March 1st, 2010 / 9:41 pm
Author News & I Like __ A Lot
Barry.
First lines of Barry Hannah’s I ever read:
When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to Farte Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier where the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another. The line-up is always different, because they’re always dying out or succumbing to constipation, etc., whereupon they go back to the cabins and wait for a good day when they can some out and lie again, leaning on the rail with coats full of bran cookies. The son of the man the cove was named for it often out there. He pronounces his name Fartay, with a great French stress on the last syllable. Otherwise you might laugh at his history or ignore it in favor of the name as it’s spelled on the sign.
I’m glad it’s not my name.
Barry Hannah being interviewed by Don Swaim.
I like Barry Hannah a lot. Heard a thing. Sad if true.
UPDATE:
Tags: Barry Hannah
damn
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Damn. I just listened to that “porch” interview with Larry Brown and Brad Watson that was posted here a while back. RIP.
http://htmlgiant.com/snippet/10341/
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barry was my teacher and my friend and my hero. i will miss him.
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has anyone actually confirmed this?
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March 1st, 2010 / 9:59 pmDan Wickett—
The Jackson Free Press have it listed as something they’ve tweeted recently. As close to it as can be found online right now. Said he died of a heart attack in his own home today.
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March 1st, 2010 / 10:00 pmjereme—
yes
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“Hear me, poets. I have certain feelings.”
in the world of man
one less dragon
i have certain feelings too
by barry
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March 1st, 2010 / 10:00 pmjereme—
bye
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March 1st, 2010 / 10:01 pmjereme—
- bye
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March 1st, 2010 / 10:01 pmjereme—
sooo long.
It is sad, but too true. Friend of mine at the Eagle confirmed it.
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http://oxfordeagle.com/2010/03/author-barry-hannah-dies/
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what a loss
damn
damn damn damn
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I tried to emulate Barry’s writing style before I’d even read any of his work just because I’d always heard about the surgery he could perform on a sentence. Now that I have read his work, I know that no one could ever do what what he did.
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“I lose myself in the stories of our friends in the town. I go out and stand around in their stories. Don’t get too close to me, husbands, wives, and lovers. Nothing is sacred, I tell everything.” Hey Jack
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sad news.
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Oh god. I read Ray today for the first time. First Hannah book I’d read.
Jesus.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 1:22 amTim Jones-Yelvington—
I just bought it today… there’s been one copy sitting at my neighborhood bookstore for months and I keep thinking I’ll get it later and then just sorta randomly decided to grab it tonight before hearing abt this. Eerie.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 2:32 amKevinS—
Ray is beautiful. And wild.
I loved Barry Hannah.
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Man. He came back to Tuscaloosa for one last romp a year ago. It was really spectacular to see. We will drink to him in his ol’ town tonight.
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Jesus. RIP. One of all-time favorites.
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: (
I have never read his work. Anyone with a recommendation on where to start?
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March 1st, 2010 / 11:02 pmLincoln—
Airships
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March 1st, 2010 / 11:22 pmKyle Minor—
Airships, then Bats Out of Hell, then High Lonesome, then Captain Maximus, then Ray, then Geronimo Rex
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I am going to do a Hannah retrospective post, I think. If you have a favorite Hannah moment, a few sentences or a paragraph or a certain phrase, please send it my way, and write a little about the excerpt you’ve selected. alecniedenthal@gmail.com
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http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=9983428
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One of my all-time, absolute, complete favorites :(
RIP, good sir.
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drinks
RIP
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When I was very young, I called him on the phone in his office in Oxford, and he answered. I asked him if he would be my teacher. He said, “Lad, I’ve got theses piled up to my eyeballs on this desk, plus I’ve got this cancer.” Then he talked to me for five minutes and told me it was hard to be a writer but it was harder to be a decent human being and I had to try to be both and not get too down on myself if I couldn’t. I wouldn’t trade those five minutes for anything.
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March 1st, 2010 / 11:49 pmTim Horvath—
Wow.
