3

Horton Foote has enriched American literature with his tender and forthright examinations of the human condition. He has written dozens of notable plays and screenplays, including The Carpetbagger’sChildren, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Tender Mercies and The Trip to Bountiful; he has won Academy Awards, Emmys, and the Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta.

In Dividing the Estate, Foote explores the widening rifts in a family feuding over their estate andtheir disintegrating ties to the land. Ironically, as we examined the many conflicts in the play to dis-cover the focus of this issue, we were overwhelmed by an outpouring of goodwill and admiration for itsauthor. During his lifetime, Horton Foote personally has engendered a spirit of generosity and kindnessthat has enhanced the work of those around him. It became clear that our issue could not be aboutonly one play and its conflicts; it had to be about this seemingly unconflicted man—his life, his work.And we could not have achieved this goal without the help, grace, and deep knowledge of his daughterHallie Foote, whom audiences will see in the role of Mary Jo in Dividing the Estate.

The play was produced to great acclaim last season by one of the city’s favorite companies, PrimaryStages. Lincoln Center Theater is grateful to them for bringing this wonderful work to New York andhappy to be partnering with them at the Booth Theatre this fall.

For this issue, we discovered a bounty of Horton Foote admirers to choose from. We have piecesfrom acclaimed playwrights and beloved actors who have encountered Foote in the theater, on thescreen, and on the page—Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, Lois Smith, Liz Ashley, and Robert Duvall. Theyshare their stories about the quiet power of Foote’s work and the delights of working with him. WilliamD. Zabel, an expert on trusts and estates law, sheds light on the history of estate planning. We spoke with the photographer Keith Carter, a decades-long friend, about his stunning photographs, portraiture,and Texas.The renowned American writer Reynolds Price has written about Horton Foote’s place in thepantheon of literature.

Conferring the National Medal of Arts on Horton Foote in 2000, President Clinton said, “Believe it ornot, the great writer Horton Foote got his education at Wharton—but not at the Wharton Business School.He grew up in the small town of Wharton, Texas. His work is rooted in the tales, the troubles, the heart-break, and the hopes of all he heard and saw there.” Wanting to see the town where Foote has spent mostof his life, our co-executive editor, John Guare, made a trip to Texas that resulted in a singular pieceabout Foote’s life and the place that has inspired so much of his work. And Charles Wright’s hauntingpoem speaks to our connection to the land in the face of mortality, which is one of Foote’s abiding themes.His deceptively simple stories and understated language transform the mundane into the revelatory.Horton Foote is one of America’s greatest treasures.—The Editors

The art of this issue grew out of the land-scape that Horton Foote writes about andthe themes of his play Dividing the Estate.The amazingly imagined collages of MarkWagner, constructed entirely out of foldedand cut-up dollar bills, reflect the divisiveeffects of money depicted in the play.We’ve also featured four great Americanphotographers—Keith Carter, Walker Evans,Frank Gohlke, and Edward Weston. Hereare Carter’s compelling and magical por-traits of his wife, Pat Carter, and of HortonFoote, which speak to relationships thatdevelop over the course of many years

between an artist and a subject. The extra-ordinary, and surprisingly casual Pol-aroids that Evans, known for documentingthe effects of the Great Depression, tookbetween 1973 and 1974, capture the feelof the road and of rural America. Gohlke’sarresting photograph of the laundry lineembodies the juxtaposition of the mun-dane with the profound portrayed inCharles Wright’s poem. And finally,Weston’s exquisite photograph of a shelldisplays one of nature’s most perfectforms; its simplicity reminded us of theunassuming power of Horton Foote’s work.

CAPTURING THE LANDSCAPECurrency collage by M

ark Wagner, Bouquet of Popular Flowers, 2008.

Courtesy of the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York.

4

T O D I V I D E O R N O T T O D I V I D E ?

b y W I L L I A M D . Z A B E L

The primary goal of a good estate plan is to divide the estate equi-

tably among the family. This fine and feisty play by that nonage-

narian national treasure, Horton Foote, deals primarily with the

issue of dividing a 5,000-acre farm estate among the Gordon family of

Harrison, Texas.

Stella Gordon, the eighty-year-old matriarch, is surrounded by

a group of parasitical children—none of whom, even though of

middle age, have actually held a job. Everyone is already living off

the estate. Stella makes it clear that she will not divide the estate

“until hell freezes over.” And when she dies her children must deal

with the chaos she left behind.1

If only the estate had been well planned.

A well-planned Will can be a kind of last hurrah. Thomas

Jefferson expanded his creation: the University of Virginia. George

Washington freed his slaves. A transplanted Englishman, John

Harvard, about three and a half centuries ago, in his Will left his

personal library and half of his estate to build a college on a one-

acre cow yard in what was then the colony of Massachusetts Bay.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and nitroglycerin, estab-

lished by his Will the most sought-after prizes in the world. Cecil

Rhodes created the famous scholarships that bear his name.

But what most people, even many lawyers, don’t know is that

the best-planned estate can be totally changed by a litigation, with

all the legally relevant parties agreeing on a settlement. Consider

one example—namely, the notorious Will contest involving heirs

to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune of J. Seward

Johnson, Sr., who died at age eighty-seven in 1983. He was sur-

vived by his third wife, Barbara “Basia” Johnson (née Piasecka,

forty-two years his junior and a chambermaid in his home prior to

their marriage), and his six children from two previous marriages.

His Will and estate plan were not particularly complicated: (i)

most of his $500 million estate was left in trust for Basia for her

lifetime and then to charity; (ii) his six children were to receive no

outright bequests, as he thought that he had provided amply for

them many years before; (iii) his private oceanographic research

foundation, Harbor Branch, was also out in the cold at the discre-

tion of Basia, as, again, he thought he had provided for it suffi-

ciently during his lifetime; and (iv) the plan eliminated all estate

taxes at his death.

A titanic litigation ensued, with the children (and, belatedly,

the foundation) attacking the Will, alleging the usual litany of

grounds: testamentary incapacity, improper execution, undue in-

fluence, fraud, and duress.

For connoisseurs of Will contests, an interesting aspect of the

Johnson case was the fact that Seward Johnson, in about thirty

prior Wills and Codicils, had disinherited the attacking children.

Generally, if a Will is upset because of the decedent’s incapacity,

then his prior Will is revived. His incapacity means that he could

not legally revoke a prior Will by means of his last Will. (That is

why, contrary to popular belief, you often should not destroy your

prior Wills.)

One factor, among others, causing a settlement in the Johnson

case was the possibility that the jury would find testamentary

capacity on the part of Mr. Johnson (i.e., that he was competent at

the time of its making), thus validating the Will but still invali-

dating the provisions for Basia Johnson on the grounds of her

undue influence, fraud, or duress. If that happened, what would

have gone to her instead would have all passed to the children—as

if there had been no Will.

In any event, the parties decided to settle. The Will was, to

put it charitably, totally rewritten by the contestants. The result:

any resemblance to Seward Johnson’s actual last Will seemed

purely coincidental.

Mr. Johnson should be a veritable whirling dervish in his

grave, because all his expressed intentions were flouted. Basia

received $300 million outright to do with as she wished and not

in trust; five of the children received $5.9 million and J. Seward

Johnson, Jr., received $12 million, causing death taxes substan-

tially in excess of their legacies; and the Harbor Branch

Foundation received $20 million. The U.S. government exacted,

in total, additional estate taxes of about $86 million that would

not otherwise have had to be paid.

