years old; he and his mother moved back to Greenville to live with her sister's family. Foote was an only child, and his mother never remarried. When Foote was 15 years old, he began what would become lifelong friendships with Walker Percy and his brothers LeRoy and Phinizy Percy who'd just moved into Greenville to live with their uncle – attorney, poet, and novelist William Alexander Percy – after the death of their parents. Foote began a lifelong fraternal and literary relationship with Walker; each had great influence on the other's writing. Other influences on Foote's writing were Tacitus, Thucydides, Gibbon and Proust. Foote would later recall that Greenville fitted with Southern stereotypes "in some fairly superficial ways and departed from them in the most important ways", noting that "There was never a lynching in Greenville; it never got swept off its feet that way. The Ku Klux Klan never made any headway, at a time when it was making headway almost everywhere else." Despite Foote's citation, Greenville was the site of at least one lynching some 30 years before Foote's time there, when in 1903, John Dennis, a black man, was accused of raping a white woman and was lynched by some white citizens of Greenville. According to EJI, at least 13 lynchings took place in Washington County, of which Greenville is the county seat, between 1877 and 1950. Foote edited The Pica, the student newspaper of Greenville High School, and frequently used the paper to lampoon the school's principal. In 1935, Foote applied to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, hoping to join with the older Percy boys, but was initially denied admission because of an unfavorable recommendation from his high school principal. He presented himself for admission anyway, and as result of a round of admissions tests, he was accepted. In 1940, Foote joined the Mississippi National Guard and was commissioned as captain of artillery. After being transferred from one stateside base to another, his battalion was deployed to Northern Ireland in 1943. The following year, Foote was charged with falsifying a government document relating to the check in of a motor pool vehicle he had borrowed to visit a girlfriend in Belfast, Teresa Lavery—later his first wife—who lived two miles beyond the official military limits. He was court martialed and dismissed from the army. Foote and Lavery divorced while she was living with his mother in New Orleans, after he sent her to the U. S. on a warship convoy. After the war, Lavery married Kermit Beahan, the Nagasaki atomic bomb bombardier, in Roswell, New Mexico. Foote came back to the United States and took a job with the Associated Press in New York City. Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative, was published in 1954 and is a collection of novellas, short stories, and sketches from Foote's mythical Mississippi county. Although he was not one of America's best known fiction writers, Foote was admired by his peers—among them the aforementioned Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, and his literary hero William Faulkner, who once told a University of Virginia class that Foote "shows promise, if he'll just stop trying to write Faulkner, and will write some Shelby Foote." He did not footnote his secondary sources nor use the archives but instead mined the primary sources in the 128 volume Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Foote deliberately avoided the use of footnotes, arguing that "they would detract from the book's narrative quality by intermittently shattering the illusion that the observer is not so much reading a book as sharing an experience". He argued that footnotes would have "totally shattered what I was doing. I didn't want people glancing down at the bottom of the page every other sentence". Foote concluded that most historians are "so concerned with finding out what happened that they make the enormous mistake of equating facts with truth you can't get the truth from facts. The truth is the way you feel about it". Foote worked for several weeks on an outline and decided that his plan couldn't be done to Cerf's specifications. He requested that the project be expanded to three volumes of 500,000 to 600,000 words each, and he estimated that the entire project would be done in nine years. He developed new respect for such disparate figures as Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Patrick Cleburne, Edwin Stanton and Jefferson Davis. By contrast, he grew to dislike such figures as Phil Sheridan and Joe Johnston. He has been described as writing "from a white Southern perspective, perhaps even with a certain bias": Radical Republicans are portrayed negatively in his work, and the name Frederick Douglass is absent from every volume of his Narrative. While The Civil War generated generally favorable reviews for its literary merits, Foote's efforts received pointed and strong criticisms from professional historians and scholars of slavery. Scholars criticized Foote for not including footnotes and for neglecting subjects such as economics and politics of the Civil War era, as well as the role of slavery and the participation of African Americans more generally. Indeed, Historian John F. Marszalek, reviewing volume 3, praised Foote's grasp on military history: "Twenty years of dedicated labor have resulted in a literary masterpiece which places Shelby Foote among those very few historians who are authors of major syntheses this history will long stand with the volumes of Bruce Catton as the final word on the military history of the Civil War." Foote relied extensively on the work of Hudson Strode, whose sympathy for Lost Cause claims resulted in a portrait of Jefferson Davis as a tragic hero without many of the flaws attributed to him by other historians." In a 1997 interview with Donald Faulkner and William Kennedy, Foote stated that he would have fought for the Confederacy, and, "What's more, I would fight for the Confederacy today if the circumstances were similar. There's a great deal of misunderstanding about the Confederacy, the Confederate flag, slavery, the whole thing. The political correctness of today is no way to look at the middle of the 19th century. The Confederates fought for some substantially good things. States' rights is not just a theoretical excuse for oppressing people. You have to understand that the raggedy