SOURCE: "Hannah and His Sentences," in Esquire, Vol. 119, No. 3, March, 1993, p. 55.

In the following excerpt from a review of Bats out of Hell, Blythe remarks on Hannah's characters and admiration for Jimi Hendrix.

It's altogether fitting that Jimi Hendrix is one of Barry Hannah's idols and literary influences. Not only is there something sweet and otherworldly about both men that complicates their well-deserved reputations for wildness, there is also a parallel in their artistry. What Hendrix did with the guitar, Hannah does with prose: invent a whole new American music, viciously electric, of squawks and cries, of soul rhythms and extraterrestrial riffs. When Hannah plays his typewriter up against the speakers, as it were, the result is strangely angelic feedback about the national psyche, about how tumultuous inner lives finally spill out onto the pavement in gaudy pools of blood.

Shelby Hearon on Bats Out of Hell:

This...