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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