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BATS OUT OF HELL, by Barry Hannah. Boston: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1993. 382 pages. $22.95.
Guns and gonads, symbols of our violent, sex-crazed times. So observes one of Barry Hannah's characters in a tale among the 23 pieces gathered in this collection of Hannah's short stories, the first since the publication of Airships, a work often described as a modern classic. Here again are lives tilled with violence, drunkenness, lust, disillusionment, emptiness, brutality, hopelessness, and anger. But here also we find loyalty, concern, friendship, gentleness, a quest for stability, and love. In short, these stories reflect the Hannah that readers have grown to expect, but they also register a maturing vision of Southern (and American) life. They capture the growth of a social critic while still revealing a master's wizardry with language.
Hannah's social criticism refuses to be preachy but is nonetheless pointed. Americans turn too rapidly to drugs, booze, cults, fads, and sex as recreation. They drift, they delude themselves, they despise others differing from themselves, and they not only burn their candles at both ends but set them ablaze in their middles in their quest for sensual excitement. They may be lushes at one moment, bicycling Mormons at another, wielders of guns or spouters...