Genesis of an American Playwright.
By Horton Foote. Edited by Marion Castleberry. Waco,
Texas: Baylor University Press, 2004. 287 pages.
$29.95.

The author of more than 100 plays, teleplays, and
screenplays, Horton Foote has received an abundance
of awards for his work in drama: two Academy Awards
(Best Adaptation for To Kill a Mockingbird and Best
Original Screenplay for Tender Mercies), an Emmy (Old
Man), a Pulitzer Prize in Drama (The Young Man from
Atlanta), the National Medal of Arts, and many other
honors. But in addition to his dramatic work, Foote has
produced two novels (The Chase, 1956; Days of Violence,
unpublished), two memoirs (Farewell,1999; Beginnings,
2001), and some 25 essays, lectures, and commentaries
dating from 1944 to the present. These reveal the
private man, the prolific artist, and the creative process.

Editor Marion Castleberry has made a major
contribution to the history of American theater in
collecting Foote’s commentaries on writing, film,
theater, and television. Castleberry has done an
excellent job of selecting, arranging, and editing these
essays. He has included a full chronology of Foote’s
personal and professional life as well as an appendix
that includes stage plays, teleplays, and screenplays,
followed by cast lists and production details for each
play. He has also written a good introduction placing
Foote in context. Divided into five chapters— “Genesis
of a Playwright,” “On Being a Southern Writer,”
“Writing for the Stage,” “Writing for the Screen,” and
“Thoughts on American Theater”—the collection
provides a look back to Foote’s childhood during the
Depression in Wharton, Texas, as well as an account of
American drama, film, and television over the last half
of the 20th century.

Foote says his plays began “when as a child I asked
questions of my family about their past. I heard variations
when the stories were told by different people. . . . I don’t
think I chose what I write about so much as it chose me.”
Foote goes on to comment on his many influences—both
personal and literary. “I write all of my plays out of
my own experience and observations,” he says. “As a writer,
a playwright, and screenwriter, my goal is always to
establish a true sense of place.” Place and time are major
influences alongwith the people he grew up with, both
hearing them and observing them. He credits Katherine
Ann Porter with helping him find a way “to use the
particulars of time and place without being trapped in the
quaintness of regionalism.”

Place comes from the town where he grew up–Harrison in
his plays. “I have tried to make Harrison true to
itself, true to the towns I have known. It has its tragedies and
its comedies, its rich and its poor, its great virtues
and its terrible injustices.” And Foote has much to say about
coming from a Southern place: “We Southerners I
think are very blessed in that we are surrounded by people
who love to talk, who love to remember, and who
love to share their remembrances. There is still an oral tradition
in the South and I surely think it is one of the continuing
strengths of our writers.” Foote holds, “There is a continuing
vitality in Southern writing. Every few years some critic will write
an essay on the demise of the region as a source for writers—yet
Southern writing continues. No other region of the country
has given us so many talented writers black and white
for such a sustained period.”

In addition to a sense of time and place, great art carries a vision,
Foote believes. Foote has said, “Courage is my theme.” He has
perceived the roots of courage in the face of devastating loss and
misfortune. He has examined the human condition through characters
who embody his vision. He says, “Life is a mystery isn’t it? . . . I
believe very deeply in the human spirit, and I have a sense of awe
about it. Because I don’t know how people carry on. . . . And yet
something about them retains a dignity. They face life, and they
don’t ask for quarters.” Foote affirms, “I suppose you’d have to say I’m
attracted to survivors. I guess in spite of the chaos around us, there’s a lot
to celebrate about humanity.” And Foote continues to celebrate
humanity and courage.

JOANNE BRANNON ALDRIDGE