Gene Edwards: You told Barry, you've read this book of his five times.
Ron Rash: I have.
Barry Hannah: Yeah, that's staggering to me because I have not come close to reading it five times.
Ron Rash: I just think that what he did, I mean the language in that book is just incredible. I'd love to hear you talk a little about it. I read in an interview that you said that you just wrote that book in a kind of fury, I mean, you were just consumed with it. and the language, the velocity of the language in that, I mean, it's just amazing to me. It's almost like jazz riffs, just one after another.
Gene Edwards: Did you feel that when you were writing it?
Barry Hannah: I hope so because jazz riffs meant a great deal to me. I was a musician around Jackson here,
Gene Edwards: played in the symphony
Barry Hannah: had a combo, and I was in the Jackson symphony. You can't compliment me any deeper than to say it as a jazz riff. And I'm hearing a music in all of the best of my writing. And the worst of my writing is when I'm trying to be wise.
Gene Edwards: When you're trying to teach somebody something.
Barry Hannah: When I'm trying to come up with something deep and wise instead of letting the language flow naturally and letting the people act naturally then you will have wisdom. But that music, the music is with me every time I move a pencil or pen. Yes, voice, symphonies, guitar, Bob Dylan, Beethoven, something, something's going on between my ears.
Gene Edwards: Something's happening.
Barry Hannah: Right.
Gene Edwards: Is it, is it music for you, William?
William Gay: Well, I think uh, when I was working on my second novel, it was really influenced by music. I was listening to uh, I was listening to Harry Smith's anthology of American Folk music, aA lot of the stuff recorded between '27 and ‘29. A lot of blues and the character, the principal character in it changed from… He was a demolition man on a pipeline or something originally and he ended up being a banjo player like Doc Boggs at West Virginia . I think it was from West Virginia . Banjo player. Sort of took me, changed into him. And I was hearing, I was hearing those old songs in my head when I was writing the book. I wanted the quality of uh I wanted, I wanted it to be sort of mythic and I think to me that music, that old folk music sounds mythic. County music before there was country music, you know. Stuff that was recorded in the late twenties, before the depression killed off the record business. People like John Hurt and
Gene Edwards: People from Mississippi .
Willaim Gay: Yeah, Furry Lewis
Barry Hannah: My wife is crazy about that movie The Alamo, and in it Billy Bob Thornton, as Davy Crockett, and he starts playing the violin in a very sophisticated way. He joins in the Mexican music and kind of riffs on it and harmonizes with it. And indeed, I believe Crockett was talented on the violin. People forget that the people from the hills in Tennessee and Carolinas played a very sophisticated music. Very demanding music.
Gene Edwards: Right.
Barry Hannah: I t's not hayseed at all. It's a folk music, but it's tough to play that stuff, and you know, it's, you had to apprentice yourself to the violin or the fiddle or the bass or the harp, the banjo…
Gene Edwards: You had to work at it.
Barry Hannah: You had to work at it, yes.
Gene Edwards: Do you hear the music?
Ron Rash: Oh, yeah, and I grew up, in the town I grew up in actually in Western North Carolina . Earl Scruggs is from that town. Grew up, my grandmother, my family grew up near Doc Watson's, so those musicians who are just incredibly talented. But the language, you know, I've written three books of poetry, so I think when I write prose, I want to bring as much as I can from what I've learned from poetry. And that's where you get into, you know, I think poetry is a kind of music and certain rhythms and I try to use those in my novels as well. And I think our goal and we all fall short of this is what you said is to read like poetry. A novel we want every sentence to count and we always, speaking for myself, we fail, but we, that's what we hope for.
Barry Hannah: It all starts with a sentence. For me it, it always has. It starts with a sentence, then followed by, a true sentence, followed by another true sentence, leading into another true sentence and a music that you can get. By true, I mean faithful to it's subject. I don't mean a proverb, you know. It is solid, witness to what's going on. That's what I mean by true.
Gene Edwards: Water is important to all of you, too, isn't it?
Ron Rash: That's right. We're, are we all southern Baptists here?
Barry Hannah: I certainly was heavy southern Baptist, yeah.
William Gay: I'm kind of, I'm kind of an infidel.
Ron Rash: Well, I mean you grew up, though, did you grow up in the Baptist Church ?
William Gay: Yeah
Ron Rash: And I think if you grow up.
Gene Edwards: If you've been baptized
Ron Rash: Yeah, you've been totally immersed, you know, you don't get over it. And I think water for me, definitely is because it's such a potent… I don't like the word symbol, but it just resonates because of life and it can bring life and death. And I'm also very interested in the Celtic belief that water, particularly rivers are a conduit to the other side, the other life, the other world. And so all those things are important to me and uh certainly water.
Barry Hannah: The sea and the streams and the rivers, yes, bodies of water are my church. I feel more spiritual near large bodies of water than I ever do any other place, any other place. Something, something about that flowing water, or, or the ocean waves. I never thought I'd own a swimming pool, but now I've got a swimming pool, for, to exercise my older body and I feel like there's something to discover in that aqua water, but for some reason, you know, there's a mystery.
Ron Rash: T hat's one of the wonders of it. I mean, what's under that river or that reservoir or you know,
Gene Edwards: What used to be where that reservoir.
Ron Rash: Those kinds of questions.
Gene Edwards: Do you have those feelings? Do you think about water much in your William?
William Gay: Well, rivers, I guess. It probably all goes back to Huckleberry Finn with his, you know, the river. Everything in that book happens on the river and it sort of symbolizes motion and change.
Barry Hannah: In Tennessee it meant life. And the best places for me to vacation in Mississippi , outside the poor Katrina, the coast, is up near Tennessee , that corner of Alabama , Tennessee called the Tombigbee and the Tennessee River . It is just glorious up there, you know. And you talk about a lot of water in your work. It's why people stop, why they settle.
Gene Edwards: Where they take a breath.
Barry Hannah: Right.
Gene Edwards: Look around
Barry Hannah: And how they take a trip like in Huckleberry Finn.
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Renegade Writers : Overview
