KÖNIGS ERLÄUTERUNGEN SPEZIAL

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Textanalyse und Interpretation zu

Tom Franklin

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER

Patrick Charles

Analyse | Interpretation in englischer Sprache

Zitierte Ausgaben: Franklin, Tom: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Sprachen, 2017. Note: All page references are to the Klett English Edition of the novel (ISBN 978-3-12-579900-4) and refer to the page and line numbers: for example, 191.25 is line 25 on page 191.

Über den Autor dieser Erläuterung: Patrick Charles wurde 1973 in Bournemouth, Südengland, geboren und studierte englische Literatur an der Universität von Newcastle. 1993 zog er nach Berlin, wo er eine Ausbildung zum Buchhändler machte und zehn Jahre lang als Buchhändler arbeitete. Seit 2004 ist er als freiberuflicher Autor von Schulbüchern und Lernhilfen und als Übersetzer im Kulturbereich tätig. Er lebt mit seiner Familie in Berlin.

1. Auflage 2018

ISBN 978-3-8044-4128-6

© 2018 by C. Bange Verlag, 96142 Hollfeld

Alle Rechte vorbehalten!

Titelabbildung: Old pump station on Route 66 © forcdan/fotolia.com

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CONTENT

1. FOREWORD – AT A GLANCE

2. Tom Franklin: LIFE & WORKS

2.1 Biography

2.2 Contemporary Background

The South

Chicago

Race

Class and social status

Religion

2.3 Notes on other works

3. ANALYSES AND INTERPRETATIONS

3.1 Origins and sources

3.2 Summaries

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

3.3 Structure

The title

Chronology

Symmetries

Suspense and foreshadowing

Crime fiction and collateral damage

3.4 Characters: Constellations & Characteristics

Larry Ott

Silas Jones

Carl Ott

Ina Jean Ott

Alice Jones

Wallace Stringfellow

Cindy Walker

Other characters

Constellations

3.5 Themes

Memory, the past and secrets

Guilt, responsibility and betrayal

Power

Race: Identity and taboos

Horror and monsters – outsiders

Redemption

3.6 Style and Language

Vivid similes and symbolic imagery

Symbols: The mask and the cabin

Irony

3.7 Interpretations

Agatha Christie and the whodunit

Raymond Chandler and noir

How Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter fits in

4. CRITICAL RECEPTION

5. MATERIALS

The American South

6. SAMPLE EXAM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Task 1*

Task 2**

Task 3***

Literatur

Edition used for this study guide

About the author

Reviews

Useful Links by Wikipedia

1.
FOREWORD – AT A GLANCE

This study guide to Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is designed to provide an easy-to-use overview of the structure, context, themes and characters of the novel. Here is a quick rundown of the most important points.

Part 2 takes a brief look at Tom Franklin and his career.

 Franklin was born in Alabama in 1963. His career as a writer has been defined by the region of the country in which he was born and has always lived.

 Crooked Letter is a crime thriller about two boyhood friends who are in fact half-brothers. Franklin ist closely associated with the American South.

Part 3 offers analyses and interpretations of the novel.

Crooked Letter – Origins and sources

Franklin is a Southern writer: all his published works have been concerned with the history and culture of the American South. Crooked Letter was published in 2010 and was his third and to date most successful novel.

Summaries

Two young boys, Larry and Silas, become friends despite social and family pressure (Larry is white, Silas black) in rural Mississippi in the late 1970s. A girl they are both connected to, Cindy Walker, disappears, feared dead, and suspicion falls on Larry.

Twenty-five years later, Larry is an outcast in the area, and Silas is now a police officer, investigating the disappearance of a local girl, Tina Rutherford. Larry is again a suspect, even after he is found shot and badly wounded in his own home. Silas investigates the crime and is forced to re-examine his own history, and to acknowledge the secrets he has been keeping about Cindy. He had been with her on the night she disappeared and he could have saved Larry from the suspicion which destroyed his family and his life. While investigating the past, Silas also discovers that he and Larry are half-brothers. Silas is badly injured in a showdown with the man who shot Larry and killed Tina. After Silas has confessed about the events of 1982, he and Larry can begin to mend their friendship.

Structure

The novel is concerned with events from the past and their effect on, and reflection in, events occurring in the present day. The narrative takes place in the two time periods, with some chapters taking place entirely in the past, and characters often slipping into long memories which reveal the secrets and events of 25 years ago.

Characters

The arrangement of the characters in Crooked Letter is a little more complex than in a less chronologically complex novel.

Larry Ott

 Larry is an outcast and a loner who comes from a local family.

Silas Jones

 Silas investigates the crimes in the novel and has to acknowledge his guilt for having ruined Larry’s life.

Carl Ott

 Larry’s father had an affair with Alice Jones, and Silas is his son.

Ina Ott

 Larry’s mother is the last of the earlier generation still alive.

Alice Jones

 Silas mother, a beautiful, strong-willed and hard woman.

