Barry Hannah
Barry Hannah | |
---|---|
Born | Meridian, Mississippi, U.S. | April 23, 1942
Died | March 1, 2010 Oxford, Mississippi, U.S. | (aged 67)
Occupation | |
Education | Mississippi College (BA) University of Arkansas (MA, MFA) |
Period | 1965–2010 |
Genre | Short story, novel |
Children | 3 |
Barry Hannah (April 23, 1942 – March 1, 2010) was an American novelist and short story writer from Mississippi.[1][2] Hannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 23, 1942, and grew up in Clinton, Mississippi. He wrote eight novels and five short story collections.[3]
His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his 1978 collection of short stories about the
Hannah was twice the recipient of a
Early life
Hannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 23, 1942, and grew up in Clinton, Mississippi. He had three children, a daughter Lee and two sons, Barry Jr. and Ted. He was married three times, the last to Susan (Varas) Hannah (1946-2010).[5]
Education
At Mississippi College, Hannah majored in pre-med but later switched to literature.[6] He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1964.[5] He spent the next three years at the University of Arkansas, where he earned a Master of Arts in 1966 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1967.[5]
Writing
Barry Hannah's fictions contain situational humor that spans a wide gamut, from the
And then I wrote my first truly good story, "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt," which was a piece of my then-forthcoming book, Geronimo Rex. I was about twenty-three. It really lit up for me, I thought. I don't really care what folks think of it now, but "Mother Rooney" was a springboard to the rest of my creative life.[8]
Hannah's first novel, the grotesque coming-of-age tale Geronimo Rex (1972), was nominated for the National Book Award.[4] Nightwatchmen (1973), his second novel, was a difficult book, and it is his only work never to be reissued in paperback.[9] Hannah returned to form, however, with the short-story collection Airships (1978). Most of the stories in the volume were first published in Esquire magazine by its fiction editor at the time, Gordon Lish.[5] The short novel Ray (1980) was a critical success and a minor breakthrough for Hannah, and one of his best-known novels.[10]
After the grotesque Western pastiche Never Die (1991),[11] Hannah stuck to short stories for the rest of the decade, first with the immense Bats Out of Hell (1993), which featured 23 stories over close to 400 pages, making it Hannah's longest book, and then with High Lonesome (1996), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.[2] After a near-fatal bout with non-Hodgkin lymphoma,[12] Hannah returned in 2001 with Yonder Stands Your Orphan (the title is taken from Bob Dylan's song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"), his longest novel since Geronimo Rex. In this novel, Hannah returned to a small community north of Vicksburg and to some of the characters featured in stories from Airships and Bats Out of Hell.[13][14]
Hannah attempted one more novel, which underwent several title changes. In a 2003 interview with the
Teaching
Hannah taught creative writing at the
Hannah was the director of the M.F.A. program at the
Death
Hannah died of a heart attack[25] in Oxford, Mississippi, on March 1, 2010, at the age of 67.[4] His death was just days before the 17th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, held in his hometown. Hannah and his work were the focus of that year's conference.[3]
Awards
- The William Faulkner Prize, given by the University of Rennes
- The Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction
- The Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award
- The Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- The PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction
- Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award
- Guggenheim Fellowship (1983)
Publications
Novels
- Geronimo Rex (1972)
- Nightwatchmen (1973)
- Ray (1980)
- The Tennis Handsome (1983)
- Hey Jack! (1987)
- Boomerang (1989)
- Never Die (1991)
- Yonder Stands Your Orphan (2001)
Story collections
- Airships (1978)
- Captain Maximus (1985)
- Bats out of Hell (1993)
- High Lonesome (1996)
- Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories (Nov. 2010)
Essays
- "Memories of Tennessee Williams", Mississippi Review, Vol. 48, 1995.
- "Introduction" The Book of Mark, Pocket Canon, Grove-Atlantic, 1999.
References
- ^ Obituary The New York Times. March 3, 2010. page A27.
- ^ a b c Kellogg, Carolyn (March 2, 2010). "Author Barry Hannah, 67, has died". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ a b c "Oxford Conference for the Book". Archived from the original on March 5, 2010.
- ^ a b c Pettus, Emily Wagster (March 2, 2010). "Author Barry Hannah dies at 67 in Mississippi". Associated Press. The Guardian. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f Grimes, William (March 3, 2010). "Barry Hannah, Darkly Comic Writer, Dies at 67". The New York Times. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ Smith, Kayla (April 23, 2013). "Have You Heard of Barry Hannah?". Deep South Magazine. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ Weston, Ruth D. (1998). Barry Hannah: Postmodern Romantic. p. 106. quote: "The complex nature of Barry Hannah's humor has deep roots in these American literary traditions, to which he brings his unique comic vision. the situational humor in his fiction, which runs the gamut from slapstick burlesque to parody and the absurd and from the malappropriate to the Gothic grotesque and macabre,"
- ^ "Barry Hannah 1942-2010". Oxford American. March 2, 2010. Archived from the original on March 7, 2010.
- ^ Wright, Snowden (April 10, 2013). "Barry Hannah's 'Lost' Novel". The Millions. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ^ Ellis, Lee (March 3, 2010). "Sabers, Gentlemen: Remembering Barry Hannah". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ISBN 9781572338944. p. 202.
- ^ Howorth, Richard (March 15, 2010). "Barry Hannah". Time. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ^ Bernstein, Richard (July 10, 2001). "Books of the Times; Giving In to the Urge To Do Bad in the South". The New York Times. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ISBN 9781578069194. p. 60.
- ^ Hannah, Barry (2009). An excerpt from "Sick Soldier at Your Door". Gulf Coast. 21:1. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ^ Hannah, Barry (2009). "Sick soldier at your door". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
- ^ Franklin, Tom (March 2, 2010). "Barry Hannah, 1942-2010". Tin House. Retrieved May 19, 2013. Archived from the original on December 9, 2011.
- ^ "Barry Hannah: Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories". Grove Atlantic. June 8, 2010. Archived from the original on June 15, 2010. Retrieved June 8, 2010.
- ^ "Faculty". Iowa Writers' Workshop, University of Iowa. Archived from the original on April 4, 2013. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ Cobb, Mark Hughes (September 25, 2008). "Noted writer Barry Hannah returns to UA". The Tuscaloosa News. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ Wilkes, Byron (March 7, 2010). "Hannah and his works will long be remembered". The Meridian Star. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ "Barry Hannah (1942-2010)". Sewanee Writers' Conference. Archived from the original on May 31, 2011. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ a b Steelman, Ben (March 2, 2010). "Barry Hannah, R.I.P." Star-News. Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved May 18, 2013.
- ^ "Barry – Mississippi Sideboard". jesseyancy.com. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
- National Public Radio. March 4, 2010. Archivedfrom the original on March 7, 2010. Retrieved March 4, 2010.
External links
- Lacey Galbraith (Winter 2004). "Barry Hannah, The Art of Fiction No. 184". The Paris Review (172).
- Southern Destroyer in Austin Chronicle
- Writers Remember Barry Hannah by Claire Howorth
- Barry Hannah's Long Shadow by Wells Tower
- Kim Herzinger, "On the New Fiction" Mississippi Review, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Winter, 1985), pp. 7–22.
- Literary Mourning: Thoughts on Barry Hannah