Shelby Foote learned his craft from past masters of European and American literature.

Well, the writers have influenced me as a writer, never mind the war. Anything else, of course, influenced me most. Proust and Faulkner, French are two big influences in my life, and they influence the way I write about war. But the one who influenced me to write about war will probably Tolstoy certainly. And before Tolstoy, all, sizable influence me all to the good, I think, because they had the right idea, which turned out which was the first really communicated confusion of war.

it’s about a war, but you don’t know whether it’s war or not. They don’t realize that he’s saying that he wrote Napoleon after all of, so Stendhal and Tolstoy, Stephen Crane, everyone from both of them.

Tags: On Writing