Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood [B1993]

1999 signed HCDJ in excellent condition. For more than five decades, Horton Foote, "the Chekhov of the small town," has chronicled the changes in American life -- both intimate and universal. His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies earned him Academy Awards. He received an Indie Award for Best Writer for The Trip to Bountiful and a Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta. In his plays and films, Foote has returned over and over again to Wharton, Texas, where he was born and where he lives, once again, in the house in which he grew up. Now for the first time, in Farewell, Foote turns to prose to tell his own story and the stories of the real people who have inspired his characters. 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.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "This was an easy paced memoir of his Texas childhood by the man who wrote the screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and A Trip To Bountiful. The slow pacing made it perfect for bedtime reading, and you could imagine the Southern drawl in the dialogue."; "Satisfying read all around. It feels like you are sitting in an old drugstore and listening to him talk about his life and stories. Small town, olden days feel that just warms the heart to a degree. By no means a real page turner but satisfying nonetheless."; "Reads like an oral history. Thoroughly enjoyable. I probably love Horton Foote so much because he was a Texan and his stories all resonate. The language is reminiscent of words and phrases I often heard as a girl in the 1950s and 60s, even though that was easily thirty years after the incidents in this book take place. The world changed slower back then, and families stayed closer together. I recommend this to anyone who likes nostalgia."