Barry Hannah
---------------------------------------------------------- Biography of
Barry Hannah Barry Hannah, author of numerous Southern novels and short stories, was born in Clinton, Mississippi, on April 23, 1942. In 1964, he obtained a B.A. from Mississippi College and later earned an M.A. and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Arkansas in 1966 and 1967. Then, Hannah taught creative writing at Clemson University in South Carolina until 1973, earning several writing awards in the meantime. Barry Hannah's writing style has been influenced by great Southern writers such as William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote (Limsky), and Eudora Welty (Contemporary Criticism, 231). Geronimo Rex, Hannah's first novel, earned him the William Faulkner Prize for writing and a nomination for the National Book Award (Kornegay). The novel Nightwatchmen, published one year later, confirmed his reputation as an up-and-coming writer (U. Miss.). Hannah has twice been nominated for the National Book Award, for Geronimo Rex in 1973 and Ray in 1981. He has been honored by the American Academy for Arts and Letters and by Esquire magazine in the early ’80s. In 1987, Hannah also received the Mississippi Governor’s Award and the Letters Award. After teaching at Clemson, Hannah taught for a short period at Middlebury College in Vermont and then for five years at the University of Alabama. While at Alabama, Hannah wrote Airships (1978), which won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award and the Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. Hannah's first novel in ten years called Yonder Stands
Your Orphan has just been published (2001).
The novel includes madness, murder, and sin and is set near
Vicksburg. The protaganist is a thief, pimp and murderer
named Man Mortimer, a trouble maker of the first order.
The novel is described by Publishers Weekly as
Hannah's best work yet. In the past twenty-five yea
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Review of Boomerang
The novel Bommerang by Barry Hannah is a story
filled with love, war, good times, and bad. This novel
is a firsthand look at Hannah's life with fictional names and
scenes occasionally inserted to make the novel more interesting
for the reader. This novel uses the symbol of a boomerang to
represent the memory and the influence of the past upon the
present (Day 94). Boomerang's settings were many. The novel started off with the author telling about youthful acts in a peach orchard and ended with the compelling story of his friend Yelvertson in Memphis. Hannah makes the reader actually feel like he is part of Hannah's life. The novel was written in first person with Hannah sharing his own thoughts with the reader. Hannah's attempt to portray life as it really happened is sometimes dulled with some of his obvious fictional mind-set. This novel has no set themes. Hannah just shows the good side of life and the bad in a style that is amusing to the reader. Hannah writes about many problems that he tries to overcome, but he also names many enjoyable experiences. In conclusion, this novel was very humorous and enjoyable. Hannah's style is an excellent way for an author to write about his life and not make it boring for the reader. Hannah gets a lot of criticism for some of his work, but I think he is one of Mississippi's most distinguished authors with an interesting writing style that is fun to read. A Review of Tennis Handsome
In Barry Hannah's novel The Tennis Handsome,
he stretches the bounds of modern literature. In a literal
way he does this through the use of extensive verisimilitude
in his writing, both in dialogue and in action, describing the
speech accurately and the liaisons of the characters in detail.
While this frankness may be found offensive by some, the story, The story is skillfully written in a style of grim reality where life is no more than it appears to be, and often less, where the frailties of human nature and the follies of life are shown to be overbearing, and where is fathomed the dark realities of the four lives.
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Barry Hannah has published novels, three short story collections,
two works of nonfiction, and one work for the Hollywood screen
(U. Miss.). He has received numerous awards and recognition
for his work and is generally regarded as a master of modern
fiction. The Fellowship of Southern Writers awarded him
the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. Barry Hannah
recently was diagnosed with cancer but has undergone treatment
and has recovered well. Moreover, Barry Hannah currently
has a new novel (Hannah letter) published (Yonder Stands
Your Orphan). This just shows that this
Mississippi author is far from through astounding the world
with amazing writing.
In
the novel Hannah leaps from one memory to another, sharing his
feelings filled with triumph and tragedy. For example,
Hannah shares times that include his failures in his previous
marriages, his struggling relationship with his children, and
his friendship with other writers and actors.
while speaking frequently of such actions, is not centered on
the encounters but on the relationships of the four central
Vicksburg natives in which the rendez-vous play a part. His
narrative moves quickly from character to character, changing
viewpoints as it goes, almost in a Faulknerian style.
The narrative begins with Dr. "Baby" Levaster and French Edward,
moves to Dr. James Word, and finds Captain Bobby Smith fighting
in Vietnam. From the time each character is introduced,
Hannah follows their lives, showing how they change, or don't
change, and how the lives of the four central characters, all
from Vicksburg, converge--flashbacks to before the opening of
the story reveal that when the tennis handsome French Edward
was in high school, none of the other characters know him, but
by the end of the story they all know each other quite well.
As the story progresses, the same sequences of events are sometimes
viewed by different people, giving a vivid reality to the story.
Furthermore, as the foursome's lives begin intertwining, they
draw in all who know them into their dance and add the newcomers
to each other's lives.
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