Shelby Foote and the art of history

"Despite widespread recognition of Foote's work, reception by some in the scholarly community has been lukewarm; historians dismiss his lively narratives as literary, while literary critics tend to view his exhaustively researched works as historical. In Shelby Foote and the Art of History: Two Gates to the City, James Panabaker argues that Foote is one of a rare breed of artists, capable of combining the tools and sensibilities of a writer of modernist fiction with the discipline of a historian." "Panabaker examines several key influences on Foote's development as a writer and historian, from his upbringing in the progressive southern town of Greenville, Mississippi, and his relationship with William Alexander Percy to the inescapable shadow of Faulkner."--Jacket.