Wallace Strongfellow

 Wallace kills Tina Rutherford and shoots Larry.

Cindy Walker

 Silas’ girlfriend at the time she disappears.

There are many other characters in the novel.

Themes

The themes in this novel are deeply interconnected: Memory, the past and secrets – Guilt, responsibility and betrayal – Power –

Belonging – Horror and monsters – Redemption.

Style and language

The dialogue in the novel reflects the strong local accent of rural Mississippi, providing a real sense of place and identity. The prose is rich with poetic similes and symbolic passages.

Interpretations

The novel is primarily a crime thriller, and this chapter will look at where the novel fits in with the literary genre and traditions of crime fiction.

2.
Tom Franklin: Life & Works

Thomas Gerald Franklin (* 1963)

© Ulf ANDERSEN/GAMMA-RAPHO/laif

2.1
Biography

YEAR | PLACE | EVENT | AGE
1963 | Dickinson, Alabama | Born on 7th of July in the tiny community (400–500 citizens), Franklin grew up as a huge fan of comic books and pulp fiction (science fiction, horror, fantasy, Tarzan stories, etc.) and was not a good student at school. | Up to age 18
1981 | Mobile, Alabama | The family moved, and Franklin attended the University of South Alabama, where he worked many menial jobs and took nine years to graduate. | 18
1994 | Selma, Alabama | Taught for a year at the famous all-black Selma University. | 31
1998 | Fayetteville, Arkansas | He graduated from the University of Arkansas with an M.F.A. after four years which he really enjoyed, during which he also met his future wife Beth Ann. | 35
1999 |  | First work published, the story collection Poachers | 36
2003 |  | First novel published, Hell at the Breech | 40
2006 |  | Smonk is published, cementing his reputation as a regional writer | 43
2010 |  | Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is published to widespread acclaim and great commercial success | 47
2013 |  | The Titled World is published, a novel Franklin co-wrote with his wife | 50
2017 |  | Tom Franklin is currently an associate professor at the University of Mississippi. | 54

2.2
Contemporary Background

SUMMARY

Whether he is writing crime fiction or historical novels, Tom Franklin is a regional writer who is closely associated with the American South, specifically the states Alabama and Mississippi. The traditions, lifestyles and landscapes of the South feature prominently in his writing.

The South

The southern states of the USA are very different from the North. Traditional ways of life which were associated for generations with natural factors like different kind of agriculture (the plantations, for example) and the very different climate are combined with historical, political and social factors including slavery, segregation, the American Civil War, widespread religious intensity and a lot of rural poverty. Industrialisation and urbanisation had been northern phenomena long before they began affecting the South.

Franklin addresses many issues of Southern identity and life in Crooked Letter, including racial dynamics, the coherence and claustrophobia of small rural communities, and social problems like drugs, alcoholism and poverty. He also makes efforts to portray the languid atmosphere of the hot and humid climate, and there is a strong awareness of beauty in his descriptions of the landscapes of the South.

Chicago

Chicago has many nicknames, including the “Windy City” – referring to its chilly and raw climate – and the “City of the Big Shoulders”, which is a line taken from Carl Sandburg’s poem Chicago (1916) and reflects the city’s strong working-class and industrial identity. In Crooked Letter, Alice and Silas move from Chicago to Mississippi, which is for Silas like a different world. When Silas talks to Cindy about Chicago he describes an exciting place with raw weather, access to the highest level of national sports, great pizza and much more – a lively, stimulating environment, full of noise and pressure, very different from the slow and quiet rural world of Chabot and Fulsom (p. 243).

Race

Race is a huge issue in American history and culture, and while it is a factor throughout the entire country and throughout all social strata and demographics, it is historically particularly relevant to the Southern states, including Mississippi, where the novel is set.

Slavery and institutionalised white supremacy (the conviction that white people are fundamentally better than dark-skinned people) were defining features of Southern society for many years. The American Civil War has complex origins, but one of the major factors was the push to abolish slavery.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s had many of its defining moments occur in the South, where racial segregation was widespread and efforts to maintain the white supremacist status quo were fiercer and more oppressive than in the North. In a secretive shadowy world, the institutional racism which enforced segregated schools, bathrooms, buses and drinking fountains was accompanied by mob violence and the secret society Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was first formed in the 1860s to overthrow the Republic following the Civil War. The white supremacist identity of the Klan has remained its defining feature throughout the years. The KKK is a secret society, but members are famous for their distinctive uniform of white robes with pointed white hoods. The Klan has been responsible for countless murders, lynchings and assaults on African-Americans and civil rights activists.

Grave of 14-yearold Emmett Till, lynched by a white man.

© picture alliance/AP Photo

Silas had virtually no contact with white people when he was growing up in a peaceful all-black neighbourhood in Chicago (131.8–21). It was only when he came to Mississippi that he encountered white people who would openly call blacks the N-word. As an adult, Silas sees the effects of structural racism, for example when he looks at the courthouse and sees exclusively white lawyers and exclusively black defendants (174.4–6).

