[Dog]

Rest in Peace sir..

[Thorin]

A great interview. Thanks for posting.

[Uncle Fud]

When television first came on in the early ’50s during the Eisenhower campaign, I said, “Now we can now look the creature in the face while he’s lying to us, and we’re going to be able to tell.” And I was wrong as I could be.

Nailed it.

[Bar-Face]

“I tell them to their faces that they are the scum who have degraded the Confederate flag, converted it from a symbol of honor into a banner of shame, covered it with obscenities like a roadhouse men’s room wall.”

Mr. Foote nailed it! When good people allowed their battle flag to be used by scum, they lost it forever. We woulda, shoulda, coulda, but we didna, so now the battle flag is as hated as the swastika.

[A Jovial Cad]

When I walked through the door this afternoon the first thing my wife said to me was "Shelby Foote died last night." I hadn't heard.

I didn't know the man personally, of course, but I admired both his outstanding body of work in the three-volume account of our saddest war and the dignity he brought to the Ken Burn's documentary which made him famous.

RIP, Mr. Foote. Your wise voice will be missed.

[Plymouth Sentinel]

Valin, thanks for the post.

RIP Shelby Foote.

I lost a great friend last week, also born in 1916, a man of massive learning. Much of my friend's contribution was tenebrae service, among the shadows. But like Foote, his was a life spent writing (40 books, hundreds and hundreds of articles). As executor, I had to take away all his books earlier today, and it really flattened me.

But I am grateful for Foote's (and my friend's) modesty, the absence of self-service and self-congratulation. After thousands of research hours, and hundreds of discussion hours with my friend, I consider this the ultimate moral (artistic) code: that what you do as an artist is on behalf of and in furtherance of humanity. It must be life affiriming. If not, it has no place except in the shadow of great art. Our commercial arts, athletic arts, collaborative arts, filmic and television arts are largely of this caste, having no place except in the shadow of great art.

My one issue with Foote's comments: "American poetry, as far as I can see, is as dead as a doornail."

-Not just yet.

[leadpenny]

http://www.booktv.org/Feature/index.asp?segID=1679&schedID=374

Book TV Programs
A Weekly Look at Selected Book TV Programs

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On Saturday, July 2 at 4:00 pm

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Re-air of the 2001 program In Depth: Shelby Foote
Watch

Description: In September 2001, Book TV traveled to Shelby Foote's home in Memphis, Tennessee. This three hour program looks at Mr. Foote's complete body of work. The Civil War historian died Monday, June 27th, at age 88.

Author Bio: Shelby Foote was born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1916. He attended the University of North Carolina from 1935 to 1937 where he frequently contributed to the school literary magazine Carolina. Mr. Foote’s first novel, "Tournament," was published in 1949. It was followed quickly by four other works of fiction: "Follow Me Down (1950)," "Love in a Dry Season (1951)," "Shiloh (1952)", and "Jordan County (1954)". The success of "Shiloh" prompted Random House publisher Bennett Cerf to ask Mr. Foote to write a short history of the Civil War to be published for the hundredth anniversary of the conflict. He eventually worked on this three-volume history of the war for twenty years, finally completing it in 1974.The trilogy includes "Fort Sumter to Perryville," published in 1958, "Fredericksburg to Meridian" published in 1963, and finally "Red River to Appomattox," published in 1974. In 1977 Shelby Foote published "September, September," a novel about events in the south in 1957. In the early 1990s, Shelby Foote participated in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary of the Civil War. In 1998, Jay Tolson edited and published "The Correspondence of Shelby Foote & Walker Percy," documenting Foote's sixty year friendship with southern novelist Walker Percy through the letters they exchanged. Also in 1998, Shelby Foote wrote a 10,000 word introduction to a new Modern Library edition of Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of Courage", the 19th century classic Civil War novel. Mr. Foote has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and a lecturer at the University of Virginia and Memphis State. At the time of his death June 27th, Shelby Foote lived in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife Gwen Rapier.

Publisher: Random House 299 Park Avenue New York, NY 10171

[Petronski]

I can no longer engage in any conversation about the Confederate flag, because you’ve got the black fanatics on one end and redneck yahoos on the other. --Shelby Foote

What can I say? The man was wise. ;O)