"Airships" by Barry Hannah

This book was recommended to me by my friend Dave. I should like it. The stories are told with strong narrative voices, by very individualized, finely drawn characters. And the stories go everywhere--from the contemporary south to the Civil War. But for all my trying, these stories just don't jive with me. It's probably because whatever they're trying to accomplish is well above me. Perhaps I'll pick it up in a few years and see if I've grown enough. :)

Feeling flummoxed, I did some web searching to see if I couldn't put Hannah's work in some sort of context. I found biographies, bibliographies, interviews, and fan websites. But then I found a page that made my confusion clear. Hannah has a MySpace page. (Along with Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, and Cormac McCarthy.) He is both too abstruse and too hip for my sensibilities. Or, at least his wily fans on My Space are.

Overheard at Starbuck's: a bunch of business/sales/marketing talk. And incidentally, one of the men was a recent hire to a company I worked at shortly after moving back to San Diego from Maryland. Thank God there are people in this world who live for that type of career. I would be utterly incapable in any such role.