Carolina QuotesThe point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth — not a different truth: the same truth — only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.
Shelby Foote Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1986), 815. .
- year
- 1958
Cite this record
“The point I would make is that the novelist and the historia…” Shelby Foote. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-6811D8BAB4. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/6811d8bab4
More from Shelby Foote
When I was a hardworking, pistol-hot writer, I was unknown. Now that I’m a tired old man, they start hollerin’ how good I am. I’m not going to analyze what that all means. I’m just determined not to let it turn my life into something I don’t want it to be.
I learned to love my country, in two ways. I began to learn the geography of the South-the mountains, the rivers, the valleys. The other thing was the incredible heroism on both sides. It's hard to believe men were as brave as those men were. Somehow sense of honor was stronger than fear. God knows, they felt fear. I would really like it to be stressed that my work helped me to love my country. I hope my work does that for other people, learning both our virtues and our vices.
There’s nothing better for a writer than to be reluctant to go to bed, anxious to wake up and start again. That’s living. That’s what I felt.