Southern Bookman

Tom Franklin: Exploring the Journey From Innocence

   

Tom Franklin grew up in a rural area of southern Alabama, where the wildnerness remained wonder-inspiring as well as threatening. His experience growing up in the woods in a male-dominated culture of hunting gives his novels and stories an authentic power rare in writers of his generation.

    He is among that tribe of writers who has cultivated a small geographical area and given it a mythic universality. His story collection “Poachers” and novels “Hell at The Breech” and “Smonk” display traditional qualities associated with Westerns and America’s earliest frontier narratives, written in highly expressive, lyrical language.

    His work examines wild territory in conflict with the ethical values of the law and civilization. This can illuminate recent times as well as historic eras. His striking visual descriptions give his work a cinematic quality, so that the reader feels he is experiencing the action as if through a camera. The eruption of violence can turn surreal and comic. Nature’s searing beauty also holds the core of mortality and justice.

    Tom is married to the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, also the subject of a Southern Bookman interview. They and their two children live in Oxford, Miss., and they teach at the University of Mississippi.

   

1. You write memorably about killing your first deer in “Hunting Years.” But often in your work, young males’ attempts to achieve manhood end disastrously. Do you consider the success or failure of male rites of passage as one of your main themes?

 

    Yes. My own “rite of passage” was so convoluted and full of pretense I think I'm still waiting to become a man.

    Nat Sobel, my agent, once told me that all my work has, at its center, an innocent who's drawn into violence. I knew he was right. It also features the (mostly) men who've given themselves over to violence, it's their way of life. The journey — it can last a second — from innocence to corruption/guilt fascinates me. And, as you say, for these characters, it often “[ends] disastrously.” That seems a natural course for events where violence prevails, is the default.

     

2.  Nature plays a major role in your books and stories. Do you think you have a special understanding of nature because of your background as compared with other contemporary writers, who often seem to think of nature as a giant amusement park?

 

  I don't think I have a "special understanding" as much as a working knowledge. I'm just writing what I know; since that's where I grew up — a hamlet in Alabama, very rural — it's what I have. 

     Also, I'm drawn to lyrical writing, and for some reason, nature seems appropriate for this type of writing: trees so graceful, so intricate in their design, moss, mushrooms, vines, ivy, all those great things with their great variations, all the different kinds of vegetation, all the colors. Sometimes even the names are lyrical: live oaks, loblolly pine, cypress knees...Then trots a wildcat through, and a man with a gun, and boom, a scene.

 

3. You and your family live in Oxford, the home of William Faulkner. Do you see Faulkner as an influence, especially since you also have a strong sense of place?

 

I see him as more of an influence now that I've moved here. To see the houses he writes about, the graveyard, the cypress trees, to meet people who remember “Bill” (one former neighbor I met remembered WF chasing a mule through his, the neighbor’s, yard), it’s all kind of overwhelming, that this genius lived right here, that I’m standing in Yoknapatawpha County. There’s a picture of him standing by his horse barn, and you can see how short he is; last week my family and I had a picnic there, and I looked again at that barn and marveled that the best writer of the last century had lived here, had stood right there by that barn for a photo.

    I feel his influence as a writer more through Cormac McCarthy. Faulkner seems almost old-timey he's such a giant, like Joyce, or Hemingway, past masters who are of another world entirely. Obviously Faulkner was an influence on McCarthy, but I feel a much larger shadow from McCarthy than from Faulkner.  Not that Faulkner’s is fading, not at all, but that it’s so large and overwhelming it’s more like an act of weather than shadow, the movement of a cloud over a landscape more than something cast by something in front of the sun.

 

4. Violence is frequent in your work, but I find it well-balanced and appropriate. But do you hear criticism about the violence, and how do you respond?

Until my most recent book, “Smonk,” the violence was usually mentioned in a mild kind of warning, but it wasn’t called gratuitous. The kind of people I was writing about live (and lived) with it in their midst, as some people do on a daily basis. We humans, or we American humans, anyway, have gone so far to enhance our comfort that even a hangnail is cause for a disaster. Or at least a minimalist short story. 

