Civil War author, Shelby Foote - Stars in Their Courses [From 1994 - prescient forecast of our Cancel Culture at 44:40]

CSPAN2 - Book TV ^ | 07/26/1994 | Shelby Foote & Brian Lamb

[SES1066]

If I looked up 'GRAVITAS' in the dictionary, Shelby Foote's picture and voice should be there. Anyway, while I just happened to enjoy this YouTube replay of a Brian Lamb GENUINE interview (as opposed to what we see these days), up pops a PROPHETIC statement by Mr Foote on the acceptance of history versus the desire to 'cancel' history.

[SES1066]

Twenty eight year old forecast of our Cancel Culture! If that is not prescient, I do not know what that word means then! For "the blacks to not want to be reminded of slavery" and what it does to history.

FYI: the Illinois Senator he references in the Cancel-Culture attack on the Richmond (VA) chapter of the 'United Daughters of the Confederacy' was Carolyn Mosley Braun.

[Iceclimber58]

My all time favorite author.
Could listen to the man talk all day.

[Jamestown1630]

Brian Lamb is the best, most thoughtful interviewer I’ve ever seen on television.

[Clemenza]

Say the Confederates were actually repressed LGBTQ folks who were defending their lifestyle against the homophobe Lincoln. It took a queen of the theatre named John Wilkes Booth to make things right. Amazingly, the Twitter mobs might be fooled. 😂

[Tucker39]

Roger that. Ater viewing Ken Burns’ Civil War Series on PBS, I bought Shelby Foote’s 3 volume set on the Civil War. I too could listen to the gentleman talk all day.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[OttawaFreeper]

I visited Gettysburg last week and toured the battlefield area and I thought a little about him as I remember watching him on the PBS documentary.

[BlueLancer]

I bought Shelby Foote’s 3 volume set on the Civil War.

I believe that that series is the best of all books on the Civil War ... I have all three volumes both in hardcover and on Kindle ...

[Paal Gulli]

Foote was a true believer in "The Lost Cause." As he grew old and infirm he was hounded into publicly recanting that belief. Which puts me in mind of Galileo who at the age of 69 was badgered into recanting his belief that the sun was at the center of our solar system.

Until I became familiar with Foote's work I only knew of Bennett Cerf as a game show contestant, but before "What's My Line" made him famous he co-founded Random House publishers. It was he who approached Foote to write his seminal work on the War Between the States.

Foote offered that he could finish the 3-volume series in three years. It took him 20, during which time he worked on nothing else.

Foote only wrote his drafts with old-fashioned dip-in-the-ink-well fountain pens. He said the tactile sensation of the nib scratching across heavy-bond paper kept him mindful that he was 'communicating' with the paper. I think it also kept him mindful that he was communicating with people who would not be born for centuries yet.

His favorite nib was the Easterbrook Probate 313. Easterbrook had all but gone out of business and he was near out of nibs when he chanced to walk past a dusty old stationery shop on 44th Street, near the Algonquin Hotel in Memphis. They had several gross of Probate 313s in stock and he bought them all, but for the rest of his life he struggled to find blotters.

[KC Burke]

I enjoyed Foote’s Trilogy immensely. I saw an interview as some point where he stated that a historian (which he was not) had the limitation of not being a writer with the skills of a story teller. His advantage had been he took the 20 years to learn the history and then telling the story was in his skill set.

I would admit that some of his historical perspective is limited by his background and regionalism but overall his work is masterful and is not to be missed.