Customer Reviews

Captain Maximus (Contemporary American Fiction)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barry Hannah, Captain Maximus (Penguin, 1985)

Barry Hannah is America's most sadly neglected literary author since John Fante, and that's a shame. Hannah's place in literary history should be carved in rock, if for no other reason than having written one of the world's few absolutely perfect novels in The Tennis Handsome; had he retired after that, he should have been able to retire secure in the fact that his literary legacy would stand as long as humanity does. But he kept writing, and every once in a while he'd turn out another wonderful and overlooked gem. The short story collection Captain Maximus is without doubt one of them.

Hannah hands us a small (too small, for my tastes, but you can't have everything; it runs ninety-two pages in trade paperback) collection of stories, many of which had only appeared in limited runs or places one normally doesn't find short stories (for example, the newspaper) before appearing here. Spanning the first half of the eighties, the collection shows once again why Barry Hannah should be hoisted on the shoulders of the literary establishment to tapdance on the heads of vacuous New York Times bestseller list residents; his characters are savage, unrepentant, funny, mixed-up, and above all fiercely intelligent and with a finely-honed sense of the ironies of their existences. Most of the stories here are only a few pages long, but still manage to pack a wallop. As a side note, this is unmistakably work of that genre known as "southern fiction;" had a genetic engineer taken the best parts of the creative genes of Flannery O'Connor and mated them with the same from Faulkner, they might have gotten Barry Hannah (or, at least, the oddly fraternal twins of Hannah and Ferrol Sams). So let your taste for whatever it is that makes "southern fiction" southern be your guide, but one way or the other, give Hannah a try. If you want a small dose first, by all means, start here.

(Side note: it is amusing that 90% of the bibliographies of Hannah I found on the web list Captain Maximus as a novel. Ah, the hazards of letting books go out of print for years.) *** ½

