Barry Hannah’s High Lonesome by Amy Hempel
In a lecture last year at Bennington College, Barry Hannah offered advice to writing students that was simple and profound: “Be master of such as you have.” The critically acclaimed, award-winning writer from Mississippi is himself master of the hot moment, of linguistic reverb (his term), and of the enviable sentence. From Airships and Ray to Bats Out of Hell, his voice has been a corrective to so much generic-sounding fiction.
- enviable adj. 令人羡慕的
Hannah has always been brilliant at depicting people in retreat, not just from the awfulness of their souls, but from the sweetness of them. This time out, in the stories in High Lonesome, Hannah is Grand Marshall at a parade of human ugliness. His characters are “autoannointed third-raters,” or the folks who oppose them: “Beating back nature was the obsession of men in these suburbs, and failing that, arranging it like a combed orphan.” Yet there is a softer spirit present in certain of these stories, though less acute an observer—a reassessment from a new stage of life. “Something tired and battered and loud had just thrown in the towel,” is the thought of a man recently released from “the lifetime monster of lust,” and of drink.
- depict vt. 描画
- be in retreat 在静修期
- throw in the sponge (或towel) (拳击中)承认失败, 认输, 放弃不干
- batter vt. 重击; 殴打 vi. 连续猛击
Hannah has said he finds plots “confining”: his free-range excursions are a wry, wise play-by-play of old fools and new fools just hanging around hoping somebody don’t like it. Lowered expectations abound, nowhere more than in marriage, where the feeling of a man for his wife is “an embattled apathy each morning goaded into mere courtesy.” One fellow beats up another “in a dutiful way, just socking him as if stamping the price on groceries.”
- confine vt. 禁闭; 关起; 监禁; 关押; 限制
- excursion cn. 远足(to somewhere); 涉足(into sth); 离题
- wry adj. (ironic) 挖苦的, 讽刺的; (displeased) 扭曲的
- play-by-play 体育比赛现场解说
- abound vi. 大量存在; 丰富; 充沛
- rumours abounded 传言四起
- to abound in sth. 充满某物
- this career abounds in opportunities 这个职业充满机遇
- embattled adj. 处境艰难的; 卷入战争的; 参战的
- apathy n. 冷淡
- goad n. [赶牛用的] 尖头棒 vt. [用尖头棒] 驱赶; (provoke) 刺激
- to goad sb. to violence 驱使某人使用暴力
- sock vt. -informal- 猛击
Yet these stories are not gloomy thanks to Hannah’s incomparable humor—as wicked as ever, those glorious sentences are teased out of the language the rest of us use, and the underpinning of Christian acceptance for our muted efforts.
- incomparable adj. (without equal) 无与伦比的; 绝美的; 绝佳的; (totally different) 完全不同的
- underpin vt. (support) 加固…的基础; (strengthen) 支持; 巩固
High Lonesome was just recently published by Atlantic Monthly Press.