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March 1st, 2010 / 11:49 pmZZZZIPP—
I FEEL SAD THAT I HAD NOT REALLY PAID MUCH ATTENTION TO HIM UNTIL NOW. THAT IS A FANTASTIC ANECDOTE KYLE. HANNAH SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE I HAVE TO KNOW.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 12:12 amjereme—
Ill send you my copy of ‘ray’ zzzippp. It woke my heart from a deep slumber
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March 2nd, 2010 / 1:04 amZZZZIPP—
I WOULD REALLY LIKE THAT JEREME. IF YOU DON’T MIND SENDING IT INTO CANADA.
EMAIL ME AT a.o.aaa.ooo.a.o@gmail.com AND WE WILL ARRANGE THIS.
March 2nd, 2010 / 3:03 pmjereme—
no i don’t mind. i’ll shoot you an email
March 1st, 2010 / 11:58 pmryan—
That is really cool.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 2:38 amKevinS—
That’s a cool story, Kyle. I saw Barry at Powell’s many years ago. It must have been when High Lonesome came out. I gave him a copy of my chapbook, The Patricia Letters, which was my homage to his influence. I loved the way he wrote about cranky old southerners who still have the biggest urge to sex up their neighbors. He was a master. Truly.
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Check this and spread the word, if you would. I’m pretty bummed.
http://www.friedchickenandcoffee.com/barry-hannah-memorial-competition/
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Definitely Airships first, if you’re starting in on his work.
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I had the beyond belief good luck to take a couple of his Ole Miss classes while I was a kid in high school. Learning about literature in a small town w/o even the benefit of the internet meant that every word he said–what would have been reports from the other side anyway–became out and out oracular. Just fire down off the mountain with no other reports coming in from the field.
Learning about writing, about reading, about word plus word plus word equal something from him just by listening to him talk. One of the best talkers ever, a hell of a writer, and I think I’m going to go read either “Drummer Down” or “Two Gone Over” or both.
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[...] Via. [...]
i’m not too big on literary pilgrimage, believing a place is just a place, but there’s a handful of memorials or still lived ins that i wanted to visit. one of those was barry in ms. my teacher askold taught with him at bennington and on the first day of class in our mfa prog askold asked us who we wrote under the auspices of, who the people were who we wanted to look over our shoulders, and i said, definitively, barry hannah. askold was happy that young folks were still reading hannah as no one else in my class had heard of him. a year and a half later, at least half the class has read airships or more. my god today is a sad, sad day. i’m struck with the flu but can’t pry myself away from this goddamned computer reading interviews, reviews, etc.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 1:47 amchristian—
this all pretty much sums me up.
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[...] (Hat tip to HTMLGiant) [...]
He was sweet and kind.
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I just discovered Barry Hannah this past year reading Airships, a book I found so remarkable. Then I read Ray thanks to Alec (I believe) discussing it in a comment thread and I loved that book too. I’m sorry to hear of his passing but so glad to know and continue getting to know his work.
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Respect, so much.
A craftsman, yes, but not only obsessive sentence fetishist. Rather a writer who cared about place and voice and character and something we used to call soul, and who could render them all in prose that seemed as effortless and inevitable as an act of god.
It is selfish of me to hope that he finished Sick Soldier at Your Door before he left?
(Also, can someone please republish Nightwatchmen?)
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March 2nd, 2010 / 3:06 ammike—
That should be *an* obsessive sentence fetishist; clearly, I am not one.
(After reading up a bit, it seems that Hey Jack and Captain Maximus are also out-of-print. It seems criminal, especially now, that the man’s work should be without a publisher.)
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March 2nd, 2010 / 12:31 pmDrew Johnson—
I think that Captain Maximus will be better served by being bundled into the possibly forthcoming Collected Stories (Airships, Captain Maximus, Bats Out of Hell, High Lonesome, plus ?) than being reprinted on its own.
