High Lonesome

by Barry Hannah

High Lonesome is a darkly comic, fiercely tragic, and strikingly original odyssey into American life. This collection by the author of Airships and Bats Out of Hell explores lost moments in time with intensity, emotion, and an eye to the past. In "Uncle High Lonesome," a young man recalls his Uncle Peter, whose even temper was marred only by his drinking binges, which would unleash moments of rage hinting at his much deeper distress. Fishing is transformed into a life-altering, almost mystical event in "A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis," when a huge fish caught on a line threatens to pull a young boy, and his entire world with him, underwater and out to sea. And in "Snerd and Niggero," a deep friendship between two men is inspired by the loss of a woman they both loved, a woman who was mistress to one and wife to the other. Viewed through memory and time's distance, Hannah's characters are brightly illuminated figures from a lost time, whose occassionally bleak lives are still uncommonly true.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Southern, American, Literary Fiction, Short Story Collection, Southern Gothic

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

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

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think the language Hannah uses in the stories in this collection defies categorization. It is certainly idiosyncratic way beyond anything else I’ve read this year. It demands to be taken on its own terms. Pops you out of the smooth flow that most prose strives for, but if you give in to it, it drags you deep, deep, and deeper. There is no attempt here to write the way “one is supposed to write,” although I won’t go as far as saying there is an attempt to do the opposite. The words simply cohere, cling to each other, create a logos of their own. After reading the first sentence of “Through Sunset Into the Raccoon Night” there was no way I was not going to read that story. And it didn’t disappoint. Just great control of language and tone, and true irony. And as with virtually all of the stories in this collection, there is an incredible depth of characterization that is implied in the language. This is character embedded in the language. Not character created via biographic details, but character in every word. Writing like this just kind of stops me in my tracks to ask: how do you get there?

[Korcan Derinsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

Alakarga’nın kampanyasından aldığım ve öncesinde herhangi bir bilgimin olmadığı bu öykü derlemesi bu sene okuduğum kitaplar arasında en “ilginçlerinden” biri kuşkusuz. Güney gotiğini buram buram hissettiğimiz hikayelerin merkezinde bir dönem aşkın ya da tutkunun peşinden gidip aradığını bulamamış insanlar var. Kimisi alkolik, kimisi deli, kimisiyse her şeyin sınırında bir tür arafta yaşayan ve ortak noktaları dengesizlik, tekinsizlik olan bu karakterler yalnızlık ve hayal kırıklığıyla sınanma halindeler. Bunu bazen kendi içlerinde yaşarken bazen etrafındakilere de yaşatıyorlar üstelik. Daha iyi bir hayatın ihtimali, harcanmış fırsatlar, bitmeyen serzenişler; suç, ırkçılık, dindarlık vs. gibi türe özgü öğelerle bir arada anlatılıyor. Kısaca özetlemek gerekirse, güney gotiğini seven bu öyküleri de kesinlikle sever. Ancak okur olarak bu kitabı birilerine önerir miyim, emin değilim. Bunun nedeni, yazarın kurduğu evrenlerin çok kolay anlaşılır, sevilir evrenler olmaması ve öykülerin neredeyse tamamının sanki bir romandan kesilmiş parçalar gibi durması. Üstelik birkaç öykü dışındaki öyküler de çok güçlü değiller ama derlemenin ruhuna çok uyuyorlar. Uzun lafı kısası, tek tek değerlendirmek yerine bütün olarak bakınca tadı da kıymeti de farklılaşan bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often call Barry Hannah the greatest living writer and I stand by that statement. I'll reluctantly grant there may be three or four valid arguments to the contrary, his death in March 2010 being the least of them. Shit, man, I can't review this guy's books. They're my road maps. I'm like one of those obsessive Jimmy Buffett or Grateful Dead or Star Trek or model train persons when it comes to Barry Hannah's work. But maybe not. I'm giving this one four stars instead of five, for now. Hannah has a sneaky and complex way of making you love his people despite and sometimes because of their negative traits, prejudices, and bad habits, but his characters' relentless misogyny in this collection of stories occasionally wore me down. That's why I'm docking it a star. Still, I have little use for political correctness, especially in fiction, so that star may come back when I revisit the book someday. I'm already reconsidering it. I think he loves women even when his characters don't.
Hannah always gets a lot of credit for writing great sentences in sincere yet backhanded compliments that neglect the overall form and structure of his unconventional style. Here are a lucky thirteen examples of his mastery of both the individual components and the whole shebang. Two sentences:
"A year ago Walthall was in a college play, a small atmospheric part but requiring much dramatic amplitude even on the streets thereafter. Walthall bought an ancient Jaguar sedan for nothing, and when it ran, smelling like Britain on the skids or the glove of a soiled duke, Walthall sat in it aggressive in his leisure as he drove about subdivisions at night looking in windows for naked people."

