Joan Wylie Hall
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802330
- eISBN:
- 9781496804990
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802330.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter discusses Tom Franklin's fiction. Franklin was born in Dickinson, Alabama, in 1963. Growing up, he watched horror films, created stories for toy action figures, and wrote and illustrated ...
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This chapter discusses Tom Franklin's fiction. Franklin was born in Dickinson, Alabama, in 1963. Growing up, he watched horror films, created stories for toy action figures, and wrote and illustrated his own comic books. His family, devout Pentecostals, demonstrated its faith through healings and speaking in tongues. When Franklin was eighteen, his family moved to Mobile, where he attended the University of South Alabama, earning a BA in English. In 1998 he earned an MFA at the University of Arkansas, where he met and married poet Beth Ann Fennelly. His first book, Poachers, appeared the next year, and he has since published three novels: Hell at the Breech (2003), Smonk (2006), and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (2010). In late 2013 Franklin published The Tilted World, a novel co-written with Fennelly. Poachers is set in a contemporary South whose landscapes have long been under assault. “Grit,” the first story, displays many conventions of Rough South literature.Less
This chapter discusses Tom Franklin's fiction. Franklin was born in Dickinson, Alabama, in 1963. Growing up, he watched horror films, created stories for toy action figures, and wrote and illustrated his own comic books. His family, devout Pentecostals, demonstrated its faith through healings and speaking in tongues. When Franklin was eighteen, his family moved to Mobile, where he attended the University of South Alabama, earning a BA in English. In 1998 he earned an MFA at the University of Arkansas, where he met and married poet Beth Ann Fennelly. His first book, Poachers, appeared the next year, and he has since published three novels: Hell at the Breech (2003), Smonk (2006), and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (2010). In late 2013 Franklin published The Tilted World, a novel co-written with Fennelly. Poachers is set in a contemporary South whose landscapes have long been under assault. “Grit,” the first story, displays many conventions of Rough South literature.
Jean W. Cash and Keith Perry (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802330
- eISBN:
- 9781496804990
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802330.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This book describes and discusses the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the ...
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This book describes and discusses the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. The book starts by distinguishing Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. Other chapters begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later chapters address members of both groups—the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners.Less
This book describes and discusses the work of southern writers who began their careers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They fall into two categories. Some, born into the working class, strove to become writers and learned without benefit of higher education, such writers as Larry Brown and William Gay. Others came from lower- or middle-class backgrounds and became writers through practice and education: Dorothy Allison, Tom Franklin, Tim Gautreaux, Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Silas House, Jill McCorkle, Chris Offutt, Ron Rash, Lee Smith, Brad Watson, Daniel Woodrell, and Steve Yarbrough. Their twenty-first-century colleagues are Wiley Cash, Peter Farris, Skip Horack, Michael Farris Smith, Barb Johnson, and Jesmyn Ward. The book starts by distinguishing Rough South writers from such writers as William Faulkner and Erskine Caldwell. Younger writers who followed Harry Crews were born into and write about the Rough South. These writers undercut stereotypes, forcing readers to see the working poor differently. Other chapters begin with those on Crews and Cormac McCarthy, major influences on an entire generation. Later chapters address members of both groups—the self-educated and the college-educated. Both groups share a clear understanding of the value of working-class southerners.
