Novelist Shelby Foote Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jefferson Davis

Foote starts volume one ("Fort Sumter to Perryville") with Jefferson Davis' resignation speech to the U.S. Senate in early 1861. He concludes volume three ("Red River to Appomattox") with a reporter's post-war interview with Davis, wherein the Confederacy's president asked the journalist to "Tell them that I only loved America." Foote remarked in Ken Burns' "The Civil War" that he found Davis to be a warm and personable fellow.

Answer: "September, September"

"September, September" was adapted into the TV movie "Memphis", starring Cybill Shepherd, who also produced. Both the novel and movie tell the story of three inept white kidnappers who hold for ransom the child of a prominent black man in 1957.

Answer: Walker Percy

Foote and fellow novelist Percy became friends while they were teens, and wrote each other frequently until Percy's death in 1990. The two discussed novels, philosophy (Percy published two books of philosophical essays), religion, race, criticism, drinks, the Civil War and much more.

Answer: "The Red Badge of Courage"

In addition to "The Red Badge of Courage", Foote edited Modern Library's "Chickamauga and Other Civil War Stories", and wrote introductions for two Modern Library editions of Anton Chekhov's short stories, as well as the volume of Tacitus' "The Annals & The Histories".

Answer: William Faulkner

Early in Foote's writing career, William Faulkner said to a class at the University of Virginia that Foote "shows some promise, if he'll just stop trying to write Faulkner, and write some Shelby Foote." (The quote comes from Stuart Chapman's "Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life".) In other words, Faulkner was saying that Foote should find his own literary voice instead of trying to mimic Faulkner's.

Answer: Gettysburg and Vicksburg

The two volumes are "Stars in Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign, June - July 1863" and "The Beleaguered City: The Vicksburg Campaign, December 1862 - July 1863". Foote read the audio versions of both volumes.

Answer: Metcalfe's commander, Johnston, was killed.

General Albert Sidney Johnston commanded the Confederate forces at Shiloh (and all rebel forces in the Western theater) until he was shot and bled to death midway through the first day of the battle. In the novel, after Johnston's death Palmer found himself mixed with infantry, and, at the end of the battle, with Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry.

Answer: "September, September"

"September, September" takes place in Memphis, Tennessee, while the other three are set in Mississippi. Foote created a fictional Mississippi county - Jordan County - for his stories, in much the same way as William Faulkner did with his Yoknapatawpha County.

Answer: Foote's great-grandfather was a lieutenant under Forrest.

When Foote died in 2005, he was buried in Memphis next to the family plot of the Forrest family. As for the other two connections, Foote told the following tale in Ken Burns' "The Civil War" documentary.

"Bedford Forrest's granddaughter lived here in Memphis and she recently died, and I got to know her. And she even let me swing the general's sword around my head, which was a great treat. I thought a long time and I called her and said, 'I think the war produced two authentic geniuses. One was your grandfather and the other was Abraham Lincoln.' And there was a silence at the other end of the phone. And she said, 'Well, you know, in my family, we never thought much of Mr. Lincoln.'" (Quoted verbatim from "The Civil War".)

Answer: Foote used no footnotes or endnotes.

As related in William C. Carter's "Conversations with Shelby Foote" and Stuart Chapman's "Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life", some scholars criticized Foote's Civil War trilogy because he didn't use either endnotes or footnotes. Some also complained that Foote did not sufficiently explore the politics and economics of the war. None of the other three choices are true. Foote wrote the trilogy from the perspective of a novelist, not a historian - hence, the "Narrative" in the trilogy's title.