Class and social status

The South maintained an almost feudal social system far into the modern era, with powerful, dynastic landowners who ran their vast estates like medieval aristocratic properties, complete with successive generations of servants and, for a long period, slave labour. In Crooked Letter, the clearest example of class and social tensions is combined with racial issues in the idea of “white trash”, specifically Wallace Stringfellow and the Walker family. These are white people who are at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, poor, uneducated, unskilled, unemployed, and often associated with drug addiction, alcoholism and domestic abuse. We can see in the character of Wallace how a lifetime of being treated like dirt can make you believe it at some point (“I ain’t worth a shit”, 283.10), but the combination of this sense of worthlessness with Wallace’s emotional and psychological problems makes him a dangerous character. Cindy Walker on the other hand has also been subject to contempt and abuse throughout her young life, but she wants to escape and find a better life.

Religion

Religion in the Deep South has an interesting and diverse history. There is a long tradition of Protestantism, but the predominant denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention. There are also many Methodists.

Religion plays a minor role in Crooked Letter. Larry is a believer, and Wallace’s first memories of Larry are of him in a church. Larry and his mother feel a genuine hunger for religion and must search for congregations which will accept them after Larry becomes the main suspect in the disappearance of Cindy Walker. They are Baptists.

2.3
Notes on other works

SUMMARY

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was Franklin’s third novel, and is his most successful and famous work.

Works | Publication year
Poachers (short story collection) | 1999
Hell at the Breech | 2003
Smonk | 2006
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter | 2010
The Tilted World | 2013

Poachers

His first published work, this collection of short stories won a major prize in the field of crime fiction (the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Short Story).

Hell at the Breech and Smonk

His first two novels are historical novels, both examples of regional fiction, as they are set in Alabama. Hell at the Breech[1], his debut, was based on actual historical events. Smonk is a wildly over-the-top novel about a brutal rapist and his path of destruction, intended in part as a reaction against or parody of the excessively masculine Southern fiction of established writers like Cormac McCarthy (famous for novels like Blood Meridian – published 1985).

Smonk

has recently been translated into German for the first time and has been receiving a lot of attention for its grotesque, energetic humour and brutality[2].

The Tilted World

Co-written with his wife, this is another historical, regional novel, set in Mississippi in 1927.

3.
ANALYSES AND INTERPRETATIONS

3.1
Origins and sources

SUMMARY

Tom Franklin is widely considered to be a regional, and specifically Southern writer. All of his published work has been set in Mississippi or Alabama, and the region and his experiences there have shaped his work as a writer.

“To write a story, you have to get the details right. You have to convince a reader you know what you’re talking about.”[3]

(Tom Franklin)

Franklin’s personal background in the region and his familiarity with the life, landscape, history, people and feel of the South means that there are traces of his life and experience in his work. This is also true of Crooked Letter: for example, like Larry, he grew up with a father who ran a car repair workshop in a tiny rural community.

He mentions in interviews how much autobiographical detail has slipped into Crooked Letter: “the character of Silas "32" Jones is very loosely based on the sole police officer of the hamlet of Dickinson, Alabama, where I grew up”[4] and “I used a lot of autobiographical stuff for Larry, the mechanic”[5]. These autobiographical details include Larry’s reading habits – when asked in an interview who his favourite writers were and are, Franklin says, “I loved Stephen King and Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid”[6].

His roots in the South have shaped him as a writer:

“So, yes, the souths made me the writer I am. It taught me to listen to the cadences and rhythms of speech, and to notice the landscape. It also has this defeated feel, a lingering of old sin, that makes it sweet in a rotting kind of way. Much of it is poor, much is rural, and thats an interesting combination, a deep well for stories.”[7]

In the same interview, Franklin talks briefly about the origins of the novel: “Id been wanting to write about a small town police officer, and Id long had the image of a loner mechanic in my mind. When I put the two together, the story began to form.”

This comment reinforces the impression many readers of Crooked Letter have that this is primarily a character-driven novel, and, despite the plot, only secondarily a crime thriller.

3.2
Summaries

SUMMARY

Two young boys, Larry and Silas, become friends in rural Mississippi in the late 1970s. A girl, Cindy Walker, disappears, feared dead, and suspicion falls on Larry.

Twenty-five years later, Larry is an outcast in the area, and Silas is now a police officer, investigating the disappearance of a local girl, Tina Rutherford. Larry is again a suspect, even after he is found shot and badly wounded in his own home. Silas investigates the crime and is forced to re-examine his own history. After Silas has confessed about the events of 1982, he and Larry can begin to mend their friendship.