On the other hand, Big Momma Stella can rest in peace in her

grave, having prevented the dividing up of the family estate and

bound her family to live together on it for the foreseeable future.

Or did she? Are the surviving Gordons finished? Remember the

brooding aphorism of author-journalist Ambrose Bierce: “There’s

death and then there’s the litigation.” It all depends on the family.

William D. Zabel is a senior and founding partner at Schulte Roth &

Zabel, a leading expert on trusts and estates law, and chair of the Board

of Human Rights First.1 Stella Gordon’s grandson is called Son. His name brings to mind the man whose holographicWill left his entire estate—“All to Mother.“ He died leaving his mother and his wife, whom hehad affectionately nicknamed “Mother.“ Which mother wins?

Currency collage by Mark W

agner, The Alleged Cherry Tree Incident, 2007. Courtesy of the Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New

York.

6

This past fall, our editors spoke with theincomparable Robert Duvall, who has knownHorton Foote for nearly fifty years and hasworked with him on Foote’s play TheMidnight Caller and with him on such filmsas To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and TenderMercies (1983).

Editors: When did you first encounterHorton Foote? Robert Duvall: Well, the NeighborhoodPlayhouse did a number of his plays, and Iknew of Horton. But I first met him whenhe came to see The Midnight Caller. Hecame with Kim Stanleyand Robert Mulligan—who ended up directingTo Kill a Mockingbird—andLillian Foote, his wife. Itwas a great evening. Hewas very friendly. Onetime I went up to hishome in Nyack with Sanford Meisner. Ithink that was even before Hallie was born(laughs). That’s a while back, you know?(Laughter) And he was just very open,very warm and a very supportive guy.ED: He and Lillian, I think, had a long andwonderfully creative marriage. Is it truethat it was Lillian who thought of you whenthey were casting To Kill a Mockingbird?RD: Yeah. About a year or two later, whenthey were casting the part of Boo Radley,she brought my name up. She said,“Remember that boy who was in theplay….“ And Bob Mulligan remembered.And around that time I did Naked City. Itwas my first lead, and it was the first timeI walked down the street and people recog-nized me. (Laughter) I had never thoughtof that before. ED: Was Horton on set while you wereshooting Mockingbird?RD: He was always on the set, and it wasgreat. When we did Convicts, he sat underthe camera, reading. I said, “Horton, you

think I could try this?“ “Oh, go ahead,Bobby.“ Then he’d watch it and when theysaid, “Cut,“ he’d go back to reading orwriting right below the camera. It wasnice to have him around; he brought asupportive kind of energy, you know. ED: Did you work on William Faulkner’sTomorrow? RD: Oh, yeah. We did that Off Broadwayas a play. And it was wonderful. HerbertBerghof directed it, and then, about ayear later, we went off and did it as afilm down in Mississippi. It was a verycomplete experience, to do it as a play,

then as a feature film.It’s funny, years later,many years later, GérardDepardieu saw it andliked it so much that hedistributed it in France. ED: There is something soparticularly Horton about

the Tender Mercies screenplay. There’ssomething Chekhovian about his work.RD: Yeah, I call it—not in a detrimentalway—Hillbilly Chekhov. Rural Chekhov’s abetter way to put it. Very simple. You’vegot to tread carefully. You don’t force any-thing, because it’s very delicate and youneed to treat it that way, but withouttreating it that way, you know? You haveto just do it.ED: It’s very clear what’s going on emo-tionally, but very little of that is actuallyhappening in the dialogue.RD: Exactly.ED: How do you get inside Horton’s char-acters? Do you talk with Horton, or withyour director? RD: You just kind of do a number ofthings. One of the things that I did do forTender Mercies was go to this place calledItaly, Texas, which had a wonderful coun-try band. I would go out and sing withthem on weekends, to get ready for thepart. I’d hang out and drive around, and

they said, “What are you looking for?“ Isaid, “I’m looking for accents.“ (Laughter) Idrove all around East Texas with these twocrazy brothers. You just go with yourinstincts. And it was good to talk toHorton; he reinforced it. He’s immenselysupportive, because he had been anactor. He’s always there if you want totalk with him. ED: Any last insights into Horton’s styleas a playwright?RD: He’s one of our greatest. My wife hasdone several documentaries, one of whichwas on Horton. I remember he was in thelobby one day, and she was just filming.She just let the camera run on him as hewrote. That deep concentration. Hortonjust in another world, as he wrote. It waswonderful to watch. And then to watch itagain on film, and see that deep commit-ment, moment to moment. He writes per-sonally, regionally, but then, without say-ing it, it becomes universal. And Horton isdoing what he’s always done—just explor-ing new facets, new branches. His work isalways connected to a certain kind of peo-ple, in the South, in Texas. It’s verysweet—I call it saccharine, but legitimatesaccharine, legitimate sweetness—andthen that translates into a universaltheme that we can all understand.ED: That’s something I think people arecoming to appreciate about Horton’swork—it is spare and simple. It isSouthern Chekhov, with all the depth ofChekhov. There’s a tremendous passion inhis work. RD: A lot of depth and humor. He has hisown voice. A friend of mine, who is a play-wright and scriptwriter, asked Horton foradvice, and Horton said, “You find yourown voice.“ And he can say that withauthority because his voice is so specific,so absolutely unique.

He writes personally,regionally,

but then,without saying it, it becomes

universal.

C h e k h ov o f t h e S ou t h :

A N I N T E RV I EW w i t h R o b e rt Du va l l

7

I could only talklike that, I could be aplaywright, too. I railedat the injustice of liv-ing in the barren,accent-free—or so Ithought—Sahara ofJackson Heights, NewYork. Thanks to Tennessee Williams andnow this Foote guy, a southern accent wasthe coin of the playwright’s realm. I sawthe movie of Death of a Salesman, which Iwould have liked a lot better if WillyLoman had a Southern accent.

When Lincoln Center Theater an-nounced that it was doing Dividing theEstate, I wanted to see the site of thoseplays Horton has spent over sixty-fiveyears writing about. But I also wantedto hear the sound of those voices.

I arrive at Hobby Airport in Houston.Horton and his daughter Hallie meet meby the baggage claim. We drive to Whar-ton, which is fifty-five miles away onthe highway.

Horton: It used to be half a day’s trip,but Houston’s getting closer every dayto where we live.

In “Dividing the Estate,” a charactersays “There are fools that drive in everyday to Houston to go to work. I say youwouldn’t catch me driving sixty miles noplace just to work.”

The land is flat. Shade trees grow in clumps.Acres of rust-colored fields.

Horton: The drought’s got the corn.Imagine working those fields all year.

We pass white Brahman bulls, sacred inIndia. Gorgeous birds fly around them.

Horton: The Brahmans were broughthere early in the 1900s. They’re the onlyanimals that can stand the heat. Thosebeautiful white birds came from Indiawith the bulls. They feed off insects onthe bulls’ bodies.

Hallie: I saw a blue heron today. A giftof the Brahman bulls.Horton: Look! See the cotton over there?

We pass low green bushes. White balls.

Is this all cotton country?

