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With American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic The Civil War: A Narrative
Modern Library
April 2011
On Sale: April 19, 2011
ISBN: 0679643702
EAN: 9780679643708
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War,
the Modern Library publishes Shelby Foote’s three-volume
masterpiece in a new boxed set including three hardcovers
and a new trade paperback, American Homer: Reflections on
Shelby Foote and His Classic Civil War: A Narrative, edited
by and with an introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Jon
Meacham and including essays by Michael Beschloss, Ken
Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, and others. Random House publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned southern
novelist Shelby Foote to write a short, one-volume history
of the American Civil War. Thirty years and a million and a
half words later—every word having been written out longhand
with nib pens dipped into ink—Foote published the third and
final volume of what has become the classic narrative of
that epic war. As he approached the end of the final volume, Foote
recounted this scene in a letter to his friend, the novelist
Walker Percy: “I killed Lincoln last week—Saturday, at noon.
While I was doing it (he had his chest arched up, holding
his last breath to let it out) some halfassed doctor came to
the door with vols I and II under his arm, wanting me to
autograph them for his son for Xmas. I was in such a state
of shock, I not only let him in; I even signed the goddam
books, a thing I seldom do. Then I turned back and killed
him and had Stanton say, ‘Now he belongs to the ages.’ A
strange feeling, though. I have another 70-odd pages to go,
and I have a fear they’ll be like Hamlet with Hamlet left
out. Christ, what a man. It’s been a great thing getting to
know him as he was, rather than as he has come to be—a sort
of TV image of himself, with a ghost alongside.” When Percy read the final book, he wrote to Foote: “It’s a
noble work. I’m still staggered by the size of the
achievement. . . . It is The Iliad.” A selection of these letters, along with essays by Jon
Meacham, Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed,
Michael Eric Dyson, Julia Reed, Robert Loomis, Donald
Graham, John M. McCardell, Jr., and Jay Tolson, are included
in American Homer, the bonus paperback book available only
in the Modern Library boxed set of The Civil War. Shelby Foote’s tremendous, sweeping narrative of the most
fascinating conflict in our history—a war that lasted four
long, bitter years, an experience more profound and
meaningful than any other the American people have ever
lived through—begins with Jefferson Davis’s resignation from
the United States Senate and Abraham Lincoln’s departure
from Springfield for the national capital. It is these two
leaders, whose lives continually touch on the great chain of
events throughout the story, who are only the first of
scores of exciting personalities that in effect make The
Civil War a multiple biography set against the crisis of an age. Four years later, Lincoln’s second inaugural sets the seal,
invoking “charity for all” on the Eve of Five Forks and the
Grant-Lee race for Appomattox. Here is the dust and stench
of war, a sort of Twilight of the Gods. The epilogue is
Lincoln in his grave, and Davis in his postwar
existence—“Lucifer in Starlight.” So ends a unique
achievement—already recognized as one of the finest
histories ever fashioned by an American—a narrative that
re-creates on a vast and brilliant canvas the events and
personalities of an American epic: the Civil War.
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