The Haunting Lodge: How Barry Hannah Exorcised the Spirit of William Faulkner in "Nicodemus Bluff"

Abstract

For most of his career, Mississippi author Barry Hannah was deemed the postmodern heir to William Faulkner, a moniker only intensified by Hannah’s association with Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner’s hometown. Though Hannah was increasingly resistant to this label, and earlier sought to distance himself from Faulkner’s mythopoetic architecture, Hannah’s later fiction frequently addresses themes concerning the Mississippi landscape that can only be described as Faulknerian. In “Nicodemus Bluff,” Hannah summonses the central theme of Faulkner’s coming-of-age story in “The Bear,” then banishes this influence with his own absurdist and surrealist style – indebted partly to the supernatural tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Underneath this stylistic renovation, Hannah maintains a certain resistance to commercialism, to the concept of ownership, and specifically the concept of inheritance when it comes to wilderness and the natural landscape, values at the heart of the “The Bear” and Go Down, Moses.