Recently I was in Rio and, against my better judgment, went paragliding off a mountain. It was exhilarating in a way I'd never experienced. That night we rode motorcycles up a steep wet mountain into a favela (slum) and hung out with these folks who squat on this mountain and nobody can make them leave. We passed men armed with machine guns, and I thought, after that day, how safe my life normally is.

     I mean, sure, anybody can die at any time, heart attack, falling airplane parts, stray bullets, freak bee attacks, sink holes, diamondback rattlers, etc. But that day, in Rio, I was making decisions that were putting me closer to mortality than I’d been in a long time.  And the cliché’s true: You feel more alive when closer to death.

  

5. What are you working on now?  

 

A novel set in contemporary Mississippi. It's called “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter” (that’s how Southern kids are taught to spell "Mississippi." M, eye, crooked letter crooked letter, eye, crooked letter crooked letter eye, humpback humpback eye). It's about a small-town cop and the man who might or might not have killed a local girl.

Lydia Peelle's Strong Debut

Lydia Peelle, the newest sweetheart of American literature, hits some strong notes in her short story collection,"Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing." Along with a memorable name, with connotations of British drawing rooms and country houses combined with Yuppie trendiness, Peelle has a talent for striking sentences and scenes.

Add another name to our teeming literary pond, so full of writers, so bereft of readers. She's followed a now well-traveled path. Stories with appealing, yearning, first-person narrators, full of regret and possibility (check). A hip, ironic title (check). Physical attractiveness that makes for a nice photo on the book jacket (check). Mention in The New York Times (check). Now working on a novel (check).

We're rich in fine young writers. But, with the novel's demise as a cultural centerpiece, will any of them ever achieve an ambitious, generation-defining book like "Catch 22," "Portnoy's Complaint" or "The Naked and The Dead?" It doesn't appear likely. Their MFA-trained, out of the bin techniques in the final analysis curtail huge ambition, which might have uttered its last gasp with David Foster Wallace.  

Meanwhile, a new anthology, "American Hybrid," gives a strong selection of poets. The theme of the anthology is that over the past 40 years or so, American poets have mixed the best of traditional forms and techniques with experimental effects to achieve a hybrid. The book spans generations, with John Ashbery,Charles Wright and Robert Hass joining those who first made their mark 15 or 20 years ago like Bin Ramke, Donald Revel and Dean Young. Edited by Cole Swensen and David St. John, the book is pushed as a "Norton Anthology of New Poetry." That stretches it a bit, since the youngest poets in the book are already quite familiar. Those who appeared fresh and ground-breaking 15 years ago thus enter the old guard.

Farewell Richard Poirier

I'm sure I've read Richard Poirier's work over the years, but I can't say I can remember any pariticular essays. But I was aware of him as a critic and editor of the Raritan Review. After his death recently, the New York Times ran a strong obituary, followed by an amorphous "appreciation" in the Sunday Week in Review. I couldn't quite figure out what the piece was trying to say, other than that Poirier appreciated literary classics. It was one of those New York Times pieces that strains to appear weighty, but which collapse on close examination.

The Times pieces made me want to go back to read Poirier. Apparently, he wrote an appreciation of The Beatles, seeing them as culturally important. As I said, I didn't recall the piece, or any others that Poirier wrote. I assume the Beatles piece was one of the hallmarks of the old high-brow culture opening to popular culture, for better or worse. The New Criterion crowd sees it as disastrous. The cultural mainstream, as exemplified by the Times, sees it as liberating for high and low culture.

The passing of such a literary figure as Poirier leads one to obvious thoughts that the culture now lacks such central critics/literary figures. We have a number of people writing about books, art and film, but none of them commands the strong general recognition of someone like Poirier, or Lionel Trilling in the '50s and '60s. Youngsters are still starting literary magazines such as Believer and n + 1, but whether they make a significant stir is debatable. 

Perhaps Adam Kirsch will prove me wrong. I hope so. 

Speaking of the Sunday New York Times, Helen Vendler had an odd review in the book review sectioin of a new selected poems by Wallace Stevens. The first paragraph is a long, meandering biographical sketch of Stevens - not exactly a gripping lede. She mentions Stevens relating writing poetry to an act of conscience, but never attempts to explain what Stevens meant. I suppose some poetry could be seen as having a moral purpose, but not all of it. And, it seems close to that old "sincerity" debate. As Auden pointed out, poets aren't required to conform to the literal truth. I assume Stevens wasn't talking about this, but Vendler doesn't say one way or another.

