Ray

Barry Hannah is a GOD. Ray made me purge emotions i didn't know existed. BUY IT and you'll understand

Barry Hannah is the kind of writer people either love or hate; he doesn't leave a lot of middle ground. But "Ray" is a novel that should have wide appeal--it's clever, insightful, original, and quick. (Even those who won't like won't be able to say that it wasted a lot of their time.)This was the second work of Hannah's that I ever read (the first was "Airships"), and it made me a fan for life.

Near the end of "Ray," Mr. Hooch is "beating [up] Shakespeare" with his poetry. Hannah doesn't beat up Shakespeare, but he musters up a fierce, admirable assault: "Sabers, gentlemen, sabers!" The novel isn't perfect -- it isn't Shakespeare -- but the writing is so alive, so strong, that it feels right filthy to root in the muck for a word of criticism. "Ray" is music.

Wow, this is really something. With only 113 pages, Barry Hannah's "Ray" from 1980 is hardly a novel (someone called it one long redneck poem), but it does not really matter, all I know is that it is wonderful. The story, if there is any, is about Dr. Ray who tries to make sense of his life in the South, tries to hold on to his wrecked marriage, while pursuing his desire, the vulnerable beautiful Sister (who reminds me of Faulkner's Caddy from "The Sound and the Fury"). The story is filled with grotesque O'Connor-like characters, a dark gallows humor, and an admirable sense of poetry and musical language. Barry Hannah is no doubt one of the most talented writers in America today, and although most of his other works are fiction on a very high level, none of them reach the heights where "Ray" soars as a lone eagle.

This is Barry Hannah's finest book, which is not saying a lot by itself. Much of his other work is drafty, self-absorbed, and worse -- boring. Ray is none of those things. Ray is short and interesting. It is written so well that it leaves you wishing that you could read the lines unwritten between sentenses. It is also, happily, not a book that you would want your mother to read.