The Tennis Handsome

by Barry Hannah

Spinning the raucous tale of four restless sons of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Hannah introduces the reader to a pretty-boy international tennis star, his devoted manager, his gay coach, and a shell-shocked but sane Vietnam vet. Their adventures include rape by a walrus, murder by crossbow, and a tennis tournament played at gunpoint. Hannah's inventiveness sparkles and his prose shines.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Sports, Literature

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Barry Hannah was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi. He was the author of eight novels and five short story collections. He worked with notable American editors and publishers such as Gordon Lish, Seymour Lawrence, and Morgan Entrekin. His work was published in Esquire, The New Yorker, The Oxford American, The Southern Review, and a host of American magazines and quarterlies. In his lifetime he was awarded the The Faulkner Prize (1972), The Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction, The Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, the PEN/Malamud Award (2003) and the Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, in Oxford, where he taught creative writing for 28 years. He died on March 1, 2010, of natural causes.

Reviews

[🐴 🍖]

delighted w/ the general weirdness of the proceedings here: our hero is a brain-damaged tennis pro; an old man gets the wind knocked out of him by a thrown cabbage; an amorous walrus is beaten back with a saxophone. happily too the prose is strange enough to match, rampant w/ verbed nouns, nouned adjectives, & the highfalutin & vernacular mixed up every which way. in the "less felicitous" column, i think every slur known to man makes an appearance in here -- idk if it was intended as sheer provocation or satire or what, but i didn't find saying that arthur ashe would be better at tennis if he played with more of the N asterisk asterisk asterisk in him to be much of a rib-tickler. nonetheless, more hannah is on the docket!

[Dom Zuccone · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining blend of K.O'Toole and Hunter Thompson, and it has tennis.

[Mike Polizzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whatever substances spurred this ecstatic, pellmell novel of the enchantments of athletic grace in the midst of superior debauchery, dissolution, and midlife collapse, seem secondary to the exacting demon of Hannah's deep gifts. He sees the full fleshy mess of late 20th century America and swims right through it. Reminded me of Thomas McGuane's Bushwhacked Piano, only with more beats per minute and recklessness. Offensive, vulgar, hilarious, electrifying and ultimately tender.

[Brian White · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this. Couldn’t keep track of what was going on. Maybe it was Coronavirus paranoia.

[Andrew Sare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is like a mix of Hunter S. Thomson and a Confederacy of Dunces on tennis! Filthy language and a clipped narrative style about characters that make good, or fall apart, through fantastic character flaws and unique backstories. Its not the height of innovative literature or anything, but this is great Southern gothic fun. I was brought to this by reading Hannah's Airships years ago. The stand out short story in that collection was about a tennis pro. I can no longer remember anything about that story, so I can't make any comparisons, but since discovering that Hannah had dedicated a whole novel to tennis absurdism I had to have it on my list. Plus, what fan of Infinite Jest doesn't want to at some point read another tennis tale, pick up their sword and shield to chase that dragon and dip back into the magic?

[Rupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly a batshit crazy minor masterpiece of unfettered word spinning. Some glorious unique passages of perception & description followed by random wild reckless hunching.
Most books you can locate where the author is, from what center the author is working, but I truly couldn’t here other than the author is high on life & will hunch an old alley couch if you let him.
Charles Portis after minor excursion into glue huffing & with a wider scope of characters? Someone who has seen it all, is kind of sick of it, but at the same time ravenous for more?

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicely overwritten. Ever spend an evening when events, drink, place, & chemistry all came together & everyone was wittier than they really are. Here's a book full of that. Thos. McGuane's jacket blurb, "...a fable of sport and lust, written in a kind of moon-landing English. B. Hannah is living proof that Stagger Lee goes on stalking the South, still armed, still dangerous"

[Ilyas]

oddly enough i can't get enough of midlife crisis existential angst of middle aged white guys...go figure.

[wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will be the 1st from Hannah for me, used hardcover, not this one shown, black background...mine has a white background, a "net" in the foreground, title and author, "a novel by"...on the jacket comparisons to Flannery O'Connor, this apparently is Hannah's 5th "and easily most startling book to date..." Pubbed 1983.

