Bat Out of Hell: An Interview with Barry Hannah

This interview was published in The Local Voice #68 ‒ November 26, 2008. Please click here to access the digital edition PDF.

Mississippi novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah has been named a USA Fellow for 2008 by United States Artists (USA), the national artists’ advocacy organization.

He’s among fifty-one winning artists (including one collaborative pair). The artists from a diverse spectrum of fields—architecture and design, crafts and traditional arts, dance, literature, media music, theater arts and visual arts—were selected from among 362 nominated applicants from forty-four states.

The USA fellows program provides direct support for artists by annually awarded fifty unrestricted grants of $50,000 to artists of all disciplines from across the country.

by Louis E. Bourgeois

I would like to begin by asking you how you became a writer? Was writing something you did as a child, or was it something you discovered later in life?

Inventing stories, a plot hatched by a villain who left telltale signs around the little village of Clinton, Mississippi (pop 2500), always discovering subtle imaginary clues, was the order of entire summer weeks. In my case the story came before the word. I wasn’t word-conscious truly—I mean words as heavy individual entities—until later college days.

What was the extent of your musical career?

I was a trumpet man winning state prizes in solo classical recitals. Played in the Jackson Symphony senior year in high school through college. Jazz/bop/rock combo playing for med school, fraternities, etc. The point was to be so good you would woo females of hot sweaty cleavage to you. Never happened. But as above, you imagined a chick with the proper sweaty cleavage, somebody actually who barely noted your existence, in a torrid mess of great length with you. She could not help herself, sacrificed all.

Can you describe the genesis of your first novel, Geronimo Rex? How did it feel to write such a critically successful book at the young age of thirty?

My first novel came from a few authentic strains of my MFA thesis at Arkansas. The critical acceptance passed delight, but I felt like an old person crawling up from the mines, the work had taxed me so much for four years. I didn’t understand the disconnect between “critical” success and massive sales, which humbled me.

Do you see yourself as a Southern writer? Do questions like this strike you as inane or meaningless?

Yes, meaningless, especially at my age. Professional Southerners sicken me. I’m very deeply American, have lived and dug into all regions of the nation.

What was your time in Hollywood like?

Robert Altman liked a book, Ray, I did in ‘80. I imagined this genius would put it on the screen. Again my hopes were tempered when I learned this was not his intent. But he gave me small doctoring and “idea” work to do, and paid me out of his pocket. A writers’ strike was in progress. Altman himself was forced to sell Lion’s Gate studios because of small popular success. He liked writers around as sort of court wags.

I worked a bit at Zoetrope with a British woman under extremely vague circumstances. The woman called Ray, which she adored, “a little redneck classic,” which didn’t thrill me. We did absolutely nothing at Coppola’s house, a kind of university with many arms. One day, as I sat there with a pencil, hungry to get down to writing, she said, “Oh tomorrow! Tomorrow the children come in!”

It was time to say f**k it. I was just driving my motorcycle back and forth from studio to studio. The assistant director on a Michael Crichton film wanted me to write a film about Big Jim Folson. We crept into a scene shooting, where I saw the genius of banal, about six feet nine, looking back at me as if I might despoil his precious moments of masterpissing.

I’d had it. Crichton represented everything I despised and its attitude. When I left L.A. in a red International Harvester I got for $1300 because of the dreaded gas economy, I was one happy ex-failure, on cruise back to fiction. But let’s not forget the great Pacific, Abalone Cove, Emerald Cove, the wonderful Eden that great State is.

What is it about Samuel Beckett that appeals to you?

Beckett. Nobody who wrote angelic prose has ever dared as much as he to cut to the quick of the true existence of us, the lame, halt, blind, and bummed-out lost ones, all phoniness cut away. He dared having no audience at all.

Is Bill Faulkner still important to you?

Faulkner is important for the works of genius, and, like Beckett, for the risks.

Do you think Oxford, Mississippi, is a “special” place to be as a writer?

Yes.

You were the first graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Arkansas. What was it like being there during those early years?

The instruction was very keen and handed to you by passionate pros. Just three is all it took. They believed in me. That meant everything, I worked hard.

What is your attraction to French writers?

A couple of books of Gide’s and all of Camus really got to me, still do. I was all the way into Existentialism through The Stranger and The Plague. The singular act that defined you draws me in. Camus smashed into a tree and died in ‘60, when I was a college sophomore. I felt French, I took French courses. My entire European experience is one trip to Ireland and many to Paris. I was already there before I got there, down with Hemingway in the ‘20s and much stirred by the rich but simple style of the French.

For me, the most intriguing and interesting book by Barry Hannah is the 1993 collection Bats Out of Hell. Can you describe this period of writing?

I don’t mind discussing the process of this book because it was written at a blistering pace right after my father died. I believe his spirit inhabited me. He was a good man, honest and funny, snappy dresser. I simply couldn’t quit writing stories for a year and a half. I hope the reader shares the brutal and gentle joys as I did writing it.

