By Ren Turner
It's an ideal afternoon to be sitting with the novelist Tom Franklin on the porch of Square Books, the venerable bookstore of Oxford, Mississippi that has acted as a type of home base to many literary masterminds of southern fiction including Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, John Grisham, and now Franklin. The combination of the Square, the walls of books on the other side of a swinging door and the remembrance of the greats before, construct a feeling that this is where a writer should be. It seems natural.
A middle aged woman sitting nearby is dabbling through a journal when she recognizes Franklin, and introduces herself. "I took one of your workshops," she says proudly. Franklin shoots her a genuine smile and listens carefully as she reminds him of her name.
"It's wonderful to see you again," he said, "best of luck."
After the publication of Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk, It would be easy to say that Franklin has had the "best of luck." But for eight years Franklin worked long nights at a factory that made sandblasting grit, and then cleaned up hazardous waste sites in order to fund his pursuit for an undergraduate degree from The University of South Alabama. "I don't know how in the hell I did it," Franklin said. "I could not do it now. I was young, I didn’t drink, and I didn’t have a girlfriend."
At Square Books, this is Franklin's last meeting of the afternoon. He has been meeting with students throughout the day, helping to guide their creative writing ventures, providing insight, stories, and laughs. He prefers this porch over his office. Perhaps it is the orange wall and blue floor contrasting well with the leafy green plants that engulf the vista, or the view of the immaculate courthouse, or the memories. Whatever it is, he prefers it.
Franklin's newest novel, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, was released October 5th of 2010. The next day, he signed copies at Off Square Books in Oxford, and gave a reading before a capacity crowd of friends and fans. The week before, The Washington Post praised the work, calling it, "a smart, thoughtful novel that sinks deep into a Southern hamlet of the American psyche," and referred to Franklin as, "a master of subtle withholding."
Jack Fredericks is an English major at Ole Miss and one of Franklin's creative writing students. "We bring one of our stories to class, sit in a circle and the class workshops our writing," said Fredericks. "Tom does a great job of encouraging us, which is what we need as young writers. But he's also honest, and he tells us when things simply don’t work."
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