What follows in this section is a brief chapter-by-chapter summary of the novel. Some of the chapters are based entirely or largely in the past, as the novel covers two different periods (1979–1982 and two weeks in 2007), and these flashbacks are indicated in the summaries.

one

The novel starts with Larry Ott, a 41-year old man who lives alone in his parents’ house. He wakes up and goes about his morning routine, looking after his chickens, and heads off to work in his father’s car repair workshop, Ottomotive. On the way he gets a call from his mother, who is in a nursing home, saying that she would like to see him. He heads back home. When he walks into his house he is ambushed by an intruder wearing an old zombie mask which Larry has had since he was a boy. The intruder shoots him and then watches him bleeding out on the kitchen floor.

two

Police Constable Silas “32” Jones is patrolling when he sees an unusually large number of buzzards – carrion eater birds – hovering over an area of woodland. He investigates, hoping/fearing that he will find the corpse of a missing girl, Tina Rutherford. Instead he finds the body of Morton ”M&M” Morrisette in a swamp. M&M was a local marijuana dealer with whom Silas had played baseball and been good friends in high school.

Local detective and investigator Roy French arrives, followed by other officials, including Silas’ girlfriend Angie, an EMT (emergency medical technician).

Later, back in the office he shares with Miss Voncille, the city clerk, Silas is visited by French, who says that he had visited Larry Ott regarding the missing Rutherford girl. Silas follows up on a report that a rattlesnake has been found in someones mailbox. The mailbox belongs to a woman named Irina who shares a house with two other divorcees in a run-down area populated by poor whites.

Silas is doing his shift directing traffic later that day when he receives an ominous phone call from Angie, who is now at Ott’s house.

three

This chapter is a flashback, beginning in March 1979. Larry recalls his father driving him to school one freezing cold morning. They see Silas and his mother, Alice, waiting by the road and pick them up. Familiarity between Larrys father and Alice Jones is implied. Larrys mother seems surprised and a little suspicious when he tells her about it later when she picks him up from school. This is repeated for days. Larrys mother quizzes him about the woman and how his father behaves with her. She drives Larry to school one day and it is obvious she and Alice know each other: She gives the Jones’ two second hand winter coats and makes a bitter comment before driving off and leaving them standing in the freezing cold.

Larry goes to find Silas in the woods, where the Jones family lives in a cabin. He seems to want to be friends with the other boy. He finds Silas, teaches him how to shoot, lends him a rifle and then leaves his gloves for the boy as well.

four

Back to the present: On the phone to Silas, Angie describes briefly what she has found at Larry’s place. Silas goes to investigate and is reminded of having been there once before when he and Larry were friends. French arrives and they examine the crime scene together (Larry is in hospital, badly wounded but not dead). After examining Ott’s house, Silas returns home to find that Larry had tried to call him earlier that day, leaving a message on his answer machine.

five

This very significant chapter shows how important Silas was for Larry, how lonely and withdrawn Larry is, and how unpleasant and dangerous both Carl Ott and his friend and neighbour Cecil Walker are. It also shows the reader one of the two events (the fight – the other being the disappearance of Cindy Walker) which permanently changed the course of Larry’s life.

Another chapter set in the past, this one describes events later in the year Silas and Larry first met, 1979, leading up to Carl forcing them to fight over the borrowed rifle. Silas beats Larry, who then calls him “n****r”, changing their relationship for ever.

six

This chapter is divided between the present day and a substantial section containing Silas’ recollections of his childhood and his journey with his mother from Chicago to Chabot.

Silas investigates further in Larry Ott’s life. He goes to Ott’s garage and then back to his house to look for further clues as to what has happened. He finds small pieces of glass and the butt of a joint. Being in Ott’s house triggers memories of his childhood.

Silas remembers his early life in Chicago, and how, after his mother’s boyfriend had been arrested and then gone on the run, he and his mother had left Chicago to head south to Mississippi, where she came from. As a child Silas had deeply resented his mother for her relationships with men and the way she took him out of the world he had known.

seven

Picking up in 1982, this chapter recounts Larry Ott’s connection to the disappearance of Cindy Walker and how those events shaped the rest of his life and the lives of his parents.

Cindy has encouraged Larry to take her out on a date. He believes they are going to the drive-in to see The Amityville Horror[8], but she tells him that he is to drop her off somewhere else so that she can see her secret boyfriend, and that because she is pregnant he must swear to never tell anyone about it. Larry follows her instructions, but she never appears at the arranged meeting place later that night. When he returns to the Walker’s house he is attacked by Cecil Walker. Soon after, the police are summoned.

Initially, Larry tells the sheriff an abbreviated version of what happened, leaving out specific details in order to protect Cindy and himself. But when, over time, witnesses mention having seen him leaving the drive-in, he becomes the focus of greater suspicion.

