A POSTHUMOUS COLLECTION, but only by half a year or so--Hannah died in March 2010, and this came out in December of that year. It may have already been in the works when he died...indeed, seems like it must have been, given how large a project it is (456 pages), but no one is listed as editor, and no information is provided on the production of the book save a perfunctory acknowledgements page.
Hannah was a Mississippian, and most of the book's stories are set in the South, mainly among men. Lots of alcohol and firearms, lots of hunting, lots of music, lots of military service. Not my usual kind of thing, to be honest, but Hannah's prose is so surprising, so idiosyncratic, so tangy that that I enjoyed the stories even though I would move away fast if I encountered any of his characters in public.
Some random samples:
The yard was shaggy.
My love for Felice went on belligerently, sullenly, for a month.
The streets of the town were a long heart attack themselves to Smith.
When Boléro was over, the audience stood up and made meat out of their hands applauding.
There is usually not a lot of plot to the stories--sometimes they feel more like character studies--like Chekhov's "The Darling," say. Like that story, they often unfold over a longer time than a lot of modern short stories do, over years sometimes. Once in a while, you would swear the story is about someone Hannah knows and has known over a long time (especially "Two Things, Dimly, Were Going at Each Other," which seems to be about William S. Burroughs).
By and large, I found the stories vivid, funny, and distinctive. They tended not to have much emotional punch, for me, except for the previously uncollected ones at the end of the book. I'm not sure why those four felt different--a heightened vulnerability, maybe? Those are the stories that felt deep as well as dazzling.
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