Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Eder

SOURCE: "A War Memorial in the Mind," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 6, 1987, pp. 3, 12.

An American critic and journalist, Eder received a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1987. In the following review, he remarks favorably on Hey Jack!

In the white hell of winter warfare in Korea, Homer, the narrator of Hey Jack! thought of going back to the Mississippi heat, girls and tennis games. But war is a universal condition, and once you have seen it, you recognize it anywhere, any time.

The recognition drives the narration of Barry Hannah's compelling novella. Years after the dreadful fighting around the Chosen Reservoir, the musty smell of an old book at an antiquary's shop brought the deaths back to Homer and sent him into a brief breakdown.

Now, still later, a writer in a Mississippi college town, successful and well-off, in love with a vital and...
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