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 on Thursday at his home in Fairhope, Ala. He died in his sleep, most likely from a heart attack, his stepson Frederick Helmsing said. “Forrest Gump” tells the picaresque adventures of an Alabama man who stumbles through contemporary American history with an IQ of 70 and a headful of folksy wisdom. Forrest Gump became, like Huck Finn and Atticus Finch, to name two other fictional Southerners, a beloved American character. His koan-like sayings — “stupid is as stupid does” and the line about chocolates (neither of which appeared as such in the novel) — entered the lexicon as “Gumpisms.”

Source: New York Times September 18, 2020 21:45 UTC