April 13, 2011 Like his putative Greek forerunner, Shelby Foote was not a trained historian but a master storyteller. He wrote four well-received novels before embarking on The Civil War, including Shiloh, a fictional account of the 1862 battle. Long after completing his trilogy of history books, he continued to think of himself first and foremost as a fiction writer: “I think of myself as a novelist who wrote a three-volume history of the Civil War. I don’t think it’s a novel, but I think it’s certainly by a novelist,” he said.

April 11, 2011 Shelby Foote was the first writer I ever met, and the only writer I ever personally knew until I left my hometown of Memphis and went off to college. And so my image of what a writer was supposed to look like, sound like, and smell like, came first and foremost from him. I vaguely sensed even as a high-school teenager that I wanted to be a writer, but watching him, studying him, I couldn’t see how I could get there. I couldn’t see myself wielding a quill pen. My Southern accent was strong enough, but lacked Shelby’s beautiful custardy lilts and Delta diphthongs. And I knew I could never pull off a masterpiece of a beard like his.