Eventually, Larry leaves to join the army. The suspicion and pressure put on him and his family have driven his father, who no longer speaks to him, to drink ever more heavily, and his mother has become increasingly withdrawn and depressed. While in the army he becomes a qualified mechanic. Returning to Chabot after his military service, Larry takes over his father’s garage after he dies in a drunk driving accident. His mother has to be moved into a nursing home. Larry is forced to sell large parts of his familys property to the Rutherford lumber business, and he lives solely on the money from those land sales. The garage generates no income.

eight

Silas meets Angie for lunch in the diner where his mother used to work. He confesses to Angie that he and Larry used to be friends and tells her his history, moving to Chabot from Chicago. He recalls an episode from their time at school together when Larry had been invited to a Halloween party because he had a cool zombie mask, but that he had been ignored by the other kids, including Silas and Cindy, and had eventually driven off alone. Silas lies to Angie about the nature of his relationship with Cindy. He later goes to the hospital to see Larry.

Larry has undergone surgery and is still unconscious. The nurse tells him that Larry was clinically dead at two points during the operations. After visiting Larry, Silas knows that he has to also inform Larry’s mother about the shooting. He goes to the nursing home, River Acres. Mrs Ott has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t understand who Silas is.

Silas remembers the day he spent at the Ott house when he and Larry were children. He remembers mowing the lawn, and how when Carl Ott came home that evening he had thanked Larry (whom he thought had done the work), and how angry he, Silas, had been about Larry having a father and him not having one.

He now believes that his father had been a white man who had impregnated his mother when she worked as a maid, and that his mother had left Chabot for Chicago to have her illegitimate baby.

On the return trip to the Ott house, Silas pulls over a young white man called Wallace Stringfellow who has been driving suspiciously. But Silas is too preoccupied with thoughts of the cabin where he used to live with his mother to do more than give the man a warning and send him off.

He goes to the cabin where they used to live. He sees through a window what appears to be a fresh grave dug in the dirt floor beneath one of the beds.

nine

Larry recalls having scared away a boy who used to sneak into his barn and steal things and cause disturbances. He was 31 at the time. He put on the zombie mask he got for the Halloween party years before and ambushed the boy in the barn. Years later, aged 41, Larry is visited by a drunk young man in a TV satellite installation van who introduces himself as Wallace Stringfellow – it’s the boy from ten years earlier.

Wallace is a drunk and a liar, but Larry is so crippled by loneliness that he doesn’t object to the visits from Wallace, and the two men become friends, Wallace visiting regularly and getting drunk and stoned on Larry’s porch. One Christmas, he secretly gives Larry an old pistol as a present.

On one visit, Wallace starts to ask about whether Larry had actually raped and killed Cindy Walker, and becomes increasingly excited and sexually aroused by the idea of kidnapping, abusing and raping a girl. He has found the cabin in the woods where Silas and his mother had lived – he fantasises about this cabin having been the site of the rape and murder. He talks about how his mother’s ‘boyfriends’ used to behave with his mother and his obvious arousal makes Larry increasingly uncomfortable. Larry tells Wallace to go home. Wallace becomes angry and smashes up Larry’s car. He doesn’t return to Larry’s after that evening.

Despite the insights he has had into Wallace’s dangerous and deviant character, Larry misses him and hopes he will come back, even to the point of considering employing him at his garage and training him to be a mechanic. His loneliness appears to hold sway over his judgement.

ten

Silas is working traffic duty one week after discovering the grave and Tina Rutherford’s body in the cabin on Larry’s property where he and his mother used to live. He gets a phone call from the nursing home where Larry’s mother lives, informing him, as he had requested, that she is having a “good day”.

Silas has begun working extra shifts – doing guard duty over the comatose Larry in the hospital and also spending time at the Ott farm, feeding the chickens and guarding the property. He is becoming increasingly exhausted by the extra work.

He goes to see Larry’s mother at the nursing home. She vaguely remembers him and seems worried about Larry. A “stringy-looking” young white man (p. 232.30) has been spotted trying to get near Larry’s room in the hospital.

At dinner, Angie forces Silas to finally tell her about his relationship with Cindy Walker back in school. They had been together secretly, but Silas’ mother had found out and begged him to stop seeing her. Cecil Walker had become increasingly suspicious of Cindy and tried to control her completely. Silas had been the secret boyfriend she had wanted to meet on the night she made Larry take her to the drive-in.

Angie understands immediately what this means: Silas has known all these years that Larry was not guilty, but has said nothing and allowed Larry to take the blame and be ostracized under the suspicion of having something to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker. Silas guesses that it was actually Cecil who killed her.

The next day, while feeding the chickens at Larry’s farm, he gets a phone call from the hospital. Larry has woken from his coma.

eleven

Larry wakes up in the hospital: He has been dreaming about himself and Silas, and then himself and Wallace. French and Sheriff Lolly begin questioning him but he has a seizure when they tell him what happened to Tina Rutherford. They return another time to continue questioning him.