Confederate soldier who owned no slaves and probably couldn't even read the Constitution, let alone understand it, when he was captured by Union soldiers and asked, 'What are you fighting for?' replied, 'I'm fighting because you're down here.' So I certainly would have fought to keep people from invading my native state." Foote remained adamant that slavery was not the only cause of the Civil War, stating in 2001 that "no soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves—they were fighting for other reasons entirely in their minds." Foote had a picture of Forrest hanging on his wall, and believed that "he's an enormously attractive, outgoing man once you get to know him and once you get to know more facts". Foote was staunchly anti slavery, and believed that emancipation alone was insufficient to address historical wrongs done to African Americans: "The institution of slavery is a stain on this nation's soul that will never be cleansed. It is just as wrong as wrong can be, a huge sin, and it is on our soul. There's a second sin that's almost as great and that's emancipation . There should have been a huge program for schools. There should have been all kinds of employment provided for them. Not modern welfare, you can't expect that in the middle of the nineteenth century, but there should have been some earnest effort to prepare these people for citizenship. They were not prepared, and operated under horrible disadvantages once the army was withdrawn, and some of the consequences are very much with us today." Foote condemned the Freedmen's Bureau, which "did, perhaps, some good work, but it was mostly a joke, corrupt in all kinds of ways." Foote maintained that "the French Maquis did far worse things than the Ku Klux Klan ever did—who never blew up trains or burnt bridges or anything else," and that the First Klan "didn't even have lynchings." Foote saw slavery as a cause of the Civil War, commenting that "the people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say it had everything to do with the war." Furthermore, Foote also argued that slavery was "certainly doomed to extinction" but was used "almost as a propaganda item," and that "those who wanted to exploit it could grab onto it." Foote was an outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, arguing in 1968 that "the main problem facing the white, upper class South is to decide whether or not the negro is a man if he is a man, as of course he is, then the negro is entitled to the respect an honorable man will automatically feel to an equal." Foote continued to develop his perception of the travesties that befell blacks in Southern life, a culture that he would later call "perhaps the most racist society in the United States." In his earlier life, Foote had claimed to know more about the life of African Americans in the South than James Baldwin: "I told some interviewer I knew a hell of a lot more about negroes than Baldwin even began to know." In 1986, Foote strongly denounced the Memphis chapter of the NAACP in their campaign for the removal of the Nathan Bedford Forrest Monument in Memphis, accusing them of anti white prejudice: "the day that black people admire Forrest as much as I do is the day when they will be free and equal, for they will have gotten prejudice out of their minds as we whites are trying to get it out of ours." Foote argued in favor of "the Confederate flag flying anywhere anybody wants to fly it at any time. If they have a referendum in a state that says 'Take the flag down off the state capitol,' I think they ought to take the flag down. But the flag to me represents many noble things." Speaking in 1989, Foote stated that "this black separatist movement is a bunch of junk", believing that African Americans should model themselves on Jews, who Foote believed had a talent for making money. Foote, however, believed "the odds against" black people were to be "too great" for them to succeed in the US, as a result of "having a different color skin". Foote maintained that the KKK of the 1920s was "mostly anti Catholic, incidentally anti Semitic and really was not much concerned about the Negro". Foote believed that his experience and knowledge of the South meant he understood African American historical figures such as Nat Turner better than Northern African American intellectuals, stating in the 1970s that "I think that I am closer to Nat Turner than James Baldwin is. I'm talking about, I am personally more like Nat Turner than James Baldwin is, even though they are both Negroes. I consider somebody out of Harlem to be very different from someone out of Tidewater Virginia". By the 1970s, Foote believed that a "Jewish intellectual movement" had come to dominate American literature. In the late 1980s, Ken Burns had assembled a group of consultants to interview for his Civil War documentary. Foote was not in this initial group, though Burns had Foote's trilogy on his reading list. A phone call from Robert Penn Warren prompted Burns to contact Foote. Burns and crew traveled to Memphis in 1986 to film an interview with Foote in the anteroom of his study. In November 1986, Foote figured prominently at a meeting of dozens of consultants gathered to critique Burns' script. Burns interviewed Foote on camera in Memphis and Vicksburg in 1987. That same year, he became a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The Civil War historian Judkin Browning has noted that Foote's outspoken praise of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the documentary ensured "Lost Causers raised their beer mugs in salute while historians hurled their lagers at their televisions." Foote has been further criticized for repeating "plainly wrong" Lost Cause tropes in his commentary, particularly over the issue of apparently "overwhelming" Northern industrial advantage and his downplaying of the role of slavery in causing the Civil War. Foote professed to be a reluctant celebrity. When The Civil War was first broadcast, his telephone number was publicly listed and he received many phone calls from people who had seen him on television. Foote never unlisted his number, and the volume of calls increased each time the series re aired. In 1992, Foote received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina. In the early 1990s, Foote was interviewed by journalist Tony Horwitz for the project on American memory