A Review of Barry Hannah's Bats Out of Hell
Deron Bauman

The language of Barry Hannah's Bats Out of Hell is so textured that on first reading, many of the stories are too dense to be seen through: a forest of language in which one becomes lost.

Mex Ned, some time ago, was perishing for a jungle, then a drink. He had ridden himself out into the Raw Barriers, which was much like making your way over bald, bleached skull. There was hardly a pleasant or ambiguous place to hide his stash. No, it was a torture and constraint here even to hide his intent.

The landscape might not have hiding places, but the language does. Words change shape and take on new meaning mulled over another day. A sentence that meant something once may mean something quite another when read again. Think of a combinant Joyce and Chaucer: word play and debauchery gone awry.

He was a layabout, merely heavy in mind, with no weight. He could barely look at Esther now and he felt, out of his loud toylike car, a rolling fool and an impertinence. She was not a glow. pg. 65

Other stories show an ability to illuminate a moment. Think of all those words combining and roiling. Think of water churning. Think of leaves in a forest overlapping to obtain a shadowy thickness, and then, in the midst of all this, a turn of phrase, a surfacing log, a beam of light that illuminates something that had not been seen.

"I want a dog. I want a dog. I get so lonely, nothing anybody can do about it," Lewis cried out like a child. pg. 11

The septuagenarian having just learned that a life time friend had "turned queer" in his later years. Sometimes the layers of what we desire are stripped away. Other times that which is discarded is returned. The stranger, hiding, has ears.

The outcast nephew was farhearinged. As with farsightedness, his ear could not register sounds up close, only those far away, up to a quarter mile.

In Hannah's stories, that which we say comes back to us. But the things that come back aren't the things that are said or acted in full light. Often what is reported is pornographic, dark, originally misrepresented.

But through the window I heard the clink of, yes, it had to be that dog chain, and then soon with it, at first unaccountable, but there was no mistaking it, the whir of the bicycle being pumped and clanking just a little. pg. 211

What is being described cannot be described, must only be read. These stories give movement, present motion, create pictures, but are not movies. They must be viewed privately, must be acknowledged internally, are not designed, no matter how lewd or dirty the laundry, as public spectacle.

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