Horton: No. Oil-well space. Rice farms.Grass farms. Sulfur mines. Wall Streetran Wharton County. Bankers investedin sulfur mines here. One day the sul-fur dried up and the investors aban-doned the fields. French companieswanted to buy this land to storenuclear waste, but it was stopped. TheColorado River, the Brazos River waterthe rice farms. San Antonio is trying tobuy up the rights to our water, which

5 April 1953 A fifteen-year-old boy watches A Young Lady of Property on ThePhilco Television Playhouse. The fifteen-year-old Texas girl wants to go to Hollywood to pursue her dream of being a movie star, but gives that up when she must fight to keep her home. I am the boy. I burst into tears.

The young actress with the extravagant accent between a drawl and a cry of pain was Kim Stanley.

The playwright was Horton Foote.

Some people had all the luck.

M y T r i p t o B o u n t i f u lb y J O H N G U A R E

IF

The Metropolitan M

useum of Art, Purchase, Sam

ual J. Wagstaff Jr. Bequest of Lila Acheson

Wallace Gift, 1994 (1994.245.12). ©

Walker Evans Archive, The M

etropolitan Museum

of Art.

frightens the local farmers. See the pecantrees. They’re the last ones to shed theirleaves and the last ones to bloom.

We pass a row of fantastical tepees.

Horton: The TeePee Motel from the1920s. A woman came into money andrestored it. In that last movie of Lolita,Jeremy Irons and Lolita stopped therewhile crossing America.

I see a good-sized building. The Wharton Museum. Next to it is a small white frame house.

Horton: Dan Rather wasborn there. They moved hishouse to the museum. Thesame doctor who deliveredDan delivered me. You’ll meetDr. Davidson’s grandson to-morrow at the country club.

JOHN: I never imagined Wharton beingso grand. Horton: You haven’t seen the countryclub.

Horton: San Antonio is South Texas.Marfa is West Texas. But Wharton wasknown as the heart of the Gulf Coast,which is forty miles away. When I grewup, Wharton had twenty-five hundredpeople and half of them were black. Thewhites were mostly kin to each other.

“Entering Wharton,Population 9,237.”

We pass over the Colorado River, which made the town so fertile.

SNAPSHOT:A grand stone house on Richmond

Road, with pecan trees in front.

Horton: That’s the Dividing the Estatehouse.

I turn around!

Horton: It’s also the house of the Car-petbagger’s Children. The last remainingheirs wanted to tear down the houseand sell the two lots, but the town saidthe house was too beautiful to teardown, so there it sits, empty.

Houston Street, lined with pink flowered bushes.

Horton: Crape myrtle. The only plantthat can withstand the heat.JOHN: The Brahman bulls of the flowerworld—Horton: Yes—and me. We three can standthe heat.

The temperature is in the nineties.

SNAPSHOT:Horton’s house at 505 Houston Street. One-story bungalow style. The air conditioner is on high.

HALLIE: The electrical bills are astro-nomical, but you have to have it.JOHN: Were you born in this house?Horton: I was born over at the cornerof Gallagher and Burleson. My grand-parents, whose house is directly throughthe backyard, built this house as a pre-sent for my parents when I was born, in1916. We moved in in 1918.

Horton shows me an ancient Bible thatcame into his possession only two days ago.

SNAPSHOT :

8

JOHN: You’ll take me there.Horton: Tomorrow.

The town square. The imposing courthouse.

Horton: They’d have lynchings here infront of the courthouse if a black persongot out of line.

No one to get out of line now.

Horton: On a Saturday, when I was aboy, you could not walk here for all thecotton workers, blacks and whites, fill-ing the streets, having a good time.Then machines started picking the cot-ton, which killed Wharton. The PlazaHotel used to be there. Next to it yousee the Plaza Theater. They don’t showmovies anymore. They do plays.

The season’s poster:“Dracula.” “Grease.”Wait! Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sinatra present“The Traveling Lady,” by Wharton’s own Horton Foote, for six performances.

JOHN: What an unlikelycombo. But isn’t Frankdead?Horton: It’s Frank Si-natra Jr. HALLIE: Frank Jr. lives hereoff and on with his some-times ex-wife, Cynthia,who’s from Wharton andworks as a public defenderof war criminals in Bosnia.She met Frank Jr. whenshe was singing in LasVegas.Horton: This corner restaurant that’sclosed was where Outlar’s Pharmacy was.Outlar’s had soda-fountain curb service.You’d pull up in your car and order anice-cream soda. The counter man wouldbring it out to you. It was the height ofsophistication.

Milam Street. Horton points out a beauty-supply shop called Razzmatazz.

Horton: This was the site of my fa-ther’s clothing store.

We look in. I can’t see anything.

JOHN: We’ll go in tomorrow?Horton: No need to go in tomorrow.Nothing’s the same. HALLIE: The tin ceiling is the same. Horton: The tin ceiling is the same, butI don’t go in there. When I was a boyworking here, I told a black customerwho’d come to buy a shirt how wedreaded the oncoming of the new cot-ton-picking machines. He said, “Haveyou ever picked cotton?“ I said, “No.“He said, “Then you’ll never know how

happy the invention of those machinesmakes me.“HALLIE: See that corner? That’s thebank in The Roads to Home where Mr.Hood shot Mr. Gifford.

9

The Metropolitan M

useum of Art, Purchase, Sam

ual J. Wagstaff Jr. Bequest of Lila Acheson W

allace Gift, 1994.Photo top left: (1994.245.44) and right (1994.245.63).©

Walker Evans Archive, The M

etropolitan Museum

of Art. Photo bottom

left courtesy of the How

ard Greenberg Gallery ©

Walker Evans Archive, The M

etropolitan Museum

of Art.

A woman in another town said to some-one, “Do you have a friend in Wharton? I came across a Bible in an antique storethat he should have.”

Horton opens the yellow pages. Columns written in ink:

“Albert Horton Foote born Wharton, TX 17th day of

June, 1890.”

“Lily Dale Foote born On October 26, 1891 in

Wharton, TX.”

Horton: My father and my aunt. Imag-ine a stranger finding this somewherenot around here. JOHN: How did it get there? Horton: Families come apart. Familieslose things.

SNAPSHOT:An after-dinner walk.

Horton: Breathe deep. My father wouldsay, “That’s the Gulf you’re tasting.“You asked me where Wilma lived in AYoung Lady of Property. See those firetrucks? They tore down Wilma’s housefor the fire department. JOHN: What happened to Wilma?Horton: I’m afraid Wilma grew up tobecome the very sad Bertsie in Last ofthe Thorntons.

Why Harrison?

Horton: My grandfather’s middle name.

I realize I’m in two places. I may have come to Wharton, Texas, but my real destinationis the place Horton called Harrison.

Horton: “It’s so quiet, so eternally quiet.I’d forgotten the peace and quiet.“ That’sa line from Trip to Bountiful.

hoods and carrying torches. Where werethey going? Years later, I was lookingthrough my grandfather’s things in thehouse on Richmond Road and I cameupon a white robe packed away. “Whatis this, Grandmother?“ I knew it was aKKK outfit. She took the robe from meand told me my grandfather had gone toa meeting once, but the meeting was allabout hating Jews and Catholics, whichhad nothing to do with the victory ofthe North or improving the South. Henever went to another meeting.

To East Columbia.

We pass a Baptist church with a sign out front: “Where Hearts Are Healed and Minds Transformed.”

Horton: Johnson grass and Baptistchurches take up most of Texas. John-son grass is a weed.JOHN: Are the people in Dividing theEstate Baptists?Horton: No. The Gordons are Meth-odists, who thought themselves a littlebetter than Baptists. But no one was asgrand as the Episcopalians.

