Barry Hannah
Encyclopedia
Howard Barry Hannah was an American
novel
ist and short story
writer from Mississippi.
The author of eight novels and five short story collections (some sites list it as nine novels and four short story collections), Hannah 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.
His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), won the William Faulkner Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his 1978 collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the modern South, won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. The following year, Hannah received the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Hannah won a Guggenheim
, the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award
for excellence in the art of the short story.
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. For a brief time in 1980, Hannah lived in Los Angeles and worked as a writer for the film director Robert Altman
. 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.
Hannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi
, on April 23, 1942, and grew up in Clinton
, Mississippi
.
Education
At Mississippi College
, Hannah majored in pre-med but later switched to literature. He earned a Bachelor of Arts
degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1964. 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.
Publications
Barry Hannah's fictions contains situational humor that spawns a large gamut, from the Surreal humour
to the grotesque
and black humor. His first publication was a story that was placed in a national anthology of the best college writing when he was a student at the University of Arkansas. Soon after this, Hannah says he wrote his first truly good story, "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt,":
Hannah's first novel, the grotesque coming-of-age tale
Geronimo Rex (1972), won the William Faulkner
Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award
. Nightwatchmen (1973), his second novel, was a difficult book, and it is his only work never reissued in paperback. Hannah returned to form, however, with the short-story collection Airships (1978), which today is considered a classic. Most of the stories in the volume were first published in Esquire
magazine by its fiction editor at the time, Gordon Lish
. The short novel Ray (1980) was a critical success and a minor breakthrough for Hannah, and it is still considered one of his best novels.
After the grotesque Western
pastiche Never Die (1991), Hannah stuck to the short story form for the rest of the decade, first with the immense Bats Out of Hell (1993), which featured twenty-three stories over close to four hundred pages, making it Hannah's longest book, and then with High Lonesome (1996), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
. After a near-fatal bout with non-Hodgkin lymphoma
, 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.
Hannah finished a new novel, which underwent several title changes. In a 2003 interview with the Austin Chronicle
, Hannah declared the novel to be called Last Days. A 2005 interview with Hannah in The Paris Review featured a manuscript page from the then-titled Long, Last, Happy. However, a 2009 issue of the literary journal Gulf Coast featured an excerpt from the novel, then titled Sick Soldier at Your Door. The same excerpt was printed in the June 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine. A subsequent interview with Tom Franklin in the Summer 2009 issue of Tin House revealed that Sick Soldier at Your Door had been reconceptualized as a collection of short stories. The stories will be published in November 2010 by Grove Press under the title Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories. According to Grove's website, the book will "the best of the four story collections [Hannah] published during his lifetime and the final manuscript he left behind."
Teaching
Hannah taught creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop
, Clemson University
, Middlebury College
, the University of Alabama
, Texas State University, the University of Memphis
and the University of Montana - Missoula
. Hannah was a frequent visiting writer at the summer creative writing seminars at Sewanee and Bennington.
Hannah taught creative writing
for 28 years at the University of Mississippi
, where he was director of its M.F.A. program and was regarded as a generous mentor. Among the Mississippi writers whose careers he helped foster were the firefighter-novelist Larry Brown
(”Dirty Work,” “Joe,” “Father and Son,” “Big Bad Love
,” ) and Donna Tartt
(”The Secret History
,” “The Little Friend
.”)
Death
Hannah died of a heart attack
in Oxford, Mississippi
on March 1, 2010 at the age of 67. 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.
Reviews and perspectives
Exhibits, sites, and homepages
Selected online publications
Obituaries
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist and short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer from Mississippi.
The author of eight novels and five short story collections (some sites list it as nine novels and four short story collections), Hannah worked with notable American editors and publishers such as Gordon Lish
Gordon Lish
Gordon Jay Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, and Richard Ford.-Early life and family:...
, Seymour Lawrence, and Morgan Entrekin
Morgan Entrekin
Morgan Entrekin is the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic Inc. Books in New York City. He is one of six owners of the publishing company. He is from Nashville, Tennessee.-Timeline:...
. His work was published in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, The Oxford American
Oxford American
The Oxford American is an American quarterly literary magazine "dedicated to featuring the very best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South."-First publication:...
, Southern Review
Southern Review
The Southern Review, a literary journal co-founded in 1935 by Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks and located on the campus of Louisiana State University, publishes fiction, poetry, critical essays, interviews, book reviews, and excerpts from novels in progress by established and emerging writers...
, and a host of American magazines and quarterlies.
His first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), won the William Faulkner Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his 1978 collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the modern South, won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. The following year, Hannah received the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Hannah won a Guggenheim
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
, the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award
PEN/Malamud Award
The PEN/Malamud Award and Memorial Reading honors "excellence in the art of the short story", and is awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. The selection committee is composed of PEN/Faulkner directors and representatives of Bernard Malamud's literary executors.The award was first given...
for excellence in the art of the short story.
