Happy Monday, bookish friends! One of my choices for Nonfiction November and for the year of 1999 for ACOB was Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood by Horton Foote (1999). Foote won two academy awards--one for the screenplay of To Kill A Mockingbird and another for the film Tender Mercies. Perhaps his most well known play was The Trip to Bountiful. I've been lucky enough to see a few of his plays. Also, I love a good memoir, and Farewell did not disappoint.
- Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood
- Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Summary
- Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Summary
- Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Pdf
Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood
Editions for Farewell: 068486570X (Paperback published in 2000), (Hardcover published in 1999), (Kindle Edition), (ebook published.
- His memoir is both a celebration of the immense importance of community and evidence that even a strong community cannot save a lost soul. Farewell is as deeply moving as the best of Foote's writing for film and theater, and a gorgeous testimony to his own faith in the human spirit. Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood.
- Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood. By Horton Foote. Length: 269 pages 5 hours. For more than five decades, Horton Foote, 'the Chekhov of the small.
Horton Foote (1916-2009) was born into a prominent family in Wharton, Texas. In Farewell, he recounts conversations with his family members which tell much of his story. Foote's childhood in a small town had all the elements of a Norman Rockwell type existence. He climbed pecan trees, was a voracious reader and sat on the porch after dinner with his extended family on many evenings. He knew most everyone in town and recounts stories of eccentric relatives and townsfolk and family secrets. His father owned a dry goods store and was one of the most respected gentlemen in Wharton. Foote was an intelligent child and a deep thinker. He found himself questioning the relations between whites and African Americans in the community. The Ku Klux Klan had a strong presence in the town, and as a precocious child, Foote found a strange looking white robe in a drawer and questioned his mother about the garment. He learned that his father and grandfather had attended a Klan meeting but had not gone back. What stuck out most for me, though, was when Foote's father confided once that there were times he felt abject fear walking down the sidewalk because he knew of the violence the men of the town were capable of.
This memoir covers Foote's life growing up in Wharton and ends with his decision to leave home and become an actor. At seventeen, he leaves to join the Pasadena Playhouse.
Farewell has some lovely writing and anecdotes. It's apparent that sitting on the porch as a child and listening to conversations served Horton Foote well as a playwright. I liked that he didn't write an overly sentimental memoir but dived into the underbelly of race relations that gives an in depth and honest picture of what life was like during the time he grew up in Wharton. It was also nice to visit a time before technology when people sat together often and talked to one another.
Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Summary
I enjoyed reading Farewell, and I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys a good memoir or who likes Horton Foote's work, especially his plays set in the fictional Texas town of Harrison, Texas.
Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Summary
Farewell A Memoir Of A Texas Childhood Pdf