of the Civil War which Horwitz eventually published as Confederates in the Attic (1998). Foote was also a member of The Modern Library's editorial board for the re launch of the series in the mid 1990s, this series published two books excerpted from his Civil War narrative. Foote also contributed a long introduction to their edition of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, giving a narrative biography of the author. He also received the 1992 St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. Foote was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994. Also in 1994, Foote joined Protect Historic America and was instrumental in opposing a Disney theme park near battlefield sites in Virginia. Foote emphasized that his loyalties during the 1860s would have been to Southerners: "I’d be with my people, right or wrong." Foote also argued that freedmen had led to the failure of Reconstruction and that the Confederate flag represented "law, honour, love of country." On September 2, 2001, Shelby Foote was the focus of the C SPAN television program In Depth. In a 3 hour interview, conducted by C SPAN founder Brian Lamb, Foote shows off the library of his home, working room, and writing desk, and details the writing of his books as well as taking on air calls and emails. Foote campaigned in the 2001 referendum on the Flag of Mississippi, arguing against a proposal which would have replaced the Confederate battle flag with a blue canton with 20 stars. Foote rejected the Confederate flag's association with white supremacy and argued "I’m for the Confederate flag always and forever. Many among the finest people this country has ever produced died in that war. To take it and call it a symbol of evil is a misrepresentation." In 2003, Foote received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The Helmerich Award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust. Foote died at Baptist Hospital in Memphis on June 27, 2005, aged 88. He had had a heart attack after a recent pulmonary embolism. He was interred in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis. His grave is beside the family plot of General Forrest.

Many reviews of The Civil War: A Narrative praised its style. However, the academic reviewers often complained about the absence of footnotes, and Foote's deliberate refusal to cover social, economic, and racial themes. Others, like Southern historian C. Vann Woodward, argued that Foote's work was an acceptable "narrative history," which he asserted that "nonprofessionals have all but taken over." The gradual withering of the narrative impulse in favor of the analytical urge among professional academic historians has resulted in a virtual abdication of the oldest and most honored role of the historian, that of storyteller. Having abdicated the professional is in a poor position to patronize amateurs who fulfill the needed function he has abandoned. Woodward, who wrote a best selling naval history of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, added that, "In no field is the abdication of the professionals more evident than in military history, the strictly martial, guns and battle aspect of war, the most essential aspect." In 1993, Richard N. Current argued that Foote too often depended on a single, unsupported source for lifelike details, but "probably is as accurate as most historians Foote's monumental narrative most likely will continue to be read and remembered as a classic of its kind." In a 2011 commentary, Ta Nehisi Coates concluded that Foote was not guilty of "neo Confederate apologia." However, Foote "gave twenty years of his life, and three volumes of important and significant words to the Civil War, but he could never see himself in the slave. He could not get that the promise of free bread can not cope with the promise of free hands. Shelby Foote wrote The Civil War, but he never understood it. Understanding the Civil War was a luxury his whiteness could ill afford." In 2013, the Sons of Confederate Veterans used Foote's presentation of Nathan Bedford Forrest as a "humane slave holder" to protest against the removal of his statue in Memphis. Foote had argued that Forrest "avoided splitting up families or selling [slaves] to cruel plantation owners." In 2017, the conservative writer Bill Kauffman, writing in The American Conservative, argued for a revival of Foote's sympathetic portrayal of the South. In response to the ensuing controversy, the White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders cited the work of Foote in defense of Kelly: "I do know that many historians, including Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' famous Civil War documentary, agreed that a failure to compromise was a cause of the Civil War." On October 18, 2019, a Mississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed in Greenville, Mississippi, to honor the literary and historical contributions of Shelby Foote. Foote's distinctive Southern accent was the model for Daniel Craig's character in the 2019 film Knives Out.

The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958)
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian (1963)
The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol 3: Red River to Appomattox (1974)

Foote edited a modern edition of Chickamauga And Other Civil War Stories (previously published as The Night Before Chancellorsville And Other Civil War Stories), an anthology of Civil War stories by various authors. Foote contributed a lengthy introduction to the 1993 Modern Library edition of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (which was published along with "The Veteran", a short story that features the hero of the larger work at the end of his life). In this introduction, Foote recounts the biography of Crane in the same narrative style as Foote's Civil War work. Foote collaborated with his wife's cousin, photographer Nell Dickerson, to produce the book Gone: A Photographic Plea for Preservation. Dickerson used Foote's story "Pillar of Fire", from his 1954 novel Jordan County: A Landscape in Narrative, as the text to illustrate her photographs of southern antebellum buildings in ruins.

Carter, William C., ed. Conversations with Shelby Foote, (UP of Mississippi, 1989)
Tolson, Jay, ed. The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy (W. W. Norton Company, 1997). online review