He was awarded the Fiction Prize of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters
The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is a privately funded foundation created to recognize annually the greatest accomplishments in art, music, literature, and photography among Mississippians. The idea was conceived by, among others, former Mississippi Governor William Winter, Dr. Cora...
twice and received Mississippi's prestigious Governor's Award in 1989 for distinguished representation of the state of Mississippi in artistic and cultural matters. For a brief time in 1980, Hannah lived in Los Angeles and worked as a writer for the film director Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
. 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.
"Barry could somehow make the English sentence generous and unpredictable, yet still make wonderful sense, which for readers is thrilling. You never knew the source of the next word. But he seemed to command the short story form and the novel form and make those forms up newly for himself." |
| Richard Ford Richard Ford Richard Ford is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land, and the short story collection Rock Springs, which contains several widely anthologized stories.-Early... |
Life and work
Early LifeHannah was born in Meridian, Mississippi
Meridian, Mississippi
Meridian is the county seat of Lauderdale County, Mississippi. It is the sixth largest city in the state and the principal city of the Meridian, Mississippi Micropolitan Statistical Area...
, on April 23, 1942, and grew up in Clinton
Clinton, Mississippi
Clinton is a city in Hinds County, Mississippi, United States. Situated in the Jackson metropolitan area, it is the tenth largest city in Mississippi. The population was 23,347 at the 2000 United States Census.-History:...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
.
Education
At Mississippi College
Mississippi College
Mississippi College, also known as MC, is a private, Christian university located in Clinton, Mississippi. Mississippi College comprises the main campus in Clinton, as well as satellite campuses in Brandon and Madison, Mississippi, and the Mississippi College School of Law in Jackson...
, Hannah majored in pre-med but later switched to literature. He earned a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree from Mississippi College in Clinton in 1964. He spent the next three years at the University of Arkansas
University of Arkansas
The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...
, where he earned a Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1966 and a Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
in 1967.
Publications
Barry Hannah's fictions contains situational humor that spawns a large gamut, from the Surreal humour
Surreal humour
Surreal humour is a form of humour based on violations of causal reasoning with events and behaviours that are logically incongruent. Constructions of surreal humour involve bizarre juxtapositions, non-sequiturs, irrational situations, and/or expressions of nonsense.The humour arises from a...
to the grotesque
Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
and black humor. His first publication was a story that was placed in a national anthology of the best college writing when he was a student at the University of Arkansas. Soon after this, Hannah says he wrote his first truly good story, "Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt,":
Hannah's first novel, the grotesque coming-of-age tale
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
Geronimo Rex (1972), won the William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
. Nightwatchmen (1973), his second novel, was a difficult book, and it is his only work never reissued in paperback. Hannah returned to form, however, with the short-story collection Airships (1978), which today is considered a classic. Most of the stories in the volume were first published in Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
magazine by its fiction editor at the time, Gordon Lish
Gordon Lish
Gordon Jay Lish is an American writer. As a literary editor, he championed many American authors, particularly Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, and Richard Ford.-Early life and family:...
. The short novel Ray (1980) was a critical success and a minor breakthrough for Hannah, and it is still considered one of his best novels.
|
| Barry Hannah |
After the grotesque Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
pastiche Never Die (1991), Hannah stuck to the short story form for the rest of the decade, first with the immense Bats Out of Hell (1993), which featured twenty-three stories over close to four hundred pages, making it Hannah's longest book, and then with High Lonesome (1996), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
. After a near-fatal bout with non-Hodgkin lymphoma
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma
The non-Hodgkin lymphomas are a diverse group of blood cancers that include any kind of lymphoma except Hodgkin's lymphomas. Types of NHL vary significantly in their severity, from indolent to very aggressive....
, Hannah returned in 2001 with Yonder Stands Your Orphan (the title is taken from Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
'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.
Hannah finished a new novel, which underwent several title changes. In a 2003 interview with the Austin Chronicle
Austin Chronicle
The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly, tabloid-style newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic...
, Hannah declared the novel to be called Last Days. A 2005 interview with Hannah in The Paris Review featured a manuscript page from the then-titled Long, Last, Happy. However, a 2009 issue of the literary journal Gulf Coast featured an excerpt from the novel, then titled Sick Soldier at Your Door. The same excerpt was printed in the June 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine. A subsequent interview with Tom Franklin in the Summer 2009 issue of Tin House revealed that Sick Soldier at Your Door had been reconceptualized as a collection of short stories. The stories will be published in November 2010 by Grove Press under the title Long, Last, Happy: New and Selected Stories. According to Grove's website, the book will "the best of the four story collections [Hannah] published during his lifetime and the final manuscript he left behind."
