Classic short stories by a beloved virtuoso of language, craft, and madness from the American South
“His writing was anarchic and wonderfully funny. He sounded like what you’d get if you stirred three heaping teaspoons of Thomas Pynchon and Terry Southern into a jar of Eudora Welty.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
A Penguin Classic
In the eight stories collected in Captain Maximus, Barry Hannah explores the lives of everymen and eccentrics alike in a showcase of his acerbic wit, dark humor, and stylistic flare. Hannah’s unorthodox prose, characterized by unusual wordplay mixed with hints of Faulkner and Hemingway, captured the post-1970s malaise of American life, endeared him to literary circles, and left a lasting influence on the craft of countless authors. Featuring some of Hannah’s finest work, from the fever dream “Ride, Fly, Penetrate, Loiter” to his film treatment for Robert Altman “Power and Light,” Captain Maximus is the perfect introduction to Barry Hannah.
Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Barry Hannah (1942– 2010) was the author of twelve books and the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, the PEN/ Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Hannah won the William Faulkner Prize for his 1972 novel, Geronimo Rex; was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his 1996 short story collection, High Lonesome; and twice received the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Fiction Award. A longtime writing instructor who taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of the South, and Bennington College, he was the director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where his students included Larry Brown and Donna Tartt.
Sam Lipsyte is author of the short story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and five novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Ask, Hark, Home Land (a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Believer Book Award), and No One Left to Come Looking for You. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories, among other places. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Classic short stories by a beloved virtuoso of language, craft, and madness from the American South
“His writing was anarchic and wonderfully funny. He sounded like what you’d get if you stirred three heaping teaspoons of Thomas Pynchon and Terry Southern into a jar of Eudora Welty.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
A Penguin Classic
In the eight stories collected in Captain Maximus, Barry Hannah explores the lives of everymen and eccentrics alike in a showcase of his acerbic wit, dark humor, and stylistic flare. Hannah’s unorthodox prose, characterized by unusual wordplay mixed with hints of Faulkner and Hemingway, captured the post-1970s malaise of American life, endeared him to literary circles, and left a lasting influence on the craft of countless authors. Featuring some of Hannah’s finest work, from the fever dream “Ride, Fly, Penetrate, Loiter” to his film treatment for Robert Altman “Power and Light,” Captain Maximus is the perfect introduction to Barry Hannah.
Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author
Barry Hannah (1942– 2010) was the author of twelve books and the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, the PEN/ Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Hannah won the William Faulkner Prize for his 1972 novel, Geronimo Rex; was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his 1996 short story collection, High Lonesome; and twice received the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Fiction Award. A longtime writing instructor who taