Volume 32, Number 11 · June 27, 1985
Southern Discomfort
By James Wolcott
Captain Maximus
by Barry Hannah
Knopf, 101 pp., $11.95
Lives of the Saints
by Nancy Lemann
Knopf, 144 pp., $13.95
After the coyote calls of Ray and The Tennis Handsome, Barry Hannah is carrying a more mellow tune in his new collection of stories, Captain Maximus. He seems to be bent over Wallace Stevens's blue guitar, admiring his hands of rough leather as they strike 'his living hi and ho.' Not that Hannah will ever turn crooner. Several months ago there was a movie circulating called The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and it's a title that would suit any of Hannah's bold, sonic fictions. A cowboy in the cockpit, Barry Hannah is American fiction's Buckaroo Banzai. Flight is his theme: flight, as in high altitudes and splitting the sound barrier; flight, as in escape and evasion. He roams through psychedelic skies.
Review, 2581 words
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