Customer Reviews

Ray

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

 

 

Wow, this is really something. With only 113 pages, Barry Hannah's "Ray" from 1980 is hardly a novel (someone called it one long redneck poem), but it does not really matter, all I know is that it is wonderful. The story, if there is any, is about Dr. Ray who tries to make sense of his life in the South, tries to hold on to his wrecked marriage, while pursuing his desire, the vulnerable beautiful Sister (who reminds me of Faulkner's Caddy from "The Sound and the Fury"). The story is filled with grotesque O'Connor-like characters, a dark gallows humor, and an admirable sense of poetry and musical language. Barry Hannah is no doubt one of the most talented writers in America today, and although most of his other works are fiction on a very high level, none of them reach the heights where "Ray" soars as a lone eagle.

You can't help but find the anger, comedy, raw sexuality, confused emotions, and healing a fresh voice in American Literature.
Nothing is even remotely sugar coated in this fast paced novel.

Ray lives on the edge with a fanatic frenzy which borders on lunacy while possessing the steely nerves of an ACE fighter pilot.

Fasten your seat belt!

Short enough to be a great "filler" book when you're between novels, Ray by Barry Hannah ends up being worth the read. It is written almost like journal entries of a man with enough rotten memory to be spilling his guts to a much-needed psychologist. This book is like the average southern man's Bible, filled with the honest greusomeness of every day life in a backwoods town. Loose women, alcohol, love, hate, murder, and death.
Ray, a doctor and war survivor, recaps on his life which consists of mostly adultery and drinking, injected with a few small crisis moments that keep the book interesting.
Very very honest, well written, Barry Hannah couldn't have verbalized the events in this book better!

Barry Hannah is the kind of writer people either love or hate; he doesn't leave a lot of middle ground. But "Ray" is a novel that should have wide appeal--it's clever, insightful, original, and quick. (Even those who won't like won't be able to say that it wasted a lot of their time.)

This was the second work of Hannah's that I ever read (the first was "Airships"), and it made me a fan for life.

RAY is an amusing read. you want to know who he'll screw next and what kind of crazy southern characters he'll encounter; but it is messy and doesn't try to be linear or cohesive. while that is not a bad thing, i did not find his poetic, wannabe faulkner style that engaging. if you really want to read about rednecks and how they live and feel, stick to larry brown or harry crews. but this does have merit as a quick read.

Near the end of "Ray," Mr. Hooch is "beating [up] Shakespeare" with his poetry. Hannah doesn't beat up Shakespeare, but he musters up a fierce, admirable assault: "Sabers, gentlemen, sabers!" The novel isn't perfect -- it isn't Shakespeare -- but the writing is so alive, so strong, that it feels right filthy to root in the muck for a word of criticism. "Ray" is music.

I recently had a chance to look at the original manuscript drafts of RAY, in the Gordon Lish archives at the Lilly Library. I had read RAY in 1989 and had to come back to it. It's a curious, wonderful novel, but Hannah' editior, Lish, saved him. Lish did for Hannah what he did for Carver -- a lot of cutting; but here he wa smore like Maxwell Perkins to Thomas Wolfe -- taking a massive mess of pages and shaping a novel. It is obvious that Hannah is completely drunk when wriyting most of it -- typos everywehre, unnumbered pages, writing that makes no sense. Hannha was in his deep drunk days when he wrote this. What looks like minimalism in RAY is simply what is salvaged from a sloppy typescript. And, as Lish did for Carver, Lish write the neding sentences of RAY, Hannah did not. Still, does that matter....one thing is for sure, had RAY been written by a new, young aauthor, and not by someone with the successful AIRSHIPS to his credit, this would have never seen the light of print, not by a commercial publisher anyway. With all the talk about Lish being a co-writer with Carver more than an editor, why doesn't anytone talk a bout Hannah (or many iother writers) Lish did the same thing with -- he did a lot more collabarting on this book than Carver's.

Barry Hannah is a GOD. Ray made me purge emotions i didn't know existed. BUY IT and you'll understand

This is Barry Hannah's finest book, which is not saying a lot by itself. Much of his other work is drafty, self-absorbed, and worse -- boring. Ray is none of those things. Ray is short and interesting. It is written so well that it leaves you wishing that you could read the lines unwritten between sentenses. It is also, happily, not a book that you would want your mother to read.

I did not care for this novel. Too much profanity and glorification of sexually irresponsible behavior for my taste. Also the style is rather choppy and tedious --- like wading through a stagnant swamp.