Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:

For a biographer Shelby Foote is a famously reluctant subject. In writing this biography, however, C. Stuart Chapman gained valuable access through interviews and shared correspondence, an advantage Foote rarely has granted to others.

Born into Mississippi Delta gentry in 1916, Foote has engaged in a lifelong struggle with the realities behind his persona, the classic image of the southern gentleman. His polished civil graces mask a conflict deep within. Foote's beloved South is a changing region, and even progressive change, of which Foote approves, can be unsettling. In letters and interviews, and in his writings, he often waxes nostalgic as he grapples to recover the grace of an earlier time, particularly the era of the Civil War. Indeed, Chapman reveals that the whole of Foote's novels and historical narratives serves as a refuge from deeply ambiguous feelings. As Foote has struggled to understand the radical shifts brought to his native land by modernization and the region's integration into the nation, his personal history has been clouded by ideological conflict.

This biography shows him pining for aristocratic, antebellum culture while rejecting the practices that made possible the injustices of that era. Privately and vehemently, Foote opposed George C. Wallace's and Ross Barnett's untenable segregationist stance. Yet publicly during the 1960s and '70s he skirted the explosive race issue.

Foote is best known for his dazzling and definitive The Civil War: A Narrative. Written from 1954 to 1974, the three-volume opus was published during years when the South exploded with racial and political tensions and was forever changed. This biography recognizes that nowhere are Foote's personal conflicts, ambivalence, and outright contradictions more on display than in his fiction. Although Love in a Dry Season, Jordan County, and September, September are set in the contemporary South, they reach no firm social resolutions. Instead they entertain, dramatize, and come to grips with the social, gender, and racial barriers of the southern life he experienced.

While showing how Foote's guarded embrace of the South's past and present characterizes his identity as a thinker, a historian, and a writer of fiction, Chapman discloses Foote's reluctance to address burning contemporary issues and his veiled desire to recall more gracious times.

C. Stuart Chapman is a Massachusetts State House aide living in Jamaica Plain. His work has been published in the Clarksdale Press-Register, Memphis Business Journal, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Jamaica Plain Gazette, Modern Fiction Studies, and other publications.

Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life by C. Stuart Chapman

From reader reviews:

Jennifer Garrison:

Reading a guide can be one of a lot of task that everyone in the world really likes. Do you like reading book therefore. There are a lot of reasons why people enjoy it. First reading a book will give you a lot of new info. When you read a book you will get new information because book is one of various ways to share the information or even their idea. Second, reading a book will make a person more imaginative. When you examining a book especially fictional book the author will bring someone to imagine the story how the character types do it anything. Third, you could share your knowledge to some others. When you read this Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life, you are able to tells your family, friends and also soon about yours book. Your knowledge can inspire the others, make them reading a e-book.

Ralph Ainsworth:

The publication untitled Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life is the reserve that recommended to you to learn. You can see the quality of the reserve content that will be shown to anyone. The language that writer use to explained their way of doing something is easily to understand. The copy writer was did a lot of exploration when write the book, therefore the information that they share for you is absolutely accurate. You also might get the e-book of Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life from the publisher to make you much more enjoy free time.

Maria Kim:

Often the book Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life has a lot of knowledge on it. So when you read this book you can get a lot of profit. The book was written by the very famous author. Tom makes some research before write this book. This specific book very easy to read you will get the point easily after scanning this book.

Ann Walsh:

Book is one of source of understanding. We can add our understanding from it. Not only for students but in addition native or citizen have to have book to know the up-date information of year to help year. As we know those publications have many advantages. Beside we all add our knowledge, may also bring us to around the world. From the book Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life we can consider more advantage. Don't that you be creative people? To get creative person must love to read a book. Simply choose the best book that suited with your aim. Don't always be doubt to change your life at this book Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life. You can more desirable than now.