These were the very first Barry Hannah stories that I read--short, startlingly energetic bursts of comic misdirection that made me rummage round and pull on my big black boots in a species of ebulient triumph that I bet I'm not the only one out there who's ever experienced the likes of. I remember literally bouncing diagonally round my little apartment in kinks and frisks of laughter. It must have been somewhere in there roundabout the middle 1990s--a decade despite the well-publicised notoriety et cetera and ad bleeding nauseam that turned out to be for the discerning and retiring outer borough type a bit of a bleeding riot in more ways than one. My own story abbreviated and reduced gives the following: a fourteen-year stint in Astoria, Queens, beginning upon my arrival here on these shores in 1990, and lasting until I fled to the suburbs in 2004, where to this day day I mooch about on weekends doing the vacuum cleaning and pretending to garden but I still work on weekdays so nowadays with the economic climate and the outsourcing and what have you that means at least three hours total commuting time per day which turns out pleasantly enough to also mean many good books just gobbled up in no time. Astoria is a fine place to have had a hut in I must say, suited me in any case right down to my Frye boots, which I bought in the summer of 1988 in Flushing--I was here just for the summer that year, reconnoitering you might say, very bleeding hot it was I remember, that particular season. I worked in a fencing company based in Jamaica, Queens. Paradise Fence on Hillside Avenue. Six days a week too and in the 80s I used to wear these tiny little round tortoise-shell-like glasses with wire wraparound bits for the ears, belonged to some powdered old biddy from way the hell back in the Big Smoke, and everybody thought I was sort of slow and harmless on account of such alarming magnification tightly enclosed in what were really just ridiculously small plastic circles. Had me head shaved too that summer, on account of the heat, which added some to my image as some sort of loony on leave. During one sweltering domestic job in Rego Park a woman came outside and gave the crew lemonade--she found out where I was from and asked how long I'd been in New York. "Nearly three months now," I said. "You're English isn't bad for just three months," she said. "Thanks very much," I replied. "I really like it here. I think I'm going to come back someday and maybe stay a little longer." And I did. Three apartments I shacked up in between 1990 and 2004, the first lasting a little over eight months coz the utterly repulsive and money-grubbing super slash landlord there was this pasty-faced Romanian peasant who hated me from the get-go and tried to gouge me right, left and center until I snapped and told this cash-crazed tinker that he could stuff the security deposit right up his Bucharest coz I'm keeping this month's rent and oh yeah I'm moving to the next building too and you smell a lot like boiled cabbage and your wife, if indeed that is what the rump-fed ronyon is, wears combat boots, has a moustache and also smells a lot like boiled cabbage. And I did move right next door and the super in this building was a felly from Montenegro named Drasko and this dude with his little fambly were just the exact opposite of the ghastly and grasping Romanians: just honest-to-God good people. So happy indeed was I with me new digs that I painted a giant red rectangle on the wall of the bedroom and covered it perfectly with this huge gilt picture frame I'd found thrown out on the footpath and for some reason I associate this with Barry Hannah coz it was that same day I went still slightly splotched in red enamel paint to the book sale across the street in our local library. It was there in fact that I first clapped eyes on the little paperback that could, Captain Maximus. These dopey librarians, up to their unshaved eyebrows in that limitless stupidity of theirs, were selling off in a slack-jawed fundraiser this priceless comic gem for a dollar to just anyone who happened by. "Don't you even know," I asked, "who this dude is? And what this formidable book of short stories actually represents?" "Who and what would that be, dear?" said some tweedy and tiny bun-headed old biddy in huge spectacles and the posture of one still active in curling circles. Moreover, this wretched little woman bore a startling resemblance to Helen Thomas so I turned tail and bolted back to my hut lickety-split with me Maximus under me oxter. These stories cooked up a dense and all-encompassing fogbank of fanschmabulous fiction that it was absolutely a macaroon-inflected delight to get temporarily lost in. Still packs a punch all these years later coz now that the poor old Mississippian has just checked out for good I re-read Captain Maximus and the hard, clean lines are all still there, singled up and bold as bleeding brass. In Astoria all those years as I say I lived mostly on just one single street, 31st Street--no fooling, the same exact street that Rory Gallagher sings about in that song Alcohol on his Live Irish Tour. This whole double album is as live as live gets, recorded in 1974 from shows in Belfast, Dublin and Cork, with Rory repeatedly tearing up the joint, Rod D'Eath rock solid on drums--excellent name for a drummer I always thought--the great Strother Martin on keyboards sweetly swatting them electric ivories and last but not least, the ace of bass, Mister Gerry McEvoy. Otto in the Simpsons will one day when they finally get some good writers back on the show allude to some musical hairball who can play bass lines like McEvoy. There was a feature story in yesterday's Daily News about New York City in the 1990s, the crime and general berserkery they had thought they'd wiped out came back for a nostalgic little look see in this decade apparently, all the while I was there in Queens as a matter of fact. No one ever bothered me though, not one little bit and once when I went arse over teakettle after a shopping expedition in the snow at least two people rushed out to help me to my feet and one even ran after and re-captured my escaped oranges! I could see the entire New York City skyline from the rooftop of my building--I often sat up there through balmy summer nights smoking cheroots on the fire escape and re-reading good books. Much the most of Captain Maximus was re-read on or around that fire escape--sometimes I had to stand up after a particularly good sentence or paragraph and stomp round basically bagonghi with wonder and laughter. I seem to very distinctly remember doing this not infrequently. I think it was the opening story that made me stagger about helplessly the first time too, Getting Ready--what a larf Hannah is here telling of the travails of the fisherman Roger Laird. When this dude is firing on all four cylinders sparks start to fly. Read I Am Shaking to Death if you don't believe me and if you still don't believe me after you've read it then read Even Greenland and if you don't like that either well chop my got-danged suey, I doubt I can help you. I reckon to date I've read quite a lot of this Southerner's novels and stories--am halfway through a re-read of The Tennis Handsome at the minute, an odd and dementedly funny novel which I actually got to read some of while listening to Eric Clapton singing that great Cream song Anyone For Tennis? on the Wurlitzer in this juke joint I know. This comic gem from 1983 is so blame funny you won't even notice you're peeing in your pants half the time. Ray (1980) is a slap-happy little slice of cheese Danish too, don't miss that novella either on any account--whatever you might happen to hear about editor Gordon Lish's role in the publication--and the stories in Airships (1978) and High Lonesome (1996) just could not have been written by anyone other than the inimitable Mister Hannah. Even his first novel, Geronimo Rex (1972), is a rambunctious and grotesquely funny coming-of-age story. Rest in peace, dude.