The Night Before Chancellorsville, and Other Civil War Stories (review)

456civil war history The Night Before Chancellorsville, and Other Civil War Stories. Edited by Shelby Foote. (New York: The New American Library. 1957. Pp. 189. $0.35.) this little collection of civil war fiction has been available in the pocketbook sections of most drugstores and supermarkets since the spring of 1957. Published as a Signet Book "Original" ("good reading for the Millions"), its editor, Shelby Foote, states that the collection is "an attempt, on a small scale to look at what has been done [in fiction] through nearly one hundred years o* American writing, with the four year segment of history that occurred between Davis's Provisional Inauguration . . . and Lincoln's Second Inauguration." As is no surprise, the stories begin with an excerpt from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, specifically from about the middle of Chapter II to the middle of Chapter VI, or from where Henry Fleming, facing his first battle, is already terribly frightened, to where he throws down his rifle and runs, his face showing "all the horror of those things which he has imagined." This title of this excerpt, "A Young Soldier's First Battle," is presumably Mr. Foote's inspiration. Comes next the tide stoiy of the collection, a short work by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which, though new to this reviewer, fails to send those little shivers along the spine that normally token my discovery of great or even good writing. This piece —one could charitably call it a story—is a brief episode in a prostitute's life. Told in the first person, it is complete with euphemistic dialogue and in 1935 would have been entirely at home in any issue of, say, Esquire. Following is a long ramble, "Chickamauga," from Thomas Wolfe's The HiUs Beyond; Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"; Faulkner's "My Grandmother Millard and General Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek"; and a selection from Stephen Vincent Benét's John Browns Body called "Fish-Hook Gettysburg" and taken from Book Seven of that work with no less than ten unmarked major elisions. The longest piece in Mr. Foote's collection , "Pillar of Fire," is his own writing, and the last selection, "The Fortune Teller," is from MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville. Two blankets of fact, Jefferson Davis' "Provisional Inaugural" and Abraham Lincoln's "Second Inaugural," surround these sheets of fancy, and as an added bonus the editor furnishes a brief Introduction. My first objection to this book is probably that of a reactionary old fuddy: I prefer a choice between a hardback and paper-covered edition, and I am a little suspicious in this country of any "original" pocket-book—particularly of one whose cover is festooned with bayonetted soldiers, the American flag, and a list of well-known writers. This suspicion is not mitigated by an Introduction which begins as follows: In this country, historical fiction in general has been left to second raters and hired brains, and this is particularly true of those who have chosen the Civil War as a subject. With the exception of Stephen Crane, our best writers have given it either mere incidental attention or none at all. Hemingway is a case in point; so is Henry James. . . . Book Reviews4SI Leaving out the exact definition of "historical fiction," I can imagine nothing more ludicrous than either James or Hemingway writing a novel about the Civil War, and it is a pity that space forbids one from enlarging this notion. But again to Mr. Foote who, after enlightening us as to the real difference between history and fiction, goes on in the true southern agrarian tradition to maintain that a trainload of whores on a siding by Chancellorsville is as an event every bit as noble as the Monitor-Merrimac duel or the charge up Missionary Ridge or (I suppose, though he doesn't say so) Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Continuing with what is apparendy a plea for historical-fictional synthesis, Mr. Foote states that "our best current historians are learning that they can gain greatly from a study of our best novelists. Bruce Carton, for example, has been to school to Faulkner. . . ." Well, maybe he...