We talk about William Inge, who toldHorton that they wrote about the samecountry.

Horton: The last time I saw Bill, heblamed his agent, Audrey Wood, fornot sending out his plays, not beingsupportive of his new work. He killedhimself a month later. Tennessee feltthe same way about Audrey. That shewas letting time pass them by—theyweren’t in fashion.

JOHN: Did you feel the same way?Horton: Of course.JOHN: But you didn’t kill yourself.Horton: No. I moved to New Hamp-shire. I had to consider giving up a the-ater which by 1965 no longer existed asfar as my talent knew it. My wife and Italked about becoming dealers of EarlyAmerican antiques.HALLIE: Moving was fine for them. Itwas hell for me. I had to leave myjunior year in high school, in Nyack,New York, and say goodbye to myfriends and become a stranger. Every-body else in the family liked NewHampshire.

Horton and Lillian may have contem-plated a new profession, but while there he started writing the nine plays of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle.”

I asked Hallie if she felt that her fatherhad gone out of fashion.

HALLIE:No. People in town thought Dadwas a crazy rich New Yorker who’d stayup all night writing and then walk onour dirt road wearing his pajamas, fig-uring out his plays. People thought hemust be an alcoholic. My sister, Daisy,would say, “Daddy, put on some clothes.“Horton: Did they say that?HALLIE: See, he never knew.

We enter Brazoria County.

Horton: This landscape belongs moreto Louisiana than Texas. See those liveoaks? Something’s happened to theSpanish moss that grew on the liveoaks. It’s not there anymore. JOHN: That’s the spooky moss?HALLIE: Yes. It’s a parasite.Horton: What are you calling a parasite?HALLIE: Spanish moss.Horton: Don’t say that. HALLIE: It is. Spanish moss is a parasite.Horton: Then it’s a very pretty parasite.

SNAPSHOT:Horton’s study.

Horton shows me an old book, A Historyof Wharton County, that lists townspeoplewho were slaveholders in 1860. He pointsto Albert Clinton Horton.

Horton: My great-grandfather owneda hundred and seventy slaves. My great-grandfather was the lieutenant gover-nor of Texas and the second-richestman in Texas. He invested all hismoney in Confederate bonds. He alwaysbelieved Jefferson Davis would returnto power after the Civil War and set upthe Confederacy in Mexico and thebonds would be redeemed.

Breakfast.

JOHN: Last night I read your firstBroadway play, in 1944. Horton: Only the Heart. Terrible title.JOHN: You mention the KKK in it. Horton:[A pause]. My grandfather cameover here to get me one night. I wasasleep, but my grandfather said to myparents, “The boy has to see this.“ Hebundled me up and took me throughthe yard to Richmond Road to see aparade of men riding by silently onhorseback wearing white sheets and

10

The Metropolitan M

useum of Art, Purchase, Sam

ual J. Wagstaff Jr. Bequest of Lila Acheson W

allace Gift,1994. Photo far left (1994.245.133).©

Walker Evans Archive, The M

etropolitan Museum

of Art.Photo top left and right courtesy of the H

oward Greenberg Gallery.

© W

alker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan M

useum of Art.

East Columbia is twenty-five miles from the Gulf and ninety miles from Houston.There’s a community of beautifully restoredhouses here now, some of the residentscommuting from Houston. The air smellsgreen and lush. This can’t be Bountiful.

We are met by Mrs. Griggs, who is “kin toHorton through the Munsons.” She leads us to a beautifully restored two-story whitefarmhouse of some grandeur. The AmmonUnderwood House, built in 1834. Sheopens it for us. I see photos from the 1870s,’80s, ’90s of boats on business and pleasure,boats clogging the Brazos River, the shorescrowded with life. The whole site is Edenic.

A photo of a beautiful two-story house with verandas on both levels. People standproudly in front of the house.

Horton: That’s my great-grandfatherJohn W. Brooks, and my great-grand-

mother Harriet Gautier Brooks and theirchildren standing in front. That boythere is my grandfather Tom Brooks. Wealways called him Papa Brooks. Thehouse stood over there, behind theUnderwood House. Then the railroadcame through and killed the river busi-ness. This house deteriorated to such astate that people tore it down. Thenthe river took the land and everythingwas gone. Papa Brooks died in 1925,leaving a family of seven. His familyalways talked about life here in EastColumbia as a kind of paradise. I don’tcome here now to mourn the grandeurbut only to think on what happened toour family.

Not only is this Bountiful but I realize thatthe Brooks property was Horton’s BelleReve whose loss haunted Blanche DuBois

and her family. Horton has an actuallost family home in his past, whereasTennessee’s Belle Reve was only in hisimagination. Horton’s feelings about thisplace inspired “The Trip to Bountiful;”he’s always trying to get back here.

JOHN: I thought of Bountiful as bleak.Run-down.Horton: Bountiful is two places. TheBountiful of my play feels like EastColumbia but looks like the town ofGlen Flora. We’ll go there tomorrow. JOHN: I thought your life was idyllic.Horton: Not so. I had three uncles—Brother, Speed, and Billy, who wasonly six years older than me. Brotherjoined the Merchant Marine and gotmarried. They had a boy, Tom. One daymy grandmother got a call fromArizona that Brother had died while

working as a fruit picker. Shewent out there and broughthim back and buried himhere in Wharton. He was thefirst of her boys to die. Speedwas very personable. Mygrandmother set him up herewith a cleaning business, buthe went off to Houston andgot arrested for drugs andwent to San Quentin. Mymother’s sister, who was asocial worker in Houston,said the minute it was an-nounced that Speed was be-ing released and coming backhome the phone began toring. The drug dealers gothim. He’s buried here. Billydrank and drank. He went toDallas to become a lawyer. Mygrandmother set him up witha law office here in Wharton.He came to it for one day andleft town the next. He mar-

The air smells green and lush. This can’t be Bountiful.

11

ried an alcoholic in Houston, and theyhad terrible rows. After one of her beat-ings, he was never the same. He’s alsoburied here. Brother’s son, Tom, was afinalist for the role of the boy in the 1947MGM movie The Yearling, with GregoryPeck. But a boy named Claude Jarman Jr.landed the part. Tom was a lost boy. Wegot word he died about ten years ago. Noone could ever help him. I don’t thinkthere’s anything worse than not beingable to find someone who can diagnosewhat’s wrong with you. It’s just totaldestruction.

JOHN: And what saved you?Horton: I had a built-in somethingthat said stay away from certain things.And I was ambitious to be a wonderfulactor. In my heart, I didn’t think I reallywas going to be. But I sure wanted to be.And I was very obedient. JOHN: Why haven’t you written aboutthese uncles? Horton: I can’t write about everything.

But he has. Outlaws, irresponsible men at the heart of so many of his plays. “The Traveling Lady.” “The Chase.”Talking Pictures.” “Dividing the Estate.”

Dinner at the Wharton Country Clubwith Charles Davis, a burly rancher,whose grandfather delivered Horton andDan Rather and Charles himself. BettyJoyce, who must have looked like ArleneDahl, the red-haired movie star. MyrtisOutlar, whose family owned the phar-macy with the curb service, is “soignée,”

very Upper EastSide. They’re twodecades youngerthan Horton andbecame friends withhim and Lillianwhen they’d comeback on visits.Maggie, whose lastname I’m trying to get, is the ex-daughter-in-law of Eppie Murphree,Horton’s high-school dramateacher. Maggie’sdaughter, Lisa, whoteaches acting inOrlando, Florida,grades two throughtwelve, produces a book that shefound at home:Boleslavsky’s text-book, “Six Lessons

in Acting.” On the front page of thebook, in florid handwriting, are thewords “Property of Horton Foote.”