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I pity the poor foreign fool tasked with trying to effectively translate this work; the unusual delivery and references will be difficult for a non-English speaker, let alone a non-Southerner. Although much admired and aplauded during his career, especially for his short stories, I can't say that I loved Hannah's selections that much. Some stories were ok, and he certainly opens vistas into the depravity of the region, but overall I wasn't that impressed. Luckily, I also started GERONIMO REX, which I have found good so far. I was not amused by the topics or heavily depraved sexual references (and I am no prude), the deep negativity toward women, and didn't find most of the stories remotely funny. His writing can be beautiful at times---almost poetic in its construction---but it can also frustrate and make a reader have to work too hard to enjoy. I liked "Snerd and Niggerio" the best, as two men with different views and relations with the same woman come to grips with her passing. Most main characters seemed misogynistic and mean (apparently a common theme in his writing), and there is a fixation on color and sexual preference. Perhaps I picked up a volume from late in his career and should have tried an earlier work, but there you are.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I had, as a contemporary of Vincent van Gogh, stood in front of his Starry Night, would I have recognized the genius in it?? I must in all fairness, (and guilt for not knowing) try to acknowledge and promote the genius in Barry Hannah's writing. All of these short stories seem to be dipped in that quality, but my ability to appreciate all of these short stories is lacking. Perhaps only three of the thirteen short stories here reach me in the way that was intended. I will remain a fan of Hannah's writing, just not this particular collection. ***I suspect these stories reveal much about the artist/writers psyche, his withdrawal into alcoholism, his constant searching for his "next" woman or love interest, his vulnerability and insecurities when sharing his art with the masses. I'm just too interested in what happens when an artist rises above all that. I do highly recommend 'Ray' as it was easily consumed, and I still have 'Yonder Stands Your Orphan' on my shelves to read. I will continue to pursue his other works even if they make me slightly uncomfortable, in fact for the very reason that they do.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure why I didn't have a rating for this one. But here's a snippet of an Amazon review I wrote for it a few years back:
Hannah's latest, High Lonesome, reasserts him as a master of the short story. The thirteen tragic and oddly funny tales range from "Get Some Young," in which an old shopkeeper and his wife become more than friends with an "almost too good-looking" boy, to "The Agony of T. Bandini," where the main trouble-maker is possibly a closeted homosexual and insists that "Everybody is just a collision." Hannah's style is as flashy as ever, if not less brutal as his past work. His subject matter circles around eccentric oldsters, drunks, wannabe musicians, war vets, and wimpy geeks. At times it's like a southern Tom Robbins, which can sometimes not work, but mostly does. Barry Hannah does it again. And again. And again...

[Robert Mcgehee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a book reviewer, can't speak to the technicalities of good writing, etc., but I know what like, and I like this man's work. The stories in this one are on the dark side, but humorous, the characters memorable, and there is a poinancy. You'll laugh; you'll cry; you will say to yourself that there are no people like these people. But there are; they live next door, down the block regardless of where you yourself live. The writing approaches poetry and when I'm reading it I can't think of any way it could be improved. I am also transported back to younger days down on the Gulf Coast.

[Sara Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry Hannah's stories careen across the page at breakneck speed. This is a collection of violence, a world of senselessness, there is no center here to hold outside of Hannah's language. There is devastation at every turn, but never do we take a lingering eye - the currents run under and keep us moving, almost drowning.

Many of these stories I would give five stars to ("Get Some Young," "The Agony of T. Bandini," "Two Gone Over") but the collection loses me when Hannah takes a more parabolic tack ("A Creature in the Bay of At. Louis," "Snerd and Niggero") or when his dense language becomes overly opaque in service of new structures ("Repulsed").

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not enjoy it until the last three short stories - one, because I could understand them, two, they were not full of vulgarity, three, they made sense. I will not read any of his other books or short story collections. Also, the author did not use many commas and fragmented sentences. I did only fine one typographical error, though.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

