9/03/2007

Why there is so little "fog of war" in ACW writing

Shelby Foote, from Shiloh - A Novel (1952):
He said books about war were written to be read by God Amighty because no one but God ever saw it that way. A book about war, to be read by men, ought to tell what each of the twelve of us saw in out little corner. Then it would be the way it was - not to God but to us.

I saw what he meant but it was useless talking. Nobody would do it that way. It would be too jumbled. People when they read, and people when they write, want to be looking out of that big Eye in the sky, playing God.