surface of things, and not get caught up in speculations about the causes or the meaning
of events. Flaubert is praised by Foote, not for his “philosophy” or “psychology,” which
Foote considered rudimentary, but for “a good eye and a marvelous style.” In this
context, Foote states very clearly how important it is for a writer to avoid “preaching” or
advancing “a theory” in one’s work (96). From this perspective, one could very well be
disappointed by all those passages in The Civil War where Foote seems unable to restrict
himself to simple, judgment-free description.
But one does not understand Foote’s narrative history if one thinks that it is meant
to be judgment or value-free, (as if such freedom were even possible for human beings).
While he prefers exposition to explanation (39) and elevates style over theory (96, 145),
Foote writes in order to reveal the truth about the historical events, and that truth requires
judgments about the people central to those events, for example whether they be villains
or heroes, or as Foote seems to suspect, both. Thus, Foote’s focus on the description of
events is meant to embody judgments, not avoid them. Perhaps Foote’s most revealing
account of his approach to writing is to be found in a letter discussing his novel Love in a
Dry Season. He writes to Walker Percy: “So far I have avoided pronouncing judgments;
Ive tried to bring the reader to the point where he will be forced to pronounce them
himself….A writer pays a great price for objectivity. He cant just say: ‘He was really a
scoundrel—yet not entirely so’; that’s much too easy and doesn’t give a fraction of the
effect. It’s as the newspaper motto says, ‘An inch of picture is worth a yard of text.’” (29
my emphasis).
Robertson himself faithfully describes the surface of Foote’s history when he
complains that in avoiding overt opinions the text seems to “abound” with them
nonetheless. In another letter to Percy, Foote explains how he prepares himself to write a
9
Convention