In an ultimate, though not obvious way, Hannah's stories [in Airships] are fused together thematically; the tactic is reminiscent of Faulkner's Go Down Moses. Individually, they are beautifully built, but the construction work is so organic that he didn't have to leave the braces showing….

More writers have been smuggled out of the South than cartons of cigarettes, and Barry Hannah is one of the best…. His feel for [the short story] form is amazingly sound—perhaps more so than in the slower narrative of the novel; his verbal exuberance and comic energy do exhilarate, and when tools and material work together, Hannah can make you a masterpiece…. Reading Airships is like having lightning shark down at you in the dark. It illuminates where you are. It can scare you half to death.

Within all the raucous, lyric, sly, spooked, and innocent voices of his people, Hannah's voice...