More Shelby Foote

I've been listening to interviews on NPR and reading a few and i cannot seem to get this writer out of my head. I think i have to start on my copies of The Civil War. I really feel like i NEED to read them. I know i'll be more of the person i want to be when i'm done.

...You know, for a reader, that's about as good as it is gonna get, so i better start.

(After the Starring in Ken Burns' The Civil War) Foote did complain that after the PBS series "the damn telephone won't hush," but vowed not to let his newfound fame go to his head. "I saw what happened to Truman Capote, and that shouldn't have happened to a dog."

What did happen was that Foote's three-volume series sold like never before (some 800,000 copies after the TV series). The author returned to a slow-paced life in Memphis that included writing with a dip pen and inkwell.

A good day's work would produce about 500 well-chosen words.

The dip pen 'makes me take my time, and I prize that,' Foote explained in a 1990 interview with USA TODAY. 'And it reduces the hell out of the need for rewriting.'

His magnum opus--A million and a half word 3 volume narrative--done using a dip pen. jesus. that does give you time to think about what you're doing.

It shows.