A Certain Style

            I do not take pride in my movie watching ability. In fact, I try to refrain from watching movies that necessitate complex thinking with other people in order to avoid embarrassment. The plot flies over my head and I remain more confused during the end credits than I did during the introduction. In saying this, I find it mind boggling that I predicted a major event in the novel, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter written by Tom Franklin, 70 pages before it happened. For this reason, Franklin’s structuring of his novel does not appeal to my liking as well as his repetitive use of pathos. The author attempts to grab the reader’s attention in the first chapter of his book, detailing out the murder of the character, Larry Ott. However, with no background information on Larry Ott, Franklin uses diction unfamiliar to the reader that creates a tone of confusion and bewilderment. For example, in the first sentence of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Franklin describes how Larry returned home to find “a monster waiting in his house” (1). Is this a metaphorical phrase? Or maybe the monster happens to take the form of a dreaded piece of parchment or bill for example? Perhaps Franklin means that the boogeyman awaited Larry’s return home? Instead of sparking interest within the minds’ of his readers, Franklin creates a jumbled mess of puzzlement. The novelist also decides to jump between past and present day and also between the different perspectives between characters. For example, Franklin concludes chapter eight with the words: “There it was…a place where someone had dug, he realized, a grave” (157). The reader flips the page in apprehension, only to discover a shift in the author’s perspective. Franklin utilizes this peculiar style often within his novel: stopping a chapter right before a climax only to have the same event recapped in a later chapter. This constant discouragement establishes frustration towards the author’s style. Although discouraged, I cannot help but hold in a sob every few pages or so. Franklin describes an event from when the young character, Silas Jones, stood by his mother on the side of a street in the dead of winter with little clothing: “I’m cold, Momma, I want to go back” (105). Franklin utilizes pathos towards the character Larry Ott as well, explaining how his mother has “forgotten her name” from Alzheimer’s disease (159). One cannot help but feel sympathetic towards most of the characters in the Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, therefore not depicting a distinct protagonist and antagonist. Franklin’s style of writing confuses the audience’s feelings towards certain characters as well as complicates the plot by structuring his book in a non chronological way.   The author writes to civilized Americans to think before they criticize because one does not know the troubles a person may deal with.