High Lonesome

High Lonesome

Barry Hannah

Language: English

Pages: 240

ISBN: 0802135323

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

though he had never played the game. From behind the cash register on his barstool Tuck from his hidden whitened fuzzy face watched Swanly without pause. On his fourth turn up the aisle Swanly noticed this again and knew certainly there was something wrong. Mister, you think I’d steal from you? What are you talking about? You taking a picture of me? I was noticing you’ve grown some from last summer. You’d better give me some cigarettes now so we can stamp that out. The other boys giggled.

saloon with a pistol to my head, but it was only a gag about music. Country folks don’t ever get tired of the same song, they just want it maybe faster and deeper now and then. Or maybe it wasn’t a gag. I’m just forty-two but sometimes very very weary. I drive us, but I still do not have the main handle on whether we are in for construction or destruction. She has a way of looking at the floor and whispering no, unconsciously, eyes awfully flat and grim. Mary was absolutely right. I’m terribly

she didn’t write back. I smelled something wrong and went on another bender, using every room in my house, a huge rented country estate—modest to be sure—to have pretentious toddies in. I was intent on finding the safe and happy mix. No sick loonies this time, surely not. In the midst of this the girl in North Dakota called and said her divorce from Nicholas was accomplished. She was headed back South and would drop by on her way to Florida. This was good, I was happy. There may be something

weather-caster. Like a Jeremiah just miles ahead of the storm and pointing backwards down the road, raving. The edge of the storm came on in feather-light little BB’s, then began to drive and pile. The glass on the west of the house went pecking as if attacked by a gale of birds. Under the streetlights the swirls of white-silver turned almost opaque. It was a determined blizzard. A Southerner doesn’t see such driving ice more than twice in a lifetime. But at one I went to bed pleasantly aroused,

healthy muskrat in personal hygiene. Not native to nothing. Hordes of them, Tuck imagined, pouring across the borders of the realm from bumland. His progeny lice with high attitudes. Tuck saw the revulsion of the boy. You ten cents higher than the store in Pinola, spoke Sunballs. His voice was shallow and thin as if he had worn it down screaming. A wreckage of teeth added a whistle at the end. Tuck was invested by red blindness. But Swanly spoke first. I warn you. Don’t come near me. I can’t

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