Both French and Lolly are convinced that Larry killed both Cindy Walker and Tina Rutherford and shot himself in a suicide attempt. They try to persuade Larry that this is what happened, disregarding his inability to remember the events or explain why he would have done these things. Larry – due to blood loss and the trauma of the shooting – can’t remember what happened when he was shot or even if he actually did kill Tina Rutherford.

twelve

Silas rushes to the hospital, knowing that French will be trying to force a confession out of Larry. He defends Larry, saying he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Cindy Walker, and finally, 25 years later, confesses to having been the secret boyfriend she had made Larry take her to see. Larry and French and Lolly are shocked by the revelation. French interviews Silas back in his office, and tells him to stay away from Larry from now on.

Later, Silas is getting drunk in a bar when Irina (the woman with the rattlesnake in her mailbox) comes in and starts drinking with him. She tells him about a friend of hers, Evelyn, who had been seeing a weird young white guy who collected guns and snakes. His name was Wallace Stringfellow. Irina thinks he may have been the person who put snakes in her and Evelyn’s mailbox. Silas vaguely remembers the name and the man. He goes home with Irina, but has second thoughts and leaves before anything can happen between them.

thirteen

Larry is in hospital still, watching TV. He is remembering scenes and moments from his childhood, with Silas and with Cindy, in a confused jumble which stirs his emotions.

He also now remembers how, shortly after Tina Rutherford went missing, Wallace came to his place, waking him at 3:15 in the morning. He was drunk, sitting outside on the porch. He half-confessed to having done “something”, and seemed depressed and full of self-hatred. When Larry offered to teach him how to fix cars, Wallace replied that he wasn’t “worth a shit”.

Larry wants to tell French what he has remembered, and that he is sure it was Wallace who killed Tina and shot him.

fourteen

Silas goes to work the next morning with a bad hangover. He later goes back to Larry’s farm to feed the chickens. There he sees fresh tire tracks from the 4-wheel vehicle he had noticed there before and an empty can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He begins to think about Wallace, and decides to go and talk to him about the snakes that had been put in Irina’s mailbox.

He goes to Wallace’s house and interviews him. He sees John Wayne Gacy, Wallace’s vicious and mistreated pitbull-Chow crossbreed dog, he sees the snakes, and then also spots Larry’s old zombie mask, from the Halloween party 25 years ago. When Silas asks him about it, Wallace makes an excuse to go outside and then releases the dog. The dog immediately attacks Silas, biting and wounding him before he can defend himself or get to his radio. While Silas is fighting off the dog, Wallace begins shooting at him. Silas manages to get his own gun and shoots the dog.

Silas then shoots Wallace in the leg, but Wallace escapes into a nearby wood. Silas is badly injured and collapses in Wallace’s house, smashing one of the snake enclosures and releasing a rattlesnake as he falls. The last thing he sees is Larry’s zombie mask.

fifteen

Larry hears from the deputy guarding his hospital room that Silas has been hurt and figures out that it has to do with Wallace. He tells the deputy that he has to talk to French about Wallace.

Over the deputy’s radio, he describes to French what he remembers of Wallace and his disturbing ideas, the last time he visited him, and that he recognised Wallace’s eyes behind the mask when he was shot. He describes the mask to French.

Wallace placed a diamondback rattlesnake in Irina’s mailbox

© picture alliance/PIXSELL

French later comes to Larry’s room and has him identify the mask. He asks Larry some questions about Wallace and their relationship, and then informs Larry that Wallace is now dead.

Later, after French has left, Larry is thinking about time passing and loneliness and memories when he gets a new roommate: Silas is brought in.

sixteen

Silas wakes up in the hospital room next to Larry – his brother, both of them the sons of Carl Ott – and remembers what happened and how he got here. The TV is on and they watch a news report about the events at Wallace’s house. Silas learns from the report that after he passed out in Wallace’s house, his colleague Voncille notified the sheriff’s department, and there was a gun battle during which Wallace allegedly shot and killed himself. When the officers searched Wallace’s house they found evidence that implicated him in the murder of Tina Rutherford, including her purse.

Silas tells Larry everything he has learned, including that they are half-brothers. Larry says that he thinks he already knew back when they first met, and after the incident with the coats. When Silas finishes talking, Larry summons the nurse and tells her he wants to be moved to another room.

seventeen

Silas has lots of visitors on the next day, his last day in hospital. Angie, Voncille and the mayor all come to see him. Then French comes to inform them both about the progress with the case against Wallace. They now know that he shot Larry and killed Tina. They also believe that he may have been responsible for the murder of M&M, too. He cautions them both to be careful when facing journalists, because the case has attracted nationwide attention and there are TV crews at the hospital from CNN and Fox News, as well as from local stations.

eighteen

Angie drives Silas home from the hospital. He drops in at City Hall where the mayor tells him he will be getting a new car and some assistance in his work, apparently to be financed by Tina Rutherford’s father. Silas tells the mayor to wait until he sees the story coming out in the local paper before he authorises any of this.

