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| Winston Groom | |
Winston Groom, "a Southern writer who found a measure of belated celebrity when his 1986 novel, Forrest Gump, was made into the 1994 Oscar-winning film starring Tom Hanks," died September 17, the New York Times reported. He was 77. Groom had published "three well-regarded novels and a nonfiction finalist for a Pulitzer Prize when he wrote the book that would define him as a writer and turn the Gumpian phrase 'life is like a box of chocolates' into a modern-day proverb." The film grossed more than $670 million globally at the box office, earned 13 Academy Award nominations and won six Oscars, including best picture.
"Forrest Gump is not the only reason to celebrate him as a great writer," said P.J. O'Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who knew Groom for decades. He called Groom's debut novel, Better Times Than These (1978), "the best novel written about the Vietnam War.... And this is not even to mention Winston's extraordinary historical and nonfiction works."
Groom wrote a sequel, Gump & Co. (1995), in the wake of the movie's success. His other books include Conversations with the Enemy (1983), a Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction; Shrouds of Glory (1995); and Patriotic Fire (2006). His most recent book, The Patriots: Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the Making of America, will be released in November by National Geographic.
Don Noble, a University of Alabama professor emeritus of English and 40-year friend of Groom's, noted that the novel Forrest Gump is considerably different from the film: "You can make a lot of money as a comic writer, but you can't get no respect. But Forrest Gump is really actually quite a fine novel. It's more subtle and more complicated... richer than the movie.... One of the ways that you mark the kind of immortality, or possibility of immortality of a writer, is how many characters they put into the popular culture. Most writers never put a character into the popular imagination... but Winston did. Gump entered the language."
Alabama Poet Laureate Jennifer Horne recalled that, as an editor at the University of Alabama Press in the early part of the century, she had worked with Groom on the UA football book The Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History of Football at the University of Alabama. "At the time, I was in awe. He was a big deal, a famous author and all that.... He hit every deadline. He cared about his writing, but he didn't fight with us, as editors. He was just gracious, a gentleman. He did not pull rank.... In your home state you don't necessarily get the credit you deserve. He just kept growing as a writer. You can rest on your laurels, but he didn't do that."