'Finding purities in the confusion'

 

“I'll tell you why I like writing:it's just jumping into a pool. I get myself into a kind of trance. I engage theworld, but it's also wonderful to just escape. I try to find the purities outof the confusion. It's pretty old-fashioned, but it's fun.” –Barry Hannah

 

Born on this date in 1942 (he diedin 2010), Hannah was a novelist, short story writer and professor of writing atthe University of Mississippi.   A “mostly” lifelongMississippian, he was born in Meridian and died in Oxford, which is both thelocation of the University and the home of Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner.    

 

A two-time winner of the MississippiInstitute of Arts & Letters’ “Fiction Prize” and the Governor’s Award forhis representation of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters, Hannahwrote 12 books – 5 of which were highly lauded short story collections.  Among his many other awards were thePEN/Malamud prize for “Excellence in the Art of the Short Story;” a GuggenheimFellowship; and the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award.  

 

Hannah said that music always playeda role in his writing, both on the pages of his works and filling the airaround him as he did his writing.  

 

“Some writers are curiouslyunmusical. I don't get it. I don't get them,” he said.  “For me,music is essential. I always have music on when I'm doing well.  Musical phrases can give you sentences thatyou didn't think you ever had.”