SOURCE: Weston, Ruth D. “Debunking the Unitary Self and Story in the War Stories of Barry Hannah.” Southern Literary Journal 27, no. 2 (spring 1995): 96-106.

In the following essay, Weston suggests that Barry Hannah's Vietnam stories attempt to make sense out of the violence of the Vietnam era, and views his stories within the context of Southern history and literature.

In a new book on storytellers of the Vietnam generation, David Wyatt argues that literary generations are defined by, among other things, “the impact of a traumatic historical incident or episode … [which] creates the sense of a rupture in time and gathers those who confront it into a shared sense of ordeal” (2). Whether they, their friends, or someone in their families were the actual combatants, the writers born between 1940 and 1950 are those most directly influenced by the Vietnam period: from commitment of troops to Vietnam in 1965 to troop withdrawal in...