SOURCE: "The Autobiographical and the Violent: Geronimo Rex and Nightwatchmen," in Barry Hannah, Twayne Publishers, 1992, pp. 1-20.

In the following excerpt, Charney analyzes Geronimo Rex and Nightwatchmen, focusing on structure, character, and such themes as violence and identity.

In an interview with R. Vanarsdall for the Southern Review [Spring 1983], Hannah cited his innovative and controversial use of autobiography as a primary factor distinguishing his work from that of other Southern writers: "They remain obsessed by autobiography, but I use it as a mode to get to the real stuff which is almost always lying." Although often compared to William Faulkner and Eudora Welty on the basis on his Southern heritage, Hannah admires those writers who reinvent autobiographical information in creative fictional form: "The people I like are looser and fuller like [Henry] Miller and [Thomas] Wolfe." In his first two novels, Geronimo Rex (1970) and Nightwatchmen (1973), Hannah uses autobiographical...