Teaching
Hannah taught creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...
, Clemson University
Clemson University
Clemson University is an American public, coeducational, land-grant, sea-grant, research university located in Clemson, South Carolina, United States....
, Middlebury College
Middlebury College
Middlebury College is a private liberal arts college located in Middlebury, Vermont, USA. Founded in 1800, it is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges in the United States. Drawing 2,400 undergraduates from all 50 United States and over 70 countries, Middlebury offers 44 majors in the arts,...
, the University of Alabama
University of Alabama
The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
, Texas State University, the University of Memphis
University of Memphis
The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....
and the University of Montana - Missoula
University of Montana - Missoula
The University of Montana ‒ Missoula is a public research university located in Missoula, Montana, in the United States. Founded in 1893, the university is the flagship campus of the four-campus University of Montana System and is its largest institution...
. Hannah was a frequent visiting writer at the summer creative writing seminars at Sewanee and Bennington.
Hannah taught creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
for 28 years at the University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
, where he was director of its M.F.A. program and was regarded as a generous mentor. Among the Mississippi writers whose careers he helped foster were the firefighter-novelist Larry Brown
Larry Brown (author)
Larry Brown was an American novelist, non-fiction and short story writer. He was a winner of numerous awards including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction, the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, and Mississippi's Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts...
(”Dirty Work,” “Joe,” “Father and Son,” “Big Bad Love
Big Bad Love
Big Bad Love is a 2001 film directed by Arliss Howard, who co-wrote the script with his brother, James Howard, based on a collection of short stories of the same name by Larry Brown. The story recounts an episode in the life of an alcoholic Vietnam veteran and struggling writer named Leon Barlow,...
,” ) and Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend . She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.-Early life:...
(”The Secret History
The Secret History
The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition , and the book became a bestseller.Set in New England, The Secret History tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics...
,” “The Little Friend
The Little Friend
The Little Friend is the second novel by Donna Tartt, published in 2002, a decade after her first novel, The Secret History.-Novel:Superficially, The Little Friend is a mystery adventure, centered on a young girl, Harriet, living in Mississippi in the early 1970s and her implicit anxieties about...
.”)
Those that don’t avert their eyes are the real artists. It is concentration, that’s what Dostoevsky said. Concentration is what the artist is about: he can look, and look, and look, and look. He carries no brief. He will tell you everything he sees. This sensibility will overcome every tendency to capsulize or moralize or philosophize; it is why, despite the themes and philosophy announced in behalf of an author by others, the actual art experience is much more whole. |
| Barry Hannah |
Death
Hannah died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
in Oxford, Mississippi
Oxford, Mississippi
Oxford is a city in, and the county seat of, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1835, it was named after the British university city of Oxford in hopes of having the state university located there, which it did successfully attract....
on March 1, 2010 at the age of 67. 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.
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.
Awards and honors
- The William FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
Prize - The Bellaman Foundation Award in Fiction
- The Arnold GingrichArnold GingrichArnold Gingrich was the editor of, and, along with publisher David A. Smart, co-founder of Esquire magazine. He created the magazine in 1933 and remained its editor until 1961...
Short Fiction Award - The Award for Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
- The PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction
External Links/Webliography
Interviews- Oxford American interview 2001
- Bomb interview, 2001
- Wired For Books Audio Interview with Barry Hannah
- Mississippi Review Vol. 25, No. 3, Barry Hannah Special (Spring, 1997)
- R. Vanarsdall, "The Spirits Will Win Through: An Interview with Barry Hannah," Southern Review 19:22, 317-341, 1983.
- Believer Magazine Interview, with Wells Towers (2008)
Reviews and perspectives
- Writers Remember Barry Hannah by Claire Howorth
- Barry Hannah's Long Shadow by Wells TowerWells TowerWells Tower is an American writer of short stories and non-fiction.-Early life, education, and early career:Tower was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but grew up in North Carolina....
- Kim Herzinger, "On the New Fiction" Mississippi Review, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Winter, 1985), pp. 7–22.
- Perspectives on Barry Hannah Edited by Martyn Bone
- Literary Mourning: Thoughts on Barry Hannah
Exhibits, sites, and homepages
Selected online publications
- Water Liars the full text of a short story from Hannah's 1978 collection Airships
- "Testimony of Pilot" by Barry Hannah
Obituaries
- GuardianUK obituary, March 2, 2010
- Barry Hannah 1942 — 2010 This "cyber-tombeauTombeauA tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...
" at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron SillimanRon SillimanRon Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
includes comments, tributes, and links - Barry Hannah, Author, Dies at 67 in Mississippi Filed by The Associated Press; Published: March 2, 2010