Tom Franklin

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.
n Walter Benjamin

But even if I know that 5000 years ago that people wrote the same love letters, word for word, that they write today, I simply can’t read such letters any longer without wondering whether it isn’t ever going to change. – Robert Musil


Imagine that you have been summoned to an unpleasant gathering, an obligatory session with coworkers or family at a particularly dreadful location, say Applebee’s or something likewise loathsome. Imagine that not long thereafter, a phalanx of entrees arrive all tasteless and covered with Velveeta. The banality of chatter surrounding you is nearing apoplectic and suddenly a bottle is placed in front of you, a vintage melbec, easily a forty dollar wine. Your surprise can’t be exceeded. Just as you reach for it the ever-smiling wait staff grabs the bottle and empties it into a plastic pitch a third full of tap water. This is the only way, she chirps. The conversation has shifted to Survivor and the rice pilaf is now afloat on grease. Fuck it, you mutter and pour yourself a glass. Raising it to your lips you discover that all the mystery and oaken pleasure of the melbec are there, just diluted and given the circumstances, it is a godsend.

Such was my response to Tom Franklin’s Hell At The Breach, a historical novel based upon an actual county-wide strife between planters and townies in Alabama between 1897 and 1899. Much like his earlier collection Poachers Franklin has stunning eye for detail and mood. This novel strives to be Cormac McCarthy. It does not succeed. It is quite good, especially given its familiar fondness for horses and dogs, its callous regard for the foibles of humans, especially those with gregarious morality.