He then goes home to convalesce. He visits Larry, who refuses to talk to him. He also goes to visit Mrs Ott in the nursing home, but she doesn’t know who he is, lost in dementia. He goes to look at the derelict Walker house.

nineteen

Four days later: Silas has visited Larry every day, but while he enjoys the visits, Larry doesn’t know how to react or what to say. Silas has been taking care of things for him, feeding the chickens, bringing him his mail and his cheque book so he can pay his bills.

The doctor tells Larry he can start moving around now, but that he must start eating a healthier diet. Larry takes short walks around the hospital, noticing all the reporters outside waiting for him. Late that night he sneaks out of the hospital. He starts to walk home.

Silas gets a phone call from the hospital telling him that Larry has left, and he immediately gets in his car and heads off to find him. He discovers Larry walking home. Silas drives him home, and Larry offers to fix up Silas’ jeep.

Larry is surprised that Silas and Angie have cleaned up his house while he was in hospital. Larry says Silas should come by the next day so they can work on the Jeep. Their friendship appears to be restored.

3.3
Structure

SUMMARY

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is structured as a crime thriller: a crime occurs early in the narrative and the plot involves solving the crime. The novel is also concerned with events in the past, and so it is structured to include long passages of flashbacks to 25 years ago. Other structural elements which organise the plot and the characters include the use of symmetry to highlight both divisions and similarities. Here we will also look at the evolution of the friendship between Larry and Wallace as an organising structure in the novel.

The title

The concept of place – the idea of where you are, where you belong – and the actual physical location are important in the novel. Alice and Silas’ transition from the northern city of Chicago (the third largest city in the USA) to this tiny hamlet in rural Mississippi is a big deal: For the 13-year old Silas it’s a completely different world. The racial and social tensions and dynamics of rural Mississippi are not the same as in Chicago, a major northern city. And for Larry Ott, his notoriety as “Scary Larry” is greatly exacerbated by his location in a tiny community where everyone knows everyone else – a community he has never really left, with the exception of his short time in the military.

This idea of the central importance of place in the novel begins with the title. Taken from a children’s rhyme used as a mnemonic for the correct spelling of Mississippi (the crooked letter meaning the letter “s”), the title Crooked Letter immediately and firmly anchors the novel and our expectations in a specific place, namely the deep South, and gives it a specific frame of reference: Childhood.

The idea of belonging is a central theme in the novel, and the characters belong to this specific place in varying degrees. We have Larry, who has never left and is tied to a place where he is now a pariah, and Silas, who was conceived here, but who grew up far to the north before being brought back as a teenager, only to leave again, and return yet again as an adult. Alice’s inability to successfully leave this specific place behind her is an important device within the plot of the novel, a device which is used to bring Silas into the story, and to expose the secrets within Carl Ott’s past. The place, Chabot in Mississippi, won’t let people go: Larry can’t escape. Alice can’t escape. And Silas is dragged back twice, also unable to escape.

Chronology

The novel is concerned with the connected events of two different times – the year 1982 and the present day (presumably 2007, 25 years later). The narrative makes strong use of flashbacks, at times with entire chapters being set in the past (Chapters 3, 5 and 7) but also in shorter forms, with the central characters Larry and Silas remembering moments from their past and the events which drove them apart.

The extensive use of flashbacks means that the structure of the novel must be considered in two different ways. Firstly, there is the surface structure, the sequence of chapters and narrative, which moves back and forth in time and follows the demands of the plot and the creation and release of tension and suspense. Then there is the internal chronology, the actual sequence of events within the lives of the characters in the novel, beginning with the first meeting between Larry and Silas in March 1979. (There is of course another, older part of the story – the affair between Alice Jones and Carl Ott – which is only reconstructed after both have died, and which can be understood by the reader as a kind of lost or hidden prologue to the story.)

The frequent use of flashbacks not only means that the novel has two structures: It also means that events in the past are looked at from two perspectives, those of childhood and adulthood. Major events – such as Silas’s first and only visit to Larry’s home when they were boys – are approached carefully, in stages. When Silas goes to investigate the Ott farm after Larry’s shooting (pp. 85–95) there are brief mentions of his having been there before, and a lengthier description (pp. 87.20–88.10) of Silas’ recollections of that day. This event is seen later, in greater detail and with more emotional reflection, from the boys’ perspectives.

We see events from one chronological perspective – adult or child – and then from another. This is significant, because many of the greatest conflicts in the novel – in particular the guilt Larry feels for having called Silas “n****r” and the guilt Silas feels for having betrayed Larry by not speaking up about Cindy Walker – are hidden in the past, but have enormous consequences throughout the two men’s lives. One target the novel moves towards is the possible reconciliation between Larry and Silas, which requires both of them to re-evaluate events from 25 years ago, to reflect on the feelings and impressions from the time and to consider their changed circumstances and the different perspectives they now have as adults.

