Editor Marc Smirnoff Remembers Barry Hannah

FROM THE ARCHIVES: To read Barry Hannah's first-ever OA short story, "The Spy of Loog Root," please click here.
To read an interview with Hannah, please click here.

Photograph by Tom Rankin

There are many people who know more about Barry Hannah the artist and Barry Hannah the person than me. But this magazine was fortunate enough to publish a goodly number of pieces by him and because I edit the magazine and because I lived in Oxford, Mississippi, for a long spell, I did get to know him a bit.

THE ARTIST.

I can't think of any contemporary writer who is more revered by contemporary writers than Barry. He was, to use the cliché, a writer's writer. Of course, this label comes with strings attached. It means Barry wasn't as popular with the mass reading audience as he should have been. But it also means that the people who understand the art most intensely and personally know exactly how wonderful and potent Barry's mastery was. They know that he was utterly, deeply original and that what he accomplished could not be faked or lucked into.

In this way he was like the Velvet Underground. Small fan-base, huge influence.

It's funny. Some readers get off on language; others need the usable epiphanies that some writers bring back from their explorations. Barry appealed to both types. Many of his admirers doted on the beautiful twists and turns of his prose; they were lulled to bliss by the deft Hannah touch. Others read him for his ability to penetrate the mind of the human animal and to articulate hard truths.  

But the hard truths are not always palatable and Barry, despite his immense reputation with writers, did not always make the grade with the elites of publishing. THE NEW  YORKER only published him once—a very short, secondary piece on experiencing the Oxford, Mississippi, ice storm of 1994 that was more non-fictional than fictional and would have been better placed in "Talk of the Town" than anywhere else in that magazine. NEW STORIES OF THE SOUTH, the annual anthology that purports to capture the best of Southern short fiction, selected a Hannah fiction only once. I once asked him why he thought his work didn't appear more often in NEW STORIES and he replied, in part, "I don't know why...I just don't know." But I pushed him on this and said: "I guess some people think your stories can be very violent. I wonder if that played a part."

He responded: "Maybe it does. I don't know why. This is the most violent era I've ever lived in. Mothers killing babies—I've never even touched that subject. I've never really gotten to the grizzly, hideous things that you read in the newspaper."

All I can say is that this magazine tried to publish Barry Hannah as often as possible and that whenever we did we felt we had scaled new heights.

THE PERSON.

For the first years that I lived in Oxford, Barry was a bad drunk. Bad. Many stories of Bad Barry abound. Arguably, he wrote his worst books during this phase (HEY JACK!, BOOMERANG), superficial books that wavered between grotesque sentimentality and pure meanness.

In speaking ill of the recently deceased, I sound like an asshole, don't I?

In truth, I mention all of this only because of what happened shortly after that.

Shortly after that, Barry Hannah stopped drinking.

On a dime. Cold turkey. Overnight. It was one of the most amazing transformations I've ever seen in another human being.

Not only did he stop being a bad drunk, but he became a wise man. You could no longer be around him without being affected by his wisdom, wit, or pure goodness. He became more quotable than ever. People beamed in his presence. I do not exaggerate. Ask others.

I was visiting the Sewanee Writers' Conference right after Barry went cold turkey. The new Barry was in full flower. We surrounded him, literally, at lunch or after dinner, roundtable-style, and threw questions at him and tried to remember every precious word and insight. I remember getting out of my car at Sewanee only to see the great short story writer Tim O'Brien getting into his car. We spoke briefly and almost in code....

Tim: Barry. Have you seen—

MAS: Yes, amazing—

Tim: I wouldn't have believed—

MAS: I know. It's beyond anything I could've have—

Tim: Yes. It's like he's a new force, even better than before. And so damn wise—

MAS: And so damn funny—

Tim: And not like the old—

MAS: I know—

Tim: I know—

MAS: I know—

(Later, I had similar conversations with other people.)

I'll go so far as to say that after he let go of the bottle, he wrote better than ever. His first two books, post-booze, BATS OUT OF HELL and HIGH LONESOME, are two of the most extraordinary story collections in American literature.

I could give more examples of how Barry delighted those in his reach but I'll leave that to the writing. To end, I'll just mention a last reflection.

In person, Barry and I weren't at ease around each other. Me, because I was in awe of his prowess and intellect. He was the first genius writer I ever knew up-close and I could not for a moment ever forget that he was who he was.

As for why he was uncomfortable around me, I can only speculate. Let's just say I was the not the type he would normally befriend.... But despite this discomfort, Barry often said nice things about me or the magazine behind my back. In Oxford, it was often the other way around: you could find people who pretended to like you in person but who ripped you apart once you were out of earshot.

But not Barry Hannah.

Yes, there was plenty of darkness in his writing but there was also light. And, by God, despite the hardship of being human and despite the temptations and the early battles and losses, and his later hard illness, Barry Hannah lived in the light.

I'll leave it at that. Rest in peace, Barry Hannah.


—Marc Smirnoff