We have dark humor, unhinged narrators, weird characters, pure and grotesque beauty in these stories of loneliness and desperation. Hannah's writing, as always, is searing and unrelenting. Enthralling, disturbing and creepily relatable.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never forget the character named Sunballs. Mostly for his name. This colllection is good, but Bats Out of Hell is stronger.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry Hannah is one of my favorites. I could read a grocery list written by Barry Hannah. He probably (definitely) falls into the Southern Gothic/Grotesque genre, but he never fixates on the grotesque. Things never get too dark. Hannah treats all the awfulness with a certain mirth or levity. One has a sense he's having fun as a writer, and it makes the fiction imminently more readable. Having said that, I read Hannah primarily for the zaniness of his sentences. He's a truly singular stylist, a hybrid of Faulkner, McCullers, Cormac McCarthy, the Bible, Flannery O'Connor, crime novels, and comic books. He's at his best when he can connect his style to a worthwhile story. I would recommend the novels "Geronimo Rex," "The Tennis Handsome," and the story "Testimony of Pilot" as examples of Hannah's best work. There are some excellent and some not-so-excellent stories in "High Lonesome." As I was reading, I noticed that Hannah has trouble writing in miniature, as a story requires. He's not great at coming up with discreet situations that must be resolved. Hannah's stories are kaleidoscopic, sprawling. They are more like novels compressed into story form. A lot of time passes, which requires a lot of exposition. What gets lost are details, dialogue, etc. If forced to guess, I'd say Hannah began most of his work with a character, and his weaker stories never get past the level of character sketches. It's difficult to summarize Barry Hannah's stories, but there are some themes in "High Lonesome" that recur. One is the loss of youth and innocence. In one story, everyone seems obsessed with a handsome teen named Swanly. In a couple other stories, Hannah reminisces about time spent as a child at the Bay of St. Louis. As is typical of Hannah, there's some tennis, some lusting after women, marriages splintering apart, and serious drinking. One can't help but think of Hannah's own biography when reading about the writer in "Drummer Down" who goes on such a bender that he loses his teaching job and attempts to go out to California to write screenplays (which all happened to the author; he was hired to write scripts by Robert Altman). As the author makes clear in the final story, "Uncle High Lonesome," this is a book about lost innocence and learning that the adults we revere aren't perfect. It's sad to read Barry Hannah now, knowing about his health and drinking struggles, especially as the prose dazzles on every page. His topics were sometimes repellent, but he was uniquely talented. Maybe I'm imagining it, but beneath Hannah's humor, the joy he took in writing, I now see much more sadness, more regret. His prose may be an acquired taste but it is one well-worth acquiring.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been hard to ignore all the reviews lately of Hannah's _Collected Fictions_, but I hate having to read all that much fiction at once. So instead, I got out one volume and read through it. As you can tell from my rating, I liked it a good deal.

Hannah's a bit weird, which is kind of an understatement, but also a bit weird for me to like. He's a Southern writer of the voicey kind, and seems by and large kind of invested in the hard drinking eccentric macho man thing, which isn't altogether in my wheelhouse. But the language is pitched so archly, so purple and just in love with hearing itself instead of echoing the way people actually talk that it's hard not to admire the verve and zest of it, whatever accent it wears. The stories themselves, those that I feel like I understood, are strange-- they go off on tangents and at least some of the time seem to never return to the source. They are populated by eccentrics, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't-- for example, the overlay of mythic type archetypes in the book's first story didn't really do anything for me, though there were some funny moments. But in other places, I found the stories really moving, as in the case of "Snerd and Niggero."

Hannah also had a weird way of introducing himself in some of these stories; I don't mean just the "I," but Hannah himself. It always seemed to open the stories up to being even more outrageous and unrealistic, which I enjoyed. It's something I want to try in a story or two, myself.

[Langley D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have such a true and real and tender soft spot for Barry Hannah and all his dumbass Southern writer friends. I cannot genuinely believe (though.......I mean, I certainly can genuinely believe) that nobody in the whole arc of my English literature education ever, ever told me Hey maybe you should read Barry Hannah. NOBODY writes sentences like this man. Nobody!! The way he puts words together is literally so weird and gorgeous what is he doing! Reading him is like, you're squinting and coughing and wading up to your neck through a green bog soup of sentences made entirely of big thesaurus words that don't feel like thesaurus words at all the way he uses them, like they still feel like they were the only right choice for each sentence but you've never read them actually utilized in any other place, and the characters are the strangest and most symbolically specific and most tragically deluded characters you have ever seen, and then out of the murk of syllables and Mississippi accents and turns of phrase you'd never have imagined anyone could come up with wells this like, gigantic whirlpool swell of emotion that knocks you completely onto your ass and under the swamp water and what that was was a big thematic crocodile swimming just right past you. So much right underneath the surface.

The fucking raccoons. Goddammit, the RACCOONS!!

[Joseph Daniel Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first go-around on Barry Hannah's short fiction. You really come to respect Barry's range over the course of this work. About half of these stories are told in Hannah's classic mode of deranged, bewildering, surreality (e.g. Get Some Young, Taste Like a Sword etc.), while others such as A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis, are more straight forward (quotation marks and all) in their exploration of topics such as place, fishing, and childhood. High Lonesome is something like throwing David Lynch, Robert Altman, and the American South in a Magic 8 Ball, shaking the shit out of it, and seeing what comes next.

