Mississippi Childhood
Born Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1916, Foote moved a number of times during his early childhood as his father advanced within the ranks of the Chicago-based Armour Meats and Company. After his father’s sudden death in 1922, the young Foote and his mother, Lillian Rosenstock Foote, returned to Greenville to live with their Rosenstock relatives. There in Greenville, Lillian Foote worked as a secretary and scraped together a living for herself and her son while they lived in her sister’s house. Regardless of his family’s actual financial situation, Foote later remarked, “I was given clearly to understand as a child that I was a Southern aristocrat.”[2] He was, after all, the grandson of two southern planters, both of whom, in Delta fashion, had touched and lost a fortune in their lifetimes. But as Foote matured and struggled to come to terms with his reality, he began to imagine himself as stranded on the fringes of the southern aristocracy, fighting for wealth and respectability. This self-perception would later influence his works, allowing Foote to sympathize with the poor and marginalized and to critically evaluate the socioeconomic and racial hierarchies of his society.
Another guiding force for Foote and his literary development was lawyer, planter, and famed memoirist William Alexander Percy, who promoted the fine arts in Greenville and regularly hosted prominent writers traveling through the area. In 1931, Foote found himself under Will Percy’s direct influence when the latter’s three young, newly fatherless cousins arrived in Greenville. Upon Will Percy’s suggestion, the fourteen-year-old Foote quickly befriended the three Percy brothers, beginning his celebrated lifelong friendship with fellow author Walker Percy. Foote also gained entry into the Percy house – the cultural headquarters of Greenville – where Will Percy introduced the teenager to classical music and twentieth-century literature. In his adolescence, Foote avidly read Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and William Faulkner, among other modern greats. Such early introductions to literature inspired Foote’s own writing career.
Another guiding force for Foote and his literary development was lawyer, planter, and famed memoirist William Alexander Percy, who promoted the fine arts in Greenville and regularly hosted prominent writers traveling through the area. In 1931, Foote found himself under Will Percy’s direct influence when the latter’s three young, newly fatherless cousins arrived in Greenville. Upon Will Percy’s suggestion, the fourteen-year-old Foote quickly befriended the three Percy brothers, beginning his celebrated lifelong friendship with fellow author Walker Percy. Foote also gained entry into the Percy house – the cultural headquarters of Greenville – where Will Percy introduced the teenager to classical music and twentieth-century literature. In his adolescence, Foote avidly read Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and William Faulkner, among other modern greats. Such early introductions to literature inspired Foote’s own writing career.
Foote also gained entry into the Percy house – the cultural headquarters of Greenville – where Will Percy introduced the teenager to classical music and twentieth-century literature.
Foote and the Percy brothers attended Greenville High School in the 1930s. There, both Foote and Walker Percy revealed their literary pretensions and contributed to the nationally-ranked school newspaper, The Pica. Following Walker Percy to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Foote enrolled in the fall of 1937. Although he excelled in the classes he enjoyed – mostly history and English classes – Foote’s overall academic transcript revealed that he spent most of his time in the library reading for pleasure rather than studying for class. Foote the aspiring author also dedicated a lot of his time and ink to writing short stories and book reviews for the university’s acclaimed literary journal, Carolina Magazine. After only two full academic years at UNC, Foote felt qualified to begin his writing career in earnest. In June 1937, Foote returned home to Greenville, the source of inspiration for his first novel.
[2] Shelby Foote qtd. in Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 149.
[2] Shelby Foote qtd. in Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 149.