JOHN: Horton, you’ve received two lostbooks in the past forty-eight hours. Isnothing ever lost in Wharton?

The waiter appears. Catfish? The othershave theirs fried. Grilled for me. Mistake.The fried is delicious.

JOHN: Do you all come to New York tosee Horton’s plays?MYRTIS: You bet we do. CHARLES: We saw Young Man from Atlanta. BETTY JOYCE: We’re coming to LincolnCenter for Dividing the Estate.MAGGIE: I don’t get out of Wharton.

I ask them about their lives, but they want to know what Burt Lancaster waslike to work with in “Atlantic City.”

Was everyone in Wharton this nice? Horton must have X-ray vision to see what is imperceptible on the surface.

Driving home.

JOHN: Horton, none of those peoplesounded like Kim Stanley. Horton: I don’t know if anybody ever did.JOHN: Did you ever have an accent?Horton: When I got to Pasadena Play-house, my instructors pointed out thatmy accent would make it difficult forme to get acting jobs. I used my lunchmoney to go to a coach and learnedwhat passed for proper English.

We’ve passed the train station, which looks in good repair.

Horton: Except there’s no tracks run-ning anywhere near it.JOHN: Did you leave for Pasadena fromthat train station?Horton: No. My family drove me toHouston, where I took the bus. Theycried and cried.JOHN: You were seventeen. Did yourfather give you any advice?Horton: Yes, “I’ll always love you nomatter what, but if you vote Republi-can you’re no son of mine.”

Horton must have X-ray vision to see what is imperceptible on the surface.

12

The Metropolitan M

useum of Art, Purchase, Sam

ual J. Wagstaff Jr. Bequest of Lila Acheson W

allace Gift, 1994. Photo left(1994.245.56). Photo right from

top (1994.245.17) and (1994.245.15). © W

alker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan M

useum of Art

Hallie takes me to the scene of “A YoungLady of Property.” I look at the aban-doned house and can still feel the 1953power of Kim Stanley sitting there andrevealing to Joanne Woodward her plansto move to Hollywood and become a star.

(Years later, I wondered if this tale ofsomeone seeking salvation in flight toCalifornia planted the seed for my play“House of Blue Leaves.”)

I ask Hallie to photograph me here. ALatino leans out of the house next door.

JOHN: I’m doing a story on a greatwriter who wrote a play that was set inthis house. MAN: Oh, man. HALLIE: And he was born two housesdown.MAN: In what house?HALLIE: That house right there.MAN: That’s my mamma’s house.JOHN: Your mamma lives there now?MAN: Yes.JOHN: What’s your name?MAN: Lupe Guerra. That means “war“ inEnglish.JOHN: You look very peaceful.LUPE: We get along with all the neigh-bors. What’s your name?JOHN:John Guare. My name sounds likeyours, but it doesn’t mean “war.“LUPE: Glad to meet you.JOHN: Wait a minute. I want to record you.LUPE: Oh, no.JOHN: Tell the folks in New York whoyou are.LUPE: I’m Lupe Guerra. JOHN:Your mama lives in a famous house.LUPE: That’s what you’re telling me.That’s a great house inside, man. It’sstill neat.

band, the mother tore down the house.That portico is all that’s left of the oldhouse.

My last morning, I open Boleslavsky’s “First Six Lessons.” The third lesson:

“The only real rules in art are the rules that we discover for ourselves.”

Years ago, I berated fortune for not lettingme live in a town like Wharton, speakingwith a fantastic accent like the one peoplethere used to have or maybe only KimStanley ever had. I apotheosized Horton’slife, discounting where I lived as an injus-tice. Horton’s reverence for his life mademe find reverence for mine. We all live inour own Wharton, Texas, a.k.a. Harrison.

The places that live in our imagination and our bloodstream are sacred.

JOHN: What’s happened to this sadhouse here?LUPE: Some guy from El Campo’s got it.I asked him to sell it, but he got it fortax-exempt or something. JOHN: Your house is so full of life. LUPE: I’m still remodeling a little bit. Alittle bit of this, a little bit of that.

SNAPSHOTS

Driving to Egypt.

A large factory appears.

HALLIE: That’s the plastic factory theytalk about in Dividing the Estate. It’sowned by Taiwanese, who, I hear, arethe worst polluters in Asia.

The factory’s too big to capture in a coherent photo.

SNAPSHOT:

Glen Flora. What Bountiful feels like. I feel we’re Cary Grant in “North byNorthwest”, and a crop duster will comeout of the blue and fire machine-gun bullets at us.

Horton: That emporium was the cloth-ing store that my father walked to sixmiles every day before he got his ownshop in Wharton.

Bountiful, indeed.

Egypt.

Horton: See that house. The youngboy tried to shoot his mother. Hisfather got in the way. He died fromhis son’s shot. The son ran out acrossthe prairie in his underwear. They puthim away. After she buried her hus-

13

I n t h e C o m pa ny o fH o rt o n F o ot e

Photograph by Keith Carter of Horton Foote taken during the filming of The Habitation of Dragons,

which aired on TV in 1992. Courtesy of the artist and the H

oward Greenberg Gallery, New

York.

15

E D W A R D A L B E E

I was at a writers’ conference a few years ago at which a criticdemeaned a rather good writer as a “regional writer,“ as if thiswere a limitation of some sort.

Well, I began to wonder to myself, must I now reconsider myuninhibited admiration of Proust—perhaps the most regional ofall writers, or Kafka—the Jew in Prague, of Joyce and Beckett—Irish green to their toes, Faulkner and Tennessee Williams—alldrawl? Was regionalism somehow a crutch to be borne?

Certainly, with lesser creators there can be validity to region-alism as a negative thing—if the writer cannot find the tran-scending general in the specific, cannot let us see that “where“is “wherefrom.“

There are critics like that, of course. Horton Foote is a regional writer. The majority of the charac-

ters in his fine plays have not strayed far from their homes, butthis does not make them any less than three-dimensional, doesnot render their failures and sadnesses very much different thanChekhov’s people—very similar, in fact.

Indeed, whenever I experience Horton’s work I am remindedof Chekhov—of his foolish, trapped, funny and poignant char-acters, how, if we cannot translate their situation to those of peo-ple we know, wherever we abide, then the “regionalism“ whichinhibits us is most likely our own and not Chekhov’s—or Horton’s,for that matter.

T O N Y K U S H N E R

Gentleness, charm, wit, quiet dignity and decency are not attrib-utes one immediately associates with drama, unless one is familiarwith the work of the dramatist Horton Foote. In these greatplays by one of our greatest playwrights, no tricks or gimmicksare used, nothing is done to shock, to wheedle or extort powerfulfeelings of terror or pity. We encounter instead disarminglyunforced representations of human beings inhabiting a past,magically resurrected by the playwright’s precise, generous, joy-ful, grieving imagination. We encounter, in unexpected mom-ents, tragedy, frailty, stunning endurance and grace. These areplays of a painful and uplifting honesty, constructed by a masterwith flawless craft. That they are profoundly poetic is all themore remarkable for their perfect fidelity to the language ofeveryday life. These characters, absolutely plausible in their ordi-nariness, so specific to their region, become, as we watch themlive their lives, indelible and universal. There’s no gift more valu-able that drama can give.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning and Tony-nomi-nated playwright and Academy Award-winning and Emmy Award winning–screen-writer, Horton Foote is known as “theChekhov of the small town” for his sub-tle, life-affirming stories about everydaypeople. At the age of ninety-two, he con-tinues to be one of the “strongest, mostindividual and most abidingly relevantvoices in theater.” (The New York Times)

1916Horton Foote is born on March 14, in Wharton, Texas, to Harriet GautierBrooks and Albert Horton Foote.

