RIP, Barry Hannah

All I can say is that I’m sad.  Last night, after reading about his passing, I picked up my copy of Captain Maximus and read the first story, “Getting Started.”  It has all the things that make Hannah great and frustrating.  It’s wonderfully written with paragraphs and sentences that only have a passing relation to a narrative thread, but somehow cohesion is achieved.  Not all his stories are so hard to follow, but it is a hallmark of his stories when he’s just letting it rip, and that’s what makes them a challenge, but also so goddamned great because of how they tie together.  I laughed, out loud, three times with “Getting Started.”  First, when he describes a bullet going through water slowly, as if “thrown left-handed by a sissy” because is there a more perfect way to describe that?  If there was, Hannah would have used that one.  No one was more exacting in language and image.  Another time when the main character fishmerna catches a crab, but then a dog leaps in and attacks the crab he’s catching.  And the last image of the same fisherman, at the end of his strange relationship, stalking around a lake wearing stilts, screaming “Fuck you! Fuck you!” at passing sailboats.

Thank you, Mr. Hannah, for the work you’ve done.