Southern Literary Giant, Barry Hannah Passes at 67

He died at age 67 from a heart attack.

Many of you will wonder why that is something that is newsworthy here.

Well, I’ll tell ya.

A very good friend of mine, Kayden Kross, turned me on to Barry Hannah’s writing.  She knows I love to read and she wanted me to read her “favorite book of all time”  “Yonder Stands your Orphan”.  I read it. It was a thick read, he writes in prose but his characters are incredibly rich, and like all of us, flawed.

For much of his life, Hannah was a hard drinking man, ready to fight at the drop of a hat, according to most who knew him, but he mellowed with age and was quite generous with his time.

One of the things I gave Kayden for Christmas a couple of years ago was a First edition, first printing hardback of “Yonder Stands Your Orphan”, flat signed by Barry Hannah.  I know that she treasures it.

His death was just days before the 17th annual Oxford Conference for the Book, held in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi.  Hannah and his work were the focus of this year’s conference.  I got an invite and Kayden and I had talked about going.

American literature lost one if it’s greats.

“Sometimes you don’t want to arrange your memory. I love the pure chaos of it and just the reverie of it for its own sake. I think that is what a writer has: a better memory than most people, or at least a more sensual memory. Language and memory are what it is all about”.

Barry Hannah