1925The death of Foote’s grandfather TomBrooks marks what Foote sees as the end of the Old South and the beginning of modern Wharton. According to the local Wharton paper, “Springing from the chivalric environs of the Old South,

[Brooks] was true to [the] best tradition[of the South]. His place will not be filledin our community life in this generation.”Foote recalls, “Until my grandfather’sdeath, life seemed to me just magic...back then, death had no reality for me.”

1927Foote receives his “calling” to become anactor: “When I was eleven, I got a call, so to speak, not to be a preacher but anactor....And I never wavered from that call either until I began writing, some tenyears later, and the desire to act left me as suddenly as it had arrived.”

1929–1941The Great Depression. Foote works part-time in the men’s clothing store owned byhis father until 1933. Together, they sup-port their family during the Depression.

1933One year after graduating from highschool, Foote attends acting school atPasadena Playhouse in California.

1936Foote moves to New York City to beginhis career as an actor. He becomes afounding member of the American ActorsCompany (AAC).

1939After a series of improvisation exerciseswith dancer and choreographer Agnes deMille, Foote writes his first one-act play,Wharton Dance: “I never in my wildestdreams ever thought I’d ever be a writer.”

1940Foote returns to Wharton, where he writeshis first full-length play, Texas Town. Itis produced by AAC.

T H E L I F E A N D T I M E S O F H O R T O N F O O T E

Tony Kushner quote was taken from

Three Playsby H

orton Foote, with a

forward by John Guare, forthcom

ing from Northw

estern University Press.

16

1941–45 World War II. Foote’s brother Tom Brooks,a radio pilot in the Air Force, is shotdown in 1944.

1944Foote’s first published play, Only the Heart,premieres on Broadway, starring MildredDunnock as India Hamilton, Will Hare asAlbert Price, June Walker as Mamie Borden,and Maurice Wells as Mr. Borden.

1945Foote marries Lillian Vallish. He hadappeared in a living tableau called Rail-roads on Parade at the 1939 World’s Fairand recalls, “That’s how I got the moneyto write my first play. My wife came tosee that, actually. She didn’t know thatshe was looking at her future husband.…We were very much in love.”

1952–54 Under the direction of Fred Coe, Footewrites a number of television plays withThe Philco Television Playhouse. Thisprocess leads to the creation of the fictionalized town of Harrison, Texas.Foote has revisited this town through-out his literary career.

1953 Foote writes The Trip to Bountiful tele-play for The Philco Television Playhouse,which stars the film star Lillian Gish as Carrie Watts. Gish was famous forroles in more than 120 films that span-ned the silent and the “talkie” eras.

1956The Foote family moves to Nyack, New York.

1962Foote writes the script for the filmadaptation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill

HORTON AT HIS DESK, 1988

HORTON AND LILLIAN FOOTE, 1956

HORTON, AGE 6

a Mockingbird and wins an AcademyAward for Best Adapted Screenplay.

1965–73 The Vietnam War leads to the politiciza-tion of the New York theater scene. Footefalls out of critical favor, and moves hisfamily to New Hampshire. There, he writesthe screenplay for Tomorrow (1972). Mean-while, in London he writes the book forthe West End musical version of Gone withthe Wind (1972).

1972Foote’s parents move from Wharton, Texas,to New Hampshire to live with their sonuntil their passing a few years later.

1974–1978 The death of his parents inspires Foote towrite The Orphans’ Home Cycle, a seriesof nine plays set in Harrison, Texas.

THE FOOTE FAMILY, WITH HORTON SITTING IN THE ROCKER WITH HIS AUNT LAUREL, 1921

1983Foote writes Tender Mercies, for whichhe wins a second Academy Award forBest Screenplay. Robert Duvall also winsan Academy Award for his portrayal ofMac Sledge.

1985The Trip to Bountiful is produced as afilm. Foote is nominated for an AcademyAward for his screenplay, and GeraldinePage wins an Academy Award for herportrayal of Carrie Watts.

Foote’s play The Road to the Graveyard pre-mieres Off Broadway as part of EnsembleStudio Theater’s One Act Play Marathon.Frank Rich writes in The New York Times,“Foote has been writing about a changingTexas for decades. This work may beamong the finest distillations of his con-cerns, accomplished with a subtlety thatsuggests a collaboration between Faulkner

and Chekhov.” After almost a twenty-year absence, Foote is once againembraced by the American theater.

1986Off Broadway, Molly Ringwald stars inLily Dale, while Matthew Broderick and Hallie Foote co-star in The WidowClaire, the third and fourth plays in The Orphans’ Home Cycle.

1987PBS’s American Playhouse premiere ofthree plays from The Orphans’ HomeCycle: Courtship, On Valentine’s Day, and1918, under the umbrella title The Storyof a Marriage.

1989Dividing the Estate premieres at Prince-ton’s McCarter Theatre and is subsequentlyproduced by Great Lakes Theater Festivalin 1991.

1991 Foote writes the screenplay for the adap-tation of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Miceand Men, starring John Malkovich anddirected by and starring Gary Sinise.

1992 Lillian Vallish Foote dies. Not only werethe Footes happily married for forty-sevenyears; Lillian Foote was also her husband’sco-producer on The Orphans’ Home Cycleand other productions. “My wife I missenormously, which will be a constant forthe rest of my life,” Foote says.

The Roads to Home opens at the Lamb’sTheater, with Rochelle Oliver, Jean Staple-ton, and Hallie Foote.

1994–1995 Off Broadway, Foote’s play The Young Manfrom Atlanta premieres as part of a sea-son-long tribute to his work at SignatureTheatre Company in New York. The playwins Foote the Pulitzer Prize.

L O I S S M I T H

I know it’s not a new idea, to say that collaboration, workingtogether, is one of the necessities and glories of theater withHorton Foote. I had a most particular experience.

I was privileged to play Carrie Watts in Horton’s play The Trip toBountiful, first at the Signature Theatre in New York and then at theGoodman Theatre in Chicago. Horton was in near-constant atten-dance at rehearsals and performances. His nourishing presence pro-vided auspicious conditions for planting and growing: seeds of char-acter, trust, action, interaction, event. I felt free to try anything.

Sensitive to director Harris Yulin’s fluid design and keen graspof Carrie Watts’s journey, Horton said one day in rehearsal, “Wecould do this without an intermission.“ Then he worked with hiscolleagues—Harris, designers, all of us—to make that happen. Inits first stage production on Broadway, in 1953, it was a three-actplay. I was thrilled and impressed with the continuous flow andunity the new form brought to the play.

In performance, at the end of the play, he would be there,speaking with me, watching the process, grateful as discoveries,changes, nuances, and differing emphases occurred.