Airships is deemed by many to be your most successful book. Explain what it was like and what was going on in your mind when you were writing this set of stories.

Much awful tragedy along with sublime fellowship on the tennis courts at Clemson and U of Alabama. My worst drinking years in Tuscaloosa. Dissolution of marriage, fired, headed west to make my fortune in movies, as described above. But I was on the way to a very sweet time at Iowa, which saved my honor, brought me the means to support my children and get some pride back.

Are there any contemporary writers whom you respect?

McCarthy, Ford, Denis Johnson, several of our Grisham writers. Knight, Franklin, and Watson certainly. Phillip Roth keeps the hits coming. What a man!

What impact do you think you’ve had on American literature?

It’s impossible for me to know this.

Fishing seems to play a part in much of your work. Do you or have you ever hunted?

Gave up hunting at fifteen. I wasn’t going to eat what I shot and stupid bloodlust became apparent to me with my 12 gauge auto.

How do you feel about the novels you’ve written?

I feel that I gave every one the best I had at the time. I’d like to rewrite my second book, Nightwatchmen, because I wrote it under hurried circumstance on the heels of my first book. It had no editing, and with just a few changes on the order of less=more it could be a fine book, I think.

Have you ever written poetry to any great degree?

In college for the campus lit mag. My regard for poetry remains high, undiminished. I was lucky to see and hear Jim Dickey, Richard Hugo, and Robert Lowell read. Good readers are rare, but I’ve seen football jocks moved to tears by an especially good reading of Dickey’s.

Did you know Kurt Vonnegut? Who are some of the most famous writers you’ve known over the years?

Never met Vonnegut but am a huge admirer. I believe I’m living among some great fiction greats but none of us knows who’s going to last in the highest realms of fiction. You’re too busy with your own stuff to judge.

Do you feel literature has become more “artsy” or less so?

“Artsy” remains a permanent danger in every age, I’d think. You want idealized conversation and to quickly forget the concept “literature” in any good thing you pick up.

What do you think of interviews?

I love the interviews of the few I deeply admire. My own are redundant agonies I do only for friends and money. Or major fame. Let’s not leave out the infantile vanity to ham it up on a big stage we all have.

To your mind, what is the future of fiction writing? For that matter, what is the future of literature in this age of advanced technology?

Remains the same weight and crypto magic of a gem. The line of black on white, performed naturally and with great acumen is a joy, silent, that launches into space the techno’s celebrants can’t match. It is the soul, the prayer that might even have souls.

If you were on your death bed, what would you finally say to aspiring young writers?

Please. But I’d say now, having been close or on the deathbed briefly, THAT WE’RE ALL BUSY DYING. Cut the crap, get to work. But not unless you love writing deeply, feel the angst of vacuum without it.

Why do you write? Further, why should anyone write? Is literary writing a dying art form, or is it just now being fully realized?

Not dying but curiously unadventurous right now. The Scots and Welsh are taking the lead. Oh, of course, Australians. Friend Rich Branagan of Tasmania is as good as it gets. Reminds me, I left out Marilyn Robinson, a gal of much quiet power. Had the pleasure of working with her in Iowa. Why did I forget Robert Stone? The straight ahead classic read into exotic madness. Our Conrad, no doubt.

There is a traditional notion that a writer must be alcoholic, or strung out on drugs, or insane to be any good, to be great. What are your views on this assumption?

None of those assumptions are any good. As a mentor, I’ve seen too much booze and drugs among erstwhile writers who only talk a good game and never get down to the struggling pleasure at hand.

What is your favorite book by Barry Hannah?

I’d have to go with the last, Yonder. And the one I’m finishing right now, The Happy Sickness. As mentioned, I like them all but would do some major tinkering with Nightwatchmen.

Do you like to teach writing? Can writing be taught, more importantly, perhaps, should it be taught?

I do like to teach, but not too much. My job is to coach the protégé into discovering a confident and assertive voice of his/her own. Yes, when there’s talent. Zero otherwise.

Do you ever read philosophy?

Yes, but by way of its weave into works of art and history. Never finished an actual book of philosophy by anybody.

Do you consider yourself an experimental or avant-garde writer? You have been called post-modern, how do you respond to this?

Avant-garde is the medal I’d seek. Post-modern is just a measurement of generations, sometimes wars. The new interest in Mid-Eastern and Indian works is happy and healthy, especially for us narrow chauvinists unconscious that whole attitudes of existence exist beyond our democracy-and our presidential run-offs, which are in fact “last liar standing.” The possible choice between some sub-Bushite or Hillary Clinton is sickening to any sentient patriot.

What would you like your last words to the world to be?

Refuse to have a bad day. Life is a river, not a ladder (borrowed from Jim Harrison, who borrowed it from an Indian sage).

This Barry Hannah interview was published in The Local Voice #68, November 26‒December 11, 2008. To access the digital edition PDF, please click here.