Grove has been pretty good about keeping the other collections plus Ray, Geronimo Rex, and Yonder Stands Your Orphan out there. The Tennis Handsome is another series Voices of the South. And, while Hey Jack, Boomerang, and Never Die are less available (the latter two are in an omnibus edition) they are lesser works. As for his 2nd book, Nightwatchmen, I don’t think Hannah wanted that reprinted.
All in all, Barry’s pretty well in print. Grove picked him up when Seymour Lawrence/Houghton Mifflin ceased to exist (with the death of Lawrence) and have done right by him. Actually looking at all the titles, he’s pretty enviably in-print, I’d say.
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March 2nd, 2010 / 12:38 pmgene—
fuck just being in print. people need to demand his work on bookstore shelves. i’ve never walked into a bookstore and found one of barry’s books on hand. that shit is the worst of all worsts.
March 2nd, 2010 / 12:46 pmKen Baumann—
Yes.
March 2nd, 2010 / 1:27 pmDrew Johnson—
Sure, but bookstores carrying Barry in future will be about how this Collected Stories (when/if) it comes to pass sells and is received. He’s always been a little on this side of cultish–and bookstores don’t do cultish (even from major publishers) without a big label for the cult. The Collected Stories could change all that.
March 2nd, 2010 / 3:07 pmjereme—
i agree gene.
March 2nd, 2010 / 4:57 pmgene—
drew the only problem with that is, one man’s “lesser works” is another man’s “greatest book of all time.” you could feel perfectly happy having Captain Maximus being folded into a larger Collected Works, but i’d rather come to Airships, Captain Maximus, Bats out of Hell, etc. on their own. each is distinctly barry, but barry at a different stage, barry with a slightly different ammo.
March 2nd, 2010 / 4:59 pmLincoln—
I love Hey Jack!
March 2nd, 2010 / 8:40 pmDrew Johnson—
My point was for all the talk about Barry being out-of-print, he’s actually more in print than most writers–I’m saying Morgan Entrekin at Grove/Atlantic has kept a hugely important but not very commercial writer in print to the tune of six separate titles. That’s exceptional and Entrekin deserves some credit–not the weird notion that Barry’s somehow been let down by his publisher or some damn thing.
I walked into two bookstores today that had Barry’s books on the shelf–and I’m not in the South. I’ve read every damn book but Nightwatchmen–and I like The Tennis Handsome more than most, I’d guess. It’s probably my Hey Jack!
But I don’t actually think putting everything in front of everybody is actually the way to make sure that people who don’t care (as much as you or I do) want the books on shelves for the long haul.
Collected Poems vs. Selected Poems. Not a strange concept.
damn. ive only read ray. will now read the rest.
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http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/barry-hannah-southern-author-dies/?hp
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It is always painful to lose one of our own, the world grieves without knowing why. The effect is simultaneous in all hearts.
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I got to meet Barry Hannah once at Off Square Books in Oxford. I went with one of my teachers and a friend. I was 17 at the time and he told me that I would never write anything decent for another 7-8 years, though he said it in such a way that implied a 17-year old shouldn’t quit, but just keep failing out of necessity for those next 7-8 years. He seemed really nice.
Then shortly afterwards I read Airships, and I thought my teacher was really cool for introducing Barry Hannah to us. In Mississippi schools they love to laud and push local writers, but there’s also an element of cultural conservatism that would never bring “the Jimi Hendrix of American short fiction” (as some one or other once said) into the classroom. Anyway. Legend.
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[...] HTML Giant also has a wonderful tribute to Barry. [...]
Every sentence Hannah ever wrote makes me wanna try harder in every way.
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With great thanks, Barry.
http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/barry-hannah-gone-1942-2010
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[...] Giant was one of the first to bring news of Barry Hannah’s passing, and they have a wonderful tribute to the author that unfolded as we learned of his [...]
[...] The news of his death was leaked via Twitter, and was quickly picked up by online journals like HTML Giant, The Rumpus, and The Millions. Long before the New York Times or any other periodical was running [...]