1st Chapter is subtitled: Return to Return.

Story begins:

Dr. Levaster drove the Lincoln. It was rusty and the valves stuck. On the rear floorboard two rainpools sloshed, disturbing the mosquitoes that rode the beer cans. The other day he became forty. His hair was thin, his eyes swollen beneath sunglasses, his ears small and red. Yet he was not monstrous, or very ugly. He seemed, actually, to have just retreated from some untowardness. The man with him was a few years younger, built well, curly passionate hair, face dashed with the sun. His name was French Edward, the tennis pro.

Onward and upward.

Yeah and so like Baby Levaster, M.D. discovers teenagers living in his place? Two of them thought they might have gonorrhea...heh! As, in the story I just now finished, High Priest Of California by Charles Willeford, there's this character who is suffering from syphilis....some fancy five-dollar word like psoriasis only not that.

Strange, the connections in stories, like these two previously, one in Face by Tim Lebbon and the other in Seed by Ania Ahlborn...both using the phrase because it can or because I can....evil...why it does things.


Update, finished:

Index of chapter headings:

Return to Return pp 3-37
Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet pp 38-51
His March Through Time pp 52-69
The Longwood Cricket Club, Boston, July pp 70-80
The Physician Touches a Delicate Heart pp 81-90
He Raises His Head Through Time pp 91-103
I Fear My Home pp 104- 110
See Here pp 111-114
The New Orleans Radio pp 115-126
The Redemptress Exhibition pp 127-132
The Old Flit Floats to New Orleans pp 133-140
Nativity pp 141-144
Anything Done Thrice Gets Old pp 142-151
Smith Leaves pp 152-156
At the Metairie Club pp 157-161
Please, Others Are Waiting pp 162-163
End p 164
Furtherance pp 165-166

Cast
French Edward, the tennis handsome (one of many)
Baby Levaster, also Dr. Levaster, also Herbert Murphy Levaster
Carina, a 19-year-old
Olive, French’s mother
Mr. Edward…almost a non-entity, appears here there
Dr. James “Jimmy” Word, old tennis coach, part-time homosexual
Wilbur, his brother
Cecilia “Cissy’ Emile, French Edward’s wife
They had a newborn son who died
French’s father-in-law, Tim Emile
Whitney Humble, South African, tennis
Louise, Dr. Levaster’s receptionist, then his wife, dies
V.T. the Yugoslav sensation, tennis
El Nino de Merida, tennis
Bobby Smith, Nam vet, captain there, “Gon“=Saigon
“Tubby” Wooten from Redwood, tennis
McIntire, sharpshooter, Vietnam
Li Dap, North Vietnamese biggy
Oliver, a G.I.
Thorny Frazier, another homosexual that hangs w/James Word, college days
Little Waldo…Dan Waldo, hosts a party that Thorny/Word attend
Word’s mother & father into river, 1927 flood, levee broke, etc
Tyrone Hibatchi, Japanese assistant of Word, almost sent to camp, Word hides him
Melouf, tennis, guy w/shriveled arm
Raymond & Donald, two men at camp for the retarded
Cliff Richey, blue-eyed Billy the Kid from San Angelo, Texas, tennis
Bud Collins
Beth Battrick, Bobby Smith’s aunt that he shacks up with
Inez…a woman in their lives…becomes pregnant by Levaster, daughter Murphy,
….other names picked out prior, Tennessee Williams Levaster, French Edward Levaster
Hequel…Daryl…
Troy Dean & woman
Dick Lee…dogs…
Jubal DeWayne, older brother of French Edward
Dardanell Emile, Fat Tim Emile’s older brother, politician
Billy Davis, tennis
Mrs Swarmett, French Edward’s high school teacher
…there’s a priest, a disc jockey, a receptionist, various teenagers, others not named
A bull walrus that is caught on a line by Bobby, and it boards their boat in the Pacific and mounts Aunt Beth, shoots it jism all over her, shot by the captain

Narration
Combination of things, 3rd person for many chapters, through the eyes of Baby Levaster, French Edward, Jimmy Word, and 1st person sections through the eye-narration of Bobby Smith.