There was a particularly challenging passage, late in the play,when Carrie is at last, briefly, in Bountiful. The intimacy of Carrie’spain moves to an expansive understanding, about this earth we liveon and are part of. We worked on it, wondered at it, night afternight. It was his play, which he had first seen produced over fiftyyears ago, and many times since. But he made me know that heand I were working on the play together, and kept on doing sountil the last curtain call.

HORTON, 1939

HORTON, LILLIAN, AND THEIR CHILDREN, 1957

Photograph by Keith Carter of Horton Foote at his desk, 1988. Courtesy of the artist and the H

oward Greenberg Gallery.

17

Family photographs courtesy of Hallie Foote.

1997 The Young Man from Atlanta, in aGoodman Theatre production starringShirley Knight, William Biff McGuire,and Rip Torn, and directed by RobertFalls, returns Foote to Broadway for thefirst time since the 1954 production ofThe Traveling Lady. Matthew Broderick,Ellen Burstyn, Hallie Foote, and PollyHolliday star in the premiere of TheDeath of Papa, the ninth and final playof The Orphans’ Home Cycle. The produc-tion is directed by Michael Wilson.

1998Foote wins the Academy of Arts andLetters Gold Medal for Drama.

2000President Clinton awards Foote theNational Medal of Arts.

Foote’s play The Last of the Thorntonspremieres Off Broadway in a Signature

Theatre production starring Hallie Footeand Estelle Parsons and directed byJames Houghton.

2002 Foote’s The Carpetbagger’s Children, star-ring Hallie Foote, Roberta Maxwell, andJean Stapleton, and directed by MichaelWilson, has its New York premiere atLincoln Center Theater.

2004Foote’s The Day Emily Married, starringHallie Foote, William Biff McGuire, and Estelle Parsons, and directed byMichael Wilson, has its New York pre-miere at Primary Stages.

2005Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, starringDevon Abner, James DeMarse, HallieFoote, and Lois Smith, and directed byHarris Yulin, is revived Off Broadway bySignature Theatre. The play garners aLortel Award for Outstanding Revival.

2006Foote receives a Drama Desk Award forLifetime Achievement.

2007Foote’s Dividing the Estate has its NewYork debut at Primary Stages. The playearns Foote an OBIE Award and anOuter Critics Circle Award for OutstandingOff Broadway Play.

2008The Goodman Theatre produces theHorton Foote Festival, featuring the production of four plays—celebratingHorton Foote’s illustrious career.

Lincoln Center Theater, in associationwith Primary Stages, presents Dividingthe Estate on Broadway.

At the age of ninety-two, Horton Foote isstill writing and remains involved in thetheater community. He has no thought ofretiring.

E L I Z A B E T H A S H L E Y

I’ve lusted to be in a Horton Foote play for twenty-five years! Eversince I didn’t get the part in Tender Mercies (damn that BettyBuckley!). It was worth the wait.

If it was within my power to gift the theater with the very bestthing I’ve learned in my fifty years on the stage, I would giveevery young (and more than a few old) playwrights a week inrehearsal with Horton Foote. He is on site all day, every day—totally involved with the director and the actors. He doesn’t justlisten, he actually watches! Beware of “radio writers,“ who closetheir eyes and listen to their words—they tend to want a recital.(It’s true, it’s true. You know it’s true!)

Horton is extremely attuned to the nuance, struggle, andpainful journey of actors. You know how we do, picking our waythrough, trying to find the center of the middle of the marrow ofour characters—often to the dismay of playwrights who “don’tsee why all that’s necessary—just say the damn lines!“

When I was in previews with Dividing the Estate, I had onetwo-word line: “Too bad.“ I was having a terrible time saying it.I just couldn’t discover where it was coming from; I always feltfalse and filled with dread as that moment approached. So I wentto Horton with every intention (in my actorette’s little black self-serving heart) of getting him to cut it.

Now, you just don’t say to Horton Foote, “I don’t know howto say it, so please cut it.“ NO NO NO NO! You go through this

endless rigmarole of explaining, justifying, blah-blah-blah. Hortonlistened patiently, then said, “Well, she’s always been a ruler, soshe knows how.…“ And there it was, the totality of my character. Likemagic, I was inside her. Horton knew I was standing on the edge,and he gave me permission to fall over into that golden place whereyou know your character and your character knows you.

Way back when I was young—about a thousand years ago—I was, for a short time, madly in love with a brilliant young nov-elist who was having his first screenplay produced by a majorHollywood studio. The screenplay was an outrageous, radicalpiece of American heresy, and my writer was obsessed with havingthe great Robert Altman direct it. But the studio (in its infinitewisdom) said, “No way, Altman is too creatively demanding. He’snot hot anymore, and his career is probably over.“ (This was theearly 1970s.) Of course, the studio got its way. A pedestrian(manageable) director was hired, and my writer was heartbroken.When I asked why it had to be Altman, he said, “Because he hassuch hard affection for his characters.“

Along with Horton’s wisdom, truth, understanding, joy, story-telling genius, outrageous humor, and beautiful language, there’sthat hard affection he has for the human animal. On the stage,hard affection beats love by a Mississippi mile!

A version of this timeline appeared in the Goodm

an Theatre program for

the Horton Foote festival.

18

19

Because Texas is so integral to Horton Foote’s work, we turned to anextraordinary photographer, Keith Carter, whose work is deeply rootedin the Texas landscape.

Editor: When you decide to photograph someone, what’s yourprocess? Keith Carter: I always look for light first, then background. Peopleare generally more comfortable in their own surrounds, so I usethem if at all possible. ED: How does that process change when you’re photographing a place?KC: It doesn’t change radically. For me, the portrait is the ultimatecalling. I try to treat everything, including “place,” like a portrait.ED: Your work seems to hint at the mythologies behind the every-day. What do you look for when you go to take a photograph?KC: I look for oblique angles and awkward pauses, those momen-tary glimpses of occasional askew moments when flashes of heavenappear as readily as your own reflection in water.ED: When did you first meet Horton Foote? When did you firstphotograph him?KC: I first met Horton at a Galveston dinner party, held in hishonor, at the Horton Foote Film Festival in the late eighties. Itold him his work had inspired what was to become my firstbook, From Uncertain to Blue, which was a look at small towns andfor which he later wrote a lovely introduction. I first photo-graphed him a year or so later, when he and Lillian invited mywife, Pat, and me for a visit. ED: What is it like to take photographs of the same subject over time?KC: It’s a pleasure for me to participate in the relationship we allhave to the passage of time, ideas of place, and, ultimately, to mem-ory. On another note, I’ve been photographing my wife for overthirty years now. It’s a festival of changing beauty and hairstyles.(See photographs of Pat Carter from 1972 to 2007 at left.)ED: Both you and Horton have maintained a deep commitmentto Texas—its landscape, its people, and its stories. Could you talka little bit about your relationship with Texas and its relationshipto your art? KC: Horton’s work helped me to realize that a small town (andTexas itself) is a mythological place where everything that hap-pens in the greater world at large also happens, but on a moreintimate scale. His work also helped me to value the idea ofputting down roots, and not be sentimental about doing so. Texashas always had great history, characters, people, and stories. I’mnever quite certain if people define a landscape or it’s the otherway around.

t e xa s l i g h tAN INTERVIEW

with Keith Carter

Photographs from top of Patricia: 1972, 1983, 1991, 2007

by Keith Carter.All are courtesy of the artist and the H

oward Greenberg Gallery, New

York.

