Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hannah, Barry (Vol. 23) - Ronald Nevans

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RONALD NEVANS

Barry Hannah, who wrote the extravagantly praised Airships, is a master of the short form. Yet [Ray] often reads like a collection of sketches. It is diffuse—characters are introduced once and forgotten, incidents go nowhere—and this failure of continuity deprives the book of the cumulative power it should have. Ray is laconic, mean, raunchy, and very funny, but not as moving as it means to be. (p. 72)

Ronald Nevans, "Fiction: 'Ray'," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1980 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. 7, No. 15, November, 1980, pp. 70, 72.

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1. Introduction
2. Jim Harrison
3. John Updike
4. Jonathan Yardley
5. John Skow
6. Michael Wood
7. Richard Locke
8. Michael Malone
9. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
10. Harry Crews
11. BENJAMIN DeMOTT
12. Eliot Fremont-Smith
13. Ronald Nevans
14. Geoffrey Wolff
15. John Romano
16. Copyright

1. John Updike