An example of how the two time frames interact

As an example of how the two time frames interact, we can look at the end of Chapter 4, the content of Chapter 5 and the beginning of Chapter 6. Chapter 4 is set in the present day and ends with Silas in his own home, having returned from investigating the crime scene at Larry’s home. Two things are important here at the end of the chapter. Most obviously significant is the message from Larry on Silas’ answer machine, a phone call made before he was shot. The second is less explicit but equally important: “In the closet, behind his two extra uniforms, where he wouldn’t have to look at it, was the Marlin lever-action .22 rifle.” (p. 96.21–23)

The chapter which follows is about the significance of this small detail. It describes the events leading up to the scene where Carl Ott forces Larry and Silas to fight for possession of the gun, the .22 Marlin. While it is Silas’ memory which is triggered in the present, we see this episode from the past from Larry’s perspective. The scene is of central importance for the entire book and for many of the themes – brothers, fathers and friends; guilt; race – and it is the single most important event in the course of Larry and Silas’ relationship. The chapter from the past is therefore introduced and given context by a guilty memory of Silas’ in the present day. This detour into the past is touched on again at the beginning of the next chapter when Silas acknowledges to himself that he used the event – Larry calling him “n****r” – as an excuse to avoid him (p. 121.11–13). The rifle also makes another appearance (p. 125.8–10). What we as readers don’t know yet is that this level of guilt and anger covers a much deeper and much more damaging guilt – Silas’ guilt at never having spoken up to save Larry from the suspicions surrounding Cindy Walker’s disappearance.

Symmetries

A fundamental organisational structure of the novel involves contrasting symmetries. This can be seen most significantly in the mirrored events of 1982 and the present day – the disappearances of local girls – and in the two central characters, brothers who are diametric opposites.

There are numerous other examples of symmetries throughout the book. One significant example is the way that Larry and Wallace both wear the zombie mask to scare one another. Larry uses it to frighten young Wallace when he is trespassing (pp. 195–6) and Wallace wears it when he ambushes and shoots Larry (p. 23).

LARRY | SILAS
White | Black
Shy and lonely | Gregarious and popular
Avid reader | Not a reader
Neither talented at or interested in sports | Gifted athlete, especially baseball
Single | In a relationship
Teetotal | Likes to drink
Country boy, knowledge of nature | City kid, knows nothing about wildlife
Raised by both parents | Single mother, father unknown
“Where Larry’s only visitors had been law enforcement officials … | … Silas had a stream.” (306.1–2)

As the two characters who flank Larry, Silas and Wallace are also related in a contrasting symmetry. Both are Larry’s friends. One white, one black, one a half-brother, the other a strange kind of symbolic shadow brother, Wallace and Silas embody the themes and ideas of the novel in their oppositional symmetry.

SILAS | WALLACE
Black | White
Gregarious and popular | Creepy and disliked
Single mother, father unknown | Single mother, father unknown
Destroys Larry’s life by concealing the truth about the night Cindy Walker disappeared. | Destroys Larry’s life by framing him for the murder of Tina Rutherford and shooting him.
Returns often to Larry’s home after the shooting – to investigate and to keep an eye on the place | Keeps returning to Larry’s home after having shot him (see 289.5–16)

The two missing girls, Cindy and Tina, also embody certain themes and ideas within the novel.

CINDY WALKER | TINA RUTHERFORD
Disappears, presumed murdered. | Disappears, presumed murdered.
Body never found – presumed murdered, but the killer is never officially identified. | Body discovered and murderer identified and killed.
Poor, considered “white trash”. Wants to leave school with Silas. | Privileged daughter of the region’s most prominent and wealthy family. Attends university.
Fully characterised in the novel. We meet her, see her interact with different characters and hear her speak. As a character, Cindy is as real to the reader as Silas or Larry. | Nothing but a name and a corpse. We never meet Tina nor ever hear her voice. She is missing and presumed dead from the beginning. Despite being the central focus of the crime thriller-plot of the novel (see the opening sentence) Tina is never “real” as a character.

Two central characters

Larry and Silas are the central characters of the novel. They both tell the story from their own perspective, narrating the past as well as the present. While Larry is the central figure in the novel, Silas is the more active agent: He investigates the crimes, he becomes increasingly drawn into Larry’s world, and, as the plot unfolds, we learn that he is also deeply involved in the issue of how Larry became what and who he is in the present. What also emerges is that these two central characters are in fact brothers.

The majority of the present day level of the novel is told from Silas’ perspective, not least because Larry spends most of the period in question – roughly two weeks from the shooting to the end of the novel – in a coma. In contrast, Chapters 5 and 7, describing the friendship between the boys and the fight over the gun (5) and the events surrounding the disappearance of Cindy Walker (7) are told from Larrys perspective. This is significant because it reinforces the impression we have of Larry as someone who is a prisoner of the past, someone who has been unable to break away from those events and who has been defined by them. Silas is a more active agent in the present day: He investigates, he interacts with people, he moves around. Larry is literally frozen in time – in a coma – for most of the present day narrative of the novel.

Suspense and foreshadowing

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