Here I Come Hollywood

            Why has Hollywood not created a movie after the Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, written by Tom Franklin? The book includes everything a mediocre Hollywood film needs: an interesting plot, relationships that need fixing, and an ending so perfect that even the stone-faced will shed a tear. However, I ironically do not like the ending of the book due to my inability to see past logical reasoning and realism. For example, the character Silas Jones underwent a 25 year span without informing the law about the information he knew on the case of the murder of Cindy Walker. In doing so, he threw another man, Larry, at the pit of societal scrutiny, destroying Larry’s life for a quarter century. As the story unravels, the reader learns that Larry and Jones share the same father. However, instead of Jones receiving punishment for the unimaginable acts he did to his own brother, Jones becomes “a hero” in Chabot, Mississippi (254). Did Jones not commit a crime comparable to that of the famous Penn State legend, Joe Paterno? By keeping their mouths shut and not notifying the police with knowledge to a crime, Jones and Paterno practically ruined people’s lives. For his actions, Paterno received life in prison which leads to his almost immediate death. Foiling Paterno, Jones becomes a hero. I have trouble believing that if Franklin’s novel proved nonfiction, Jones’s future would mirror his outcome in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. I also do not enjoy the ending of Franklin’s book due to Franklin’s repetition of miracles. For instance, after Jones receives a bite from a dog, a doctor informs him that “It’s amazing you’re alive” (253). I know many people that received dog bites in the past, including myself. I also know that all of these victims never came close to dying. How fortunate that Jones’s bite came so close to killing him but never finished the deal. Franklin again describes a miracle of how the character Larry had a bullet shot at him that “just missed” his heart, which then caused Larry to have “a heart attack and then your [Larry’s] organs shut down” (211). For someone to endure these things and live to tell the tale, they must possess a bit of Superman in them. Although maybe it just happened to be a convenient coincidence…again. Franklin writes to entertain those who love happy, sappy endings which proves why I did not enjoy the ending to Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.