While most collections of letters take a broad approach, in this fascinating compilation, editor Jay Tolson focuses on the fifty-year correspondence between writers Shelby Foote and Walker Percy. Rather than a sweeping portrait of one life, the reader of these letters gets an intimate look at the development of two thoughtful and creative writers, each of whom is both craftsman and artist.
Foote and Percy met in 1930, when Percy was sent to Greenville, Mississippi to spend the summer at his uncle William Alexander Percy’s home. The elder Percy asked the thirteen-year-old Foote, who lived in Greenville, to be sure to come over and spend time with his fourteen-year-old nephew Walker. Both boys were smart and shared a love of books. They also shared the common experience of losing their fathers, Percy’s to suicide the previous summer. Percy ended up staying in Greenville through high school, and he and Foote continued to spend time together. Foote followed Percy to UNC, and the pair did not go their separate ways until World War II, when Foote served in the Army and Marines, while Percy was in medical school and then recovering from tuberculosis.
The letters here start after the war, as both Percy and Foote were settling down to the work of becoming writers. Many of the early letters discuss the process of writing, outlining plots, celebrating the occasional check from a publisher, and pushing each other to be better. But the pair also discuss everything from religion to art to their family ups and downs. Both men were clever, and at times acerbic, and there is a lot of humor and affection here. This correspondence is a superb portrait of a long friendship built around shared passions and, in particular, a love of words. The correspondence was broken only by Percy’s death in 1990.
Both men wrote powerful fiction rooted in their Southern upbringing. Percy’s novels explored what it is to be human and the challenges of belief. Foote, who wrote both novels and nonfiction history, later became known to viewers as the historian of record in Ken Burns’ The Civil War. Fans of either of the pair will find much to enjoy here, as will anyone who is interested in the development of a writer.
Check the WRL catalog for The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy
[…] have written a number of posts about collected letters, see here, here, here, here, and here. So I have an obvious affection for letter-writing, and particularly for reading letters […]