 Vendler made another comment that struck me as odd: That the world needs a new "Selected Poems" by Stevens. After all of the collections, including the Library of America's, of Stevens work, why is a new "Selected" needed? Vendler weakly makes the case. However, I'm sure I'll pick up the tome. I like Stevens' poems, while appreciating the aptness of Berryman's dart at him in "Dream Songs."   

Southern Bookman Interviews

At long last, I've placed the Southern Bookman interviews in the "Pages" section of "Soutern Bookman," where they will be more accessible and permanently visible. So far, I have done interviews with the Brooklyn (way down south in Brooklyn, as the Three Stooges used to sing) poet Tim Suermondt; the poet and critic Rosanna Warren; poet, novelist and essayist Kelly Cherry; poet Beth Ann Fennelly; and novelist and biographer Tracy Daugherty.

Each of them thoughtfully and insightfully answered my questions, for which I remain thankful. The interviews were pushed back as I entered new blogs, and they deserve a place where they can be easily read. I hope this brings them the readership they deserve.

I am looking forward to conducting more interviews in the future. I hope in some small way to be contributing to the literary conversation of the country.  

Thomas Pynchon, Revisited

In a followup to my most recent post, I did find Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" at the library, and am now enjoying its witty, popular-culture referenced return to the '60s. Although some critics have called it "beach reading," I see it as deeper than that. With all of its exaggerated humor and absurd situations, the book paints a realistic picture of those disjointed, creative, paranoid times.

The book can fairly be characterized as "Pynchon light," but it possesses the best qualities of his work, its language displaying the essence of his voice. Many critics will see it as another self-indulgent celebration of the '60s and the hedonism of the counter-culture, but the book implcitly condemns the wasted talent and creativity of the times. It also shows what was lost when the age's best features were lost in commercialization, self-destructiveness and the shocking destruction of the ethos of love and peace. 

"Inherent Vice" lacks the ambition and scope of some of Pynchon's work, but it stands strong as a testament to that lost age. 

Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice" Reconnects With '60s

I'll probably give a try to Thomas Pynchon's new book, "Inherent Vice," although after reading three or four reviews, I feel as if I already know the book. Reviewers nowadays reveal more and more about plot, characters, etc. Anyway, "Inherent Vice" sounds inviting.

From what I can gather, the book is lighter, more "commercial" than Pynchon's other books. Taking place in L.A. in 1970, immediately following the Manson murders, the book is Pynchon's take on detective fiction. One reviewer, Joseph Bottum in the Wall Street Journal (an excellent cultural paper, by the way), even calls it beach reading.

In my youth, I was once a member of the Pynchon cult. Yes, some 40 years ago, I fell in thrall to "V" and "The Crying of Lot 49." Although, reader, I confess to frequently discussing "Gravity Rainbow" with breathless fellow youths at parties, I never could get through it. Sorry, Gravity Rainbow freaks, but that screaming that came across the sky left me bored. And, I found Pynchon's books over the last 15 years ago unreadable. I couldn't take that phony attempt at 18th century writing in "Mason & Dixon," for example, or his attempt to re-create boy's literature in whatever that last book was.

But detective fiction might be a good match for Pynchon themes. If it shows up at the library, I'll check it out, but. sorry Tom, I won't fork over $35 for the new hardcover edition.

One fact did leave me shaking my head: Pynchon is 72 now, only four years younger than Philip Roth. Roth's worth seems of a much older generation. A cultural divide occurred between 1958 and 1962; Pynchon was on the other side of it. It also got me thinking about Pynchon's buddy Richard Farina, who died nearly 40 years ago after publishing his "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me" (another youth cult favorite that I could never get through). Think about all of those dead '60s types who never grew old. Many of those who survived the '60s refuse to grow old. Much of what we loved and believed in is dead now too; probably that's why I'll try "Inherent Vice." In it, Pynchon apparently tries to rediscover that old spirit, which blew away with Manson, Altramont, Vietnam, Nixon, Reagan, whatever. As I read, I'll search through the old CDs, or even maybe the old vinyl records, for "Celebrations for a Grey Day," by Richard and Mimi Farina.