A reading by Tom Franklin
Last week’s English lesson was quite different from those we are used to. On Tuesday, 10th December, we went to a reading of the novel “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter“ in the town hall of Stuttgart. The speaker was Tom Franklin, the author himself, which was a major honor for all of us.
After telling us a couple of funny stories about his life, he read central parts of his book. In addition, he told us some interesting facts about the process of writing and about his personal writing style as a “binge-writer”. He went on by giving us, the students, the chance to ask all kinds of questions that we were interested in getting an answer to. One of our classmates asked about the task in our last class test for instance, which was very enlightening.
For Tom Franklin, CLCL is not only a book, it is much more than that. It is remarkable how often you can find similarities between the author and the protagonists. He kind of identifies with some characters in the book – with some more, with others less. Sometimes, even he could not find and answer to a question, because he simply did not think about one aspect in a certain way. Or he just wrote something but did not have any intentions in writing it at all. In general, Tom Franklin showed us much about his personality, he is very eloquent, and quite a funny guy, too.
Listening to the author was nice and helpful because we had the opportunity to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the book, especially with regard to the Abitur.
Julia + Roxana