RIP Barry Hannah

Fuck. RIP.

http://oxfordeagle.com/2010/03/author-barry-hannah-dies/

whoa : (

I just read Geronimo Rex at the end of last year. What really got me about the book: it's just a standard coming of age tale, but his language and tone just elevates the entire thing to this bawdy, grotesque piece of art, filled with wild sentences.

good interview here http://www.mississippireview.com/1997/interv2.html

here's the Paris Review interview

http://www.theparisreview.org/media/Hannah.pdf

SAD! big fan over the years. no barry and no larry brown! their heir was probably chris offutt, but now he writes for t.v. (true blood and weeds) so i doubt he will have time to write the kind of short stories that he used to write.

feel kinda bad that i haven't kept up with bobbie ann mason's books. i should pick up some of her newer ones.

barry hannah is sickeningly underrated. here's the first story from his awesome collection AIRSHIPS:

http://gardenandgun.com/waterliars

and if y'all haven't read RAY then you should check yourself ASAP. it's only about 109 pages, super quick read.

i live in north mississippi and knew barry pretty well. we started a band once called MFA (mother fuckers' association) and jammed it out one time (pretty hilarious experience). dude was shredding on the bass and drums, then rode his motorcycle home at 5 in the morning. we'll miss him. hope he gets his dues as a writer one day.

i think there are a lot of people who know how good he was! and he got a lot of positive feedback! i don't think he's underrated so much as underread. there's a difference. other writers and critics loved his stuff a lot.

"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 , 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 awarded the Fiction Prize of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters twice, and received Mississippi's prestigious Governor's Award in 1989 for distinguished representation of the state of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters."

people dug him!

true, he has a small but dedicated following and some critical accolades, but i just think he should be more known. case in point, this thread only got a handful of responses...

i guess the cliche of being a "writers' writer" fits for him, as i know many people (my roommate included) who moved to mississippi from elsewhere just to be near him.

For Record Store Day:

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/item/564-barry-hannah-on-the-turntable