The first scholarly treatment of one of the South's most acclaimed dramatists Even though Texas native Horton Foote has won two Academy Awards for screenwriting and the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, his work remains largely misunderstood. Foote's plays are often considered local color, his interest in history nostalgic, his preoccupation with love and courage sentimental. Based in part on several interviews with Foote and also on an examination of his private papers, Horton Foote and the Theater of Intimacy argues persuasively that Foote's work is a personal form of southern psychological realism, grounded in the creative tension between his desire to report the stories of his region truthfully and his almost religious belief that love remains a source of order, meaning, and identity in twentieth-century life.
Intimacy is also the central issue of the writer's political vision.
While Foote continually examines injustice, especially racial and sexual oppression, he places all social violence in the context of his preoccupation with loving attachments. In this first scholarly analysis of Foote, Wood maintains that the celebrated playwright's primary concern is the absence of love in modern American society, and that he constantly attends to the issue of whether his isolated characters can connect meaningfully with the confusing, violent world around them.