SOURCE: An interview in The Southern Review, Louisiana State University, Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 317-41.

In the following interview, which was conducted on April 27, 1982, Hannah discusses his literary influences, his characters, and aspects of his personal life.

[Vanarsdall]: To start off, who do you count as influences? You said Walker Percy meant a lot to you.

[Hannah]: Yeah, the one book Moviegoer. That was the one I read when I was reading into everything. I've read what you should have, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Joyce, but the Moviegoer was just an honest account by a fellow trying to be decent with a bit of glory and wasn't so drenched in rhetoric. It was possible to think and write without having all this either poetic or pulpit rhetoric around you all the time; it's very refreshing. In that way I think Hemingway was more influential on me than Faulkner, although...