barry hannah would be.
second place spirit animal
the best thing about when the weather suddenly gets warm just in time for a weekend when i finally have nothing to do is that i can go to my local coffee shop and read some of barry hannah’s short stories. i may be all alone in this, but i see a distinctly kierkegaardian development over the course of his three major collections (i’m leaving out captain maximus). it goes like this:
airships = aesthetic
bats out of hell = ethical
hi lonesome = religious
kierkegaard wouldn’t be happy about this, but i don’t see the “stages” as heirarchical, so i read hannah’s collections depending on whether i’m in an aesthetic, ethical, or religious mood. the only distinction i need to make here is that, where kierkegaard’s writings on ethics are usually his most boring, bats out of hell is anything but. i place it under ethics because of how hannah manages to take the style developed in airships and add a really intense psychological element to it. and also because i want to fit these books into a kierkegaardian rubric.
but anyway, i was feeling religious this weekend and read hi lonesome. here are some sentences that get highfalutin:
The people keep hoisting me up to the great bourgeoisie, over and over. I can’t fail, my God, America! Show me some more oily jean cash, dirty pelt, warm lucre, young man! Put your hand in your pants and show me your dollars. Reach into your brassiere, O my sovereign nymphs and clayhill babushkas. This may be work but I doubt it.
in other news, i’ve been wanting to tell the details of my story collection, but it’s a calculus i haven’t figured out how to talk about yet. this is, of course, on my end of things. on your end of things, you just order now and then get my book and another book later. also, you get amelia gray’s book, AM/PM, which is beautiful in form and content, now, free.