21

Simplicity of means and lucidity of results may not be the universal aims of art throughout the world, but they’re very

nearly so. The brute suavity of French cave-paintings, the mathematically sophisticated but visually spare shapes of

Greek temples, the calligraphic and encoded elegance of Oriental scroll-painting, the Bach Prelude in C, a William Blake

lyric, the final movement of Beethoven’s last piano sonata (opus 111), an Appalachian ballad—who doesn’t love them all?

Millions may resist the polyphonic magnificence, wit, and ecstasy of Bernini’s Saint Teresa; but who has not surrendered

to Michelangelo’s youthful Virgin of the Pietà?

Yet how to describe, or discuss, any such masterpiece? How—in Chesterton’s joke—to play the Venus de Milo on a

trombone? It’s a famous and lamentable limitation of modern aesthetic criticism—whether of the graphic and plastic arts,

literature, music, or performance—that it has proved generally helpless in the presence of apparent “simplicity,“ the illu-

sory purity of means and ends toward universally comprehensible results. Where is there a genuinely illuminating discussion

of Blake’s “Tyger,“ Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,“ or Joan Baez’s traversals of the Child ballads?—one that helps us

understand how and, above all, why such complex but supremely satisfactory ends are achieved in such small and evidently

transparent vehicles. As readers’ minds are most engaged, in narrative fiction, by wicked or at least devious characters, so the

mechanistic methods of modern critics require complexity of means before their intricate gears can begin to grind.

Thus (since I’m here to celebrate three plays) Shakespeare is the critic’s darling among dramatists. Apart from ques-

tions of relative depth and durability of interest, he provides the critic an apparently infinite parade of artifice—one which

anyhow shows no sign of exhausting in their multitudinous hands.

In Europe at least, other dramatists—Racine, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and Shaw—have elicited memorable and still

useful studies. But what American dramatist has yet received similar treatment? Admittedly, our first great playwright has

been dead fewer than forty years. But again, Eugene O’Neill worked with sufficient awkwardness of means toward his

broad and deep effects to make him unattractive to a tribe of critics energized primarily by technical adroitness. An almost

identical assertion might be made for our second internationally significant dramatist, Tennessee Williams. The straight-

forward urgency and eloquence of his best early work—the lean balladic lament of Glass Menagerie or the arpeggiated

rising howl of Streetcar—have yet to receive sustained helpful attention from critics.

Any sympathetic viewer of the recent films and plays of Horton Foote is likely to share the critics’ dilemma. Were you

as deeply moved as I was by his Tender Mercies (1983)? Then can you tell me why? Explain to me how actors—even as

perfect as those he found, even so resourceful a director—could employ so few and such rhetorically uncomplicated

speeches toward the flawless achievement of such a calmly profound and memorable face-to-face contemplation of

human degradation and regeneration. I confidently suggest that even St. Augustine in his Confessions went no farther

toward the heart of that luminous dark mystery than Horton Foote. And I—a novelist, poet, playwright, and critic—can-

not hope to begin to tell you how he has made that longest and hardest of journeys. I can only urge you to look and then

agree or disagree.

In the case of The Orphans’ Home, this monumental cycle of nine related plays, I’m in better luck—though only to this

extent. Though two of the plays have been filmed and several others performed on stage, no one has yet seen all of them

N E W T R E A S U R Eb y R E Y N O L D S P R I C E

Photograph by Edward W

eston, Shell, 1927. Collection of The Center for Creative Photography. ©

1981 Arizona Board of Regents.From

Courtship, Valentine’s Day, 1918: Three Plays from The Orphans’ Hom

e Cycleby H

orton Foote.Introduction ©

1987 by Reynolds Price. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

22

in coherent productions, and given the scattered disorganization of the American commercial theatre and the poverty of the

lively regional companies, no one is likely to see all nine any year soon. But soon all will be readable, and the black-and-

white outlines of Foote’s large scheme will be at least discernible.

For what these texts—and his recent films—demonstrate is how unquestionably Foote is the supreme musician among

our great American playwrights. More even than with Tennessee Williams, Foote’s method (and his dilemma) is that of the

composer. His words are black notes on a white page—all but abstract signals to the minds of actor and audience, signs

from which all participants in the effort (again all those at work on both sides of the stage or camera, including the audi-

ence) must make their own musical entity.

Take the case of 1918, the third play here. A careful reading of its printed text will provide the pleasures we expect

of well–made and intensely felt drama—the gracefully attenuated line of suspense, the nearly devastating crisis, the

unexpected but credible and warm resolution. Despite

the scarcity of stage descriptions or directions to the

actors, we can (if we’re ideally cooperative) construct

our own series of pictures of small-town early twentieth-

century Texas, not that different from small-town America anywhere else—or small-town bourgeois France of the same

time, for that matter. But nowhere can we point to speeches of an extraordinary or heightened eloquence, language

of an “unreal“ intensity or rhythm. Memory is allowed to flow and blossom (for all the plays are loosely based on the

history of Foote’s own families) into universal emotion but only within the strict verbal channels of the quotidian, the

daily norm. Language is pruned and shaped but not visibly transformed.

See the film of 1918 though. And there, within the physical confines of a modest budget, a small company of beau-

tifully restrained and emotionally transparent players perform the minimal text with such grave musical skill as to achieve

a final effect of genuinely transcendent volume. From the bare lines of Horton Foote’s original text—and from nowhere

else really, except the voluble faces of the actors—there pours finally a joyful and unanswerably powerful psalm of praise:

Suffering (to the point of devastation) is the central human condition and our most unavoidable mystery. Yet we can sur-

vive it and sing in its face. The only tonal parallels that come easily to mind—for similar findings, wisdom, and credibility—

are the conclusion of A Long Day’s Journey Into Night or the rapturous final claim of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Yet even

they, for all their grandeur of human love and pardon, are not bolstered by such a glacial weight of evidence as Foote pro-

vides in the prior and succeeding plays of his cycle, rich as it is in all the emotions from farce to tragedy to transcendence.

Courtship and Valentine’s Day are parallel achievements—indeed, the three are grouped as numbers five, six, and

seven in the cycle of nine. When all three volumes of the series have appeared, and The Orphans’ Home can then be

seen whole and entire, I’m confident it will take its rightful earned place near the center of our largest American dramatic

achievements—a slowly generated, slowly won, apparently effortless, surprisingly wide vision of human life that flowers

before our patient incredulous eyes with an opulent richness of fully communicated pleasure, comprehension, and

usable knowledge: a permanent gift.

Reynolds Price received the William Faulkner Award for his first novel, A Long and Happy Life, and the National Book Critics

Circle Award for his novel Kate Vaiden. Price is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences. His new memoir, Ardent Spirits, is forthcoming from Scribner.

...Even St. Augustine in his “Confessions” went no farther toward the heart of that

luminous dark mystery than Horton Foote.

I think that someone will remember us in another time,

Sappho once said—more or less—

Her words caught

Between the tongue’s tip and the first edge of the invisible.

I hope so, myself now caught

Between the edge of the landscape and the absolute,

Which is the same place, and the same sound,

That she made.

Meanwhile, let’s stick to business.

Everything else does, the landscape, the absolute, the invisible.

My job is yard work—

I take this inchworm, for instance, and move it from here to there.

YA R D W O R Kb y C H A R L E S W R I G H T

“Yard Work” from

Negative Blue: Selected Later Poems

by Charles Wright. ©

2000 by Charles Wright. Reprinted

by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

© Frank Gohlke/Courtesy H

oward

Greenberg Gallery, New York.