The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy - Softcover

Foote, Shelby

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393317684 ISBN 13: 9780393317688

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998

Synopsis

“A fascinating window into a lifelong friendship and the writing life.” ―Kirkus Reviews

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. Walker Percy, the highly regarded author of The Moviegoer, wrote six novels, two volumes of philosophical writings, and numerous essays. Shelby Foote met with early success as a novelist, but his reputation today rests more upon his massive three-volume narrative history of the Civil War, and his role as commentator in Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War. The correspondence between Percy and Foote traces their lives from the beginning of their respective careers, when they were grappling fiercely and openly with their ambitions, artistic doubts, and personal problems. Although they discuss such serious matters as the death of Foote's mother and Percy's battle with cancer, their letters are full of sly humor and good-natured ribbing. Jay Tolson has selected, edited, and annotated the letters of these two remarkable writers to shed light on their relationship and their literary careers. Includes an eight-page insert with photographs of the writers chronicling their friendship.

About this title

Review:

Mississippi has produced some of the nation's finest literary voices, includingShelby Foote and Walker Percy. Foote spent much of his career reconstructing the Civil War in a 1.6 million-word trilogy (he was the smooth-drawling storyteller in Kenneth Burns's television series on the conflict). Percy was a philosophical novelist whose work includes The Moviegoer and The Thanatos Syndrome. Not only were the two friends, but they corresponded for years, leaving behind a series of letters unearthed by biographer Jay Tolson. Tolson, the author of an exhaustive book on Percy, Pilgrim in the Ruins, shows that, unlike other Southern writers such as William Faulkner, Foote and Percy always acted as quite decent fellows, Southerners with manners and brains.

About the Author:

Jay Tolson is the author of the biography Pilgrim in the Ruins: A Life of Walker Percy and is the editor of the Wilson Quarterly. He lives in Arlington, Virginia.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0393317684
• ISBN 13: 9780393317688
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324
• Editor: Tolson Jay