Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood / Foote, Horton

The marvelous second chapter of Farewell sets the mood for everything to come in the noted playwright's memoir of his childhood in tiny Wharton, Texas. As a young Horton Foote questions his parents about their "elopement"--they had to go five blocks across town to be wed by a Baptist minister because his mother's Methodist parents didn't approve of the match--the intricate web of kinship, friendship, and local geography that shapes small-town life is hilariously yet touchingly revealed in each of their asides and elaborations. Foote's birth in 1916 healed the family rift, and he grew up in a cozy environment where everyone knew everyone else and more or less accepted their eccentricities. He doesn't gloss over the harsh realities of racial prejudice and segregation, but his tone is nonetheless elegiac, glowing with the magic of the characters' storytelling. Southerners have always been famous for their ability to spin yarns, and Foote captures that in extended passages of conversation. Direct quotes are generally cause for suspicion in a memoir, but when the dialogue has the same vigor and subtlety found in the author's screenplays and plays (A Trip to Bountiful and The Young Man from Atlanta among them), you're willing to give Foote the benefit of the doubt. --Wendy Smith
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