This book reminded me of my Dad. At first I thought the book was too outdated and was surprised it was a part of our reading material. I thought about how journalism shifts so rapidly; advice from 1985 seems ancient. But after Franklin told us about his childhood as the ringleader of a white gang—whaaaaat?—and I got over my initial distate for his prescriptive writing, I realized his voice sounded similar to that of my father's, who worked as a newspaper sports writer from his college and high school years in the late seventies and eventually became an investigative reporter for Kare 11 News in Minnesota.
In high school I was drawn to journalism because of his work in the field. I liked the idea of really investigating a piece, of getting to draw out the details to make a story more tense, to get the scoop. But as I veered toward fiction and poetry, I stuck my nose up at my dad's notes on 'integrity' and 'craft' and 'true' story-telling.
I found myself rolling my eyes in the same way I roll them at my dad reading Franklin's advice to future writers. But then moments of relevance continued to pop up for me. The tension between writing as art and writing as craft is one that has always struck me, and Franklin's love of the short story kept me interested. In "The New School for Writers" he described his love of the form that "demanded the utmost of the writer, both technically and artistically. Yet the shortness of the story—the same thing that made it so difficult—was also its saving grace" (Franklin, 22).
I thought his diatribe about not being able to find valuable lessons in 'how to write books' books ironic as he opened the first section, but as soon as he began writing I bit my tongue. His piece "Mrs. Kelly's Monster" got me. Not telling us whether she died at the end, his use of the ‘pop pop pop repeating.
