Never Die

by Barry Hannah

Classic Hannah, this novel is an outrageous, dark comedy featuring gays, money, the West, the South, and most of modern America, all in a corrupt 1910 frontier town.

Genres: Fiction

152 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991

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

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the hell did I just read? Seriously?

Over the last week to week and a half, I've read 3 books (this included with Amis's 'Time's Arrow' and Krúdy's 'Sunflower') that have enthralled me at times, were challenging and made me wonder 'Why am I still reading this?'.

The uncommonness of palindromes (Hannah...get it?!?) in the English language can be comparable to the uncommonness of writers that can match, word for word, sentence for sentence to Barry Hannah and "Never Die" seems like a work that could damage someone's perception of a writer or perhaps, make them a genius.

I honestly don't know how to rate this because as much as I could comprehend the happenings and found it entertaining, it still didn't make much sense and probably didn't need to; not in a confusing way, but in a 'huh? wow' type of manner, hence why I'm giving it a 3.

In other words, this short novel is hard to explain and I'm not going to go in particulars because the description of the book tells enough.

Recommended to those who want to read something that will test your nerve and find a laugh in this dark comedy of life.

[Tony Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I must stop becoming a totally newborn asshole every day."

[wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 5th...I believe....from Hannah that I am reading/will read.

This one starts out:

Back during the Civil War Kyle Nitburg was just twelve years old. The war was going badly around New Orleans, where he and his poor but beautiful mother lived. His father had gone off to fight in Virginia, near Richmond, they thought, but there was no communication and barely any chicken and peas. There might as well have been no father and barely any world.

Some ragged-looking people on horses came through the yard repeatedly and his mother would get on the back of a horse and ride off with them. Then some sheets of paper fell in the yard off a deep blue rushing cavalry that he knew was the Union.

He knew his mother was a spy. The next morning he ran over the paths to the blue people and turned her in. The reward was one hundred real dollars.

His mother was hanged on a railroad bridge.

Onward and upward.(less)

update, finished, 4/28/12, 8:39 p.m. e.s.t.

a strange kind of...um, western. complete w/the shoot-out at the end, w/a kind of summation by L.P. Sheheen, "often mistaken for a drunk, was the town fool who abhorred drink and kept a clean shirt on." heh. His last word on the matter:

--We will be here at the same time tomorrow, my children.

So there's this knee-capping dwarf, goes by the name of Smoot, who is hired by Nitberg who renamed the town after himself. Imagine the possibilities? Well, we got the various roads named after folk who have given up on town life and who don't have that old hankering for farm living.

Smoot kneecaps Fernando, a gunfighter with a university education.

Reading this and there's no way you can tell what is going to happen next. Like at the shootout, "they looked away with scorn when two negroes ran out of the alley and began raiding the corpse for cigarettes." Said corpse being some old Indian guy who materialized in the middle of the fight and began laying down lead. The cigarette option is curious, all things considered, somewhat prophetic on Hannah's part? Heh...this last story I read, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Mick Kelly, a girl all of thirteen goes in the New York Cafe and buys cigarettes for seventeen cents. Something about Manhattan for beads and blankets. Or something.
And in the one previous to that, The Secret of the Sands: Or, the 'Water Lily' and Her Crew, by Harry Collingwood, ole Harry and his friend Bob, with whom he sails the seven seas, well, they head outside after supper to enjoy a smoke. The wife don't allow it inside. Such is life.

So, the negroes running out from wherever they were hid...understandable. All things considered.

So we got head-amputations here, a plane that flies over and drops nitro on sheep, a yellow car...like in Faulkner's The Reivers...same make even. I think they made all of them yellow, but that's history. Winton Flyer. Guy driving it, owning it (the dwarf Smoot lusts after the car, and the monkey)...Navy Remington, the owner, has a monkey and he gets his arm shot off during the battle.

Strange tale...Fernando, who wants to burn the town down at the outset, "see the scum run" has this thought early on: --I thought Evil was big but it's really a mighty, mighty...small thing.

Maybe give this one a reread at some point. Hannah has so many curious turns-of-phrase here, it's a wonder how he came up with them all.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short raucous "Wild West" sort of tale set in Texas, full of people talking and thinking the way Barry Hannah likes to write. If you enjoy Barry Hannah, you will enjoy this book and get through it quickly. If you like books that involve midgets lusting after monkeys, women eating motor oil, people forced into opium addiction, pyromania, and biplanes, you might like it, too. The plot is a little thrown together, but the colorful cast of characters and short length mitigate the downsides.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given all the brilliant characters and set pieces Hannah devices I felt as though he fumbled the execution by opting for a style akin to his short stories, leaving all his great ideas underdone along with a little too much emphasis on the fragmented writing style.

[Jb · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a tough task to describe Barry Hannah's work and this novel is no exception. It is the story of a small town in the Old West but on the edge of modern changes (1911), and it is ferocious. And comical. And some damn beautiful writing.

[Shane F · Rating 3 out of 5]

omnibus with 'boomerang'

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to be charitable because I love Barry Hannah's writing, but this is not his best work. The plot is a bit garbled and slow to get going, but his plots are often secondary to his sentences, so that I can forgive. But this short work has many characters with little effort spent in developing any of them. The prose hums along as usual with Hannah, so the book may be worth reading for that alone. The third act is also enjoyable if gruesome. What surprised me, though, was how conventional this Western turned out to be. Greedy baron takes over town, good-hearted gunslinger challenges his authority, tyrant hires mercenaries to fix the problem, showdown ensues. Sound familiar?