Biloxi, Vicksburg, Mobile, Newark, Santa Fe, Richmond, Atlanta, Tuscaloosa: The names all appear in Barry Hannah's striking book of short stories ["Airships"] and the places are mostly Southern. Mr. Hannah's territory is "the new American South," and the new economy of the South appears in one story as something like a frame of mind…. (p. 1)
But Barry Hannah is not really a regional writer, except perhaps in the sense that "Dubliners" is a regional work…. Mr. Hannah not only has a voice of his own, but a precise, personal inflection. There is a kinship with Eudora Welty, perhaps, or Flannery O'Connor—an eccentric response to a world of fading but rigid social convention—but Mr. Hannah's style is more abrupt. His South is more scattered, too, and seems finally to represent an America that is to be found East, North and West as well, a disheveled modern country caught between Shiloh and Vietnam, dreaming almost tenderly of violence …, and plagued by recent memories that already have the force of ancient legend….
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