[Ethan Ksiazek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply masterful. I think Hannah’s writing has it all. The seamless pacing, the clever syntactic turns, the inventive glances of humanity that refresh the mind. He’s hilarious, he’s stylish, the stories make me happy; I’ll definitely come back to them. This collection felt like a languorous mentor doling out symbolic winks time and time again, leaving me blushing and nodding—honored.

[Cole Brumley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great writing. Hate everybody in there.

[Scottaggart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the stories were forgettable nouveau Southern gothic fiction. Most depressun'.

[Nick Dundee · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't think I got it lol.

[Michael Whittle · Rating 3 out of 5]

High Lonesome. Reminded me in parts of John Fante, though not as good in my opinion (who is?!). What is clearly noticeable is the similarly erratic and get a quick reaction style that Fante championed. Hannah also had a character named 'Bandini' in one of the titled stories. Ultimately, I can see why Hannah's been referred to as a writer's writer. This is a good collection of short stories if you like weird prose and don't take life too seriously.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now I get it. Hannah didn't click for me before, but the first few short stories in this collection are some of the best I've ever read.

I mean, some of these sentences! Poetic. I took lots of pictures of pages.

I'd say the main themes are southern/midwestern existentialism, fishing, broken relationships, loneliness, and drinking. So if that stuff sits well with you, you're gonna have fun.

Recommended for anyone with a relative named Ebbnut.

[Danny Batten · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first book by Barry Hannah. The good stuff was outstanding. A couple stories just dragged or didn’t click for me, and I put those down. In those I think the plot, the imagery, and his unique prose just didn’t work together for me. The ones I liked the most (creature of Bay St. Louis, uncle high lonesome, get some young) will definitely get me to pick up another book by Hannah.

[stuti · Rating 3 out of 5]

stylistically interesting. my opinion is influenced by having a professor that is in love with this book. i did find a couple stories, like the ice storm to be really interesting. (but i haven't read all the stories)

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection of short stories, nominated for a Pulitzer prize.

[Patrick Strickland · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.65 rounded up. Even the few stories that stand out as somewhat vague and hard to follow hit you hard. It's not 'Airships,' but it's a fine collection.

[Thomas McDade · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The best young fiction writer to appear in the South since Flannery O'Connor."
-Larry McMurtry

Best story in my opinion: "A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis"

[Robert Morgan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare thing, this book. The sentences... man oh man.

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the key to making it through this collection of difficult stories, is reading it over a long period of time. Hannah's writing style is much like Pynchon's in that simply getting though a sentence or paragraph intelligibly can be a feat. Some stories have such a bizarre and wild delivery I needed to read them twice to simply understand the narrative (i.e. the almost Lynchean "Taste Like a Sword").

I normally hate this style of writing, but I think Barry Hannah's delivery, while difficult, is earnest, where as Pynchon and those who take after him are hacks who trade on obscurity and supposed high mindedness to make up for not having anything to say at all, or if they do, the talent to synthesize and deliver that message clearly.

When taken too many at a time, his stories seem formulaic. Nearly all of these stories are essentially mournful portraits of middle aged male alcoholics and the despairs their disease drags them to, and the people they hurt along the way. The strongest stories, for me, are the ones that are the most ambitious. "Get Some Young", "Carriba", and "Uncle High Lonesome" may be my favorites, but these stories really should be read a few more times.

Definitely would recommend this collection of stories over "Airships", which I didn't enjoy nearly as much.

[Ignacio Peña · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first encounter with Barry Hannah, and his ability to slip into the voice of his characters is astounding. It is perhaps a shame then that most of the stories in this collection are various shades of the same broken, hyper-misogynist lost male of the south, if this is the view he is wishing to depict. There are some great stories in here (Taste Like a Sword, Uncle High Lonesome), but overall the view that runs through most of the stories feels overly repetitive without much gain. Drummer Down begins with "He had never liked the young dancing Astaire, all greedy and certain. But now he was watching an old ghost thriller, and he liked Astaire old, pasted against the wall of mortality--dry, scared, maybe faintly alcoholic. This was a man." This seems to summarize the sum totality of the masculinity as that which seems to drive the stories in this collection, as if he seems to be saying "I see this, in everything."

[Mique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis,” “Snerd and Niggero,” “the Agony of T. Bandini,” “the Ice Storm,” and loved “Uncle High Lonesome”

The theme of “horny old men” that dominated most of the stories wasn't particularly compelling to me. That said, the layers in each story were interesting to parse out, and they were generally very well written and so I appreciated and enjoyed them anyways. I think there’s a number of stories here that I’d like to return to again after some reflection on them.