Locations
All over the place…Vicksburg, Mississippi and other locales there in the state, the Mississippi River, New York, New Orleans, Seattle, the Pacific ocean, New Orleans if not by place then by mention, Vietnam

Time
No set time, either, backward, forward, somewhat lineal w/backward jaunts

There’s some nice phrases here, not overdone, not an abundance of them…but some. Some strange things happen…as others have noted, the thing…assault by walrus, that…then there’s French Edward’s desire to get juiced with electricity…I believe he got hit by lightening at one point, wanted it more thereafter.

This strange coupling of Dr. Herbert Murphy (we learn late in the story) “Baby” Levaster and French Edward, as well as other strange relationships…Bobby Smith with his Aunt Beth, no holds barred….I recall one of the characters asking Dr. Levaster why he did it, him a doctor….there’s something about muscular thought…or…what was it? Did I read that? Something along that angle. No way that’s a spoiler, hey? Heh!

There’s some enjoyable conversation/dialogue…though there isn’t a…what? Storyline? Yeah…something, just the whims and desires of the various assorted characters, doing what they want, when they want….some strange antic both fore and aft…a couple goes to a park, the female fakes some sort of…what was it? Orgasm? To lure out some other life whereupon the other did his bitt….and then, later, the two homosexuals, Word and the other, Thorny was it?….they go to a movie, one pretends to be female who has lost her baby.

Anyway…though there doesn’t appear to be a lineal storyline, the narrative moved along and it was interesting to read to see just what going to happen next….and then some.

I’d read a review that made the judgement that Hannah is better than Harry Crews…no. I disagree. Crews’s stories are that, stories, yarns…stories that go from point a to point z, whereas this from Hannah is more like A Woman Named Drown, from the other writer at the University of Florida (maybe Harry is retired by now), Padgett Powell…who is able to turn a phrase better than Hannah. "Southern" writers being the point of the other reviewer, "Southern Gothic"...whatever. Maybe Hannah's other stories are...?

I’m sure I’ll pick up more from Hannah---tried to get that one, what was it…forget the title, something about Lonesome or…Yonder stands your orphan...so...I have a mission.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barry Hannah may not be for everyone, but he’s for me. He is “talented at being curt to poor white trash as only poor white trash itself can be.” He knows all too well about “country sadness, country badness, and country strife” and tells the truth about it. He doesn’t glamorize or romanticize. He’s not writing poetry, lyrical as it may read. “Why do I detest poetry? Because it had just as soon lie as tell the truth, so long as the rhyme and meter works.”

Everything worked in Tennis Handsome for me.

[Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for people that immediately discount a book that has a woman raped by a walrus. Similar to Flannery O'Connor, if you've read a lot of the author's short stories you might recognize some of them in his/her novel.

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should probably read this. I love Barry Hannah, and this book just rushes at you with awesome metaphors, unforgettable characters, electrocution, Vietnam, walrus sex, human sex, aunt sex, oh and also tennis and one very handsome man.

[Bill Householder · Rating 3 out of 5]

1st chapter is story “Return to Return” from Airships, 2nd chapter is “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet,” also from Airships, both reworked. Not bad overall, but just okay at the same time. Felt like a fix-up, which it sort of was with the use of those two stories, but seemed to meander too much.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannah's fourth novel, published in 1983.

[Charles White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning book and one of the most original novels you'll ever pick up. It's amazing the way Hannah's language and characters veer from the absurd to the sublime.

[Andi Koral · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as Geronimo Rex, but it was still pretty damn good. Like Rex, it got better as it went on. All the tennis talk lost me a bit, but otherwise it was a fun read.

[Kingklam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A game changer.

[Erik Wyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

A modern myth of lust, grace, folly, and the controlling powers therein.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun. Interesting cultural modern writing. Point of view is unique.

[Crystal]

My love for this book is irrational. Read Barry Hannah!