A brief survey of the short story: Barry Hannah

A writer who captured the violence, bigotry and wild humour of the American deep south in line after unpredictable line

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Gee, he can use the word, Jeb can, a Confederate soldier says of his general in one of Barry Hannahs stories of the American civil war. That same wonderment and admiration characterises many responses to Hannahs work, which re-energises prose in the way that one of his favourite musicians, Jimi Hendrix, re-energised the sound that could be wrung from a guitar.

In Hannahs stories of the deep south a territory as crazed and bloody as the one Flannery OConnor described violence and wild humour meet in line after unpredictable line. A particularly hated adversary is overmurdered by a battle-crazed Confederate soldier; a doctor enduring a crisis of confidence is an unshucked oyster, hurtling on the winds, all air, gonad and gut; in Ride, Fly, Penetrate, Loiter, the one-eyed biker Maximum Ned describes receiving the gift of tongues when he was stabbed in the eye:

Now I talk white, Negro, some Elizabethan, some Apache. My dark eye pierces and writhes and brings up odd talk in me sometimes. Under the patch, it burns deep for language. I will write sometimes and my bones hurt. I believe heavily in destiny at such moments.

I dropped my beer and grew suddenly sick. Wyatt asked me what was wrong. I could see my wife in 1960 in the group of high schoolers she must have had. My jealousy went out into the stars of the night above me. I could not bear the roving carelessness of teenagers, their judgeless tangling of wanting and bodies. But I was the worst back then. In the mad days back then, I dragged the panties off girls I hated and talked badly about them once the sun came up.

Remember, I started writing in the 60s. I have changed through the decades. This aspect of his work reaches its nadir with a murderous rape in the grotesque western horror Ride Westerly for Pusalina, a story even Hannah regretted: I dont think that really violent thing with Pusalina, which caused me a few attacks for misogyny, I dont think its a great story. I just had some fun with my love of the west, thought Id put a vampire nun in the west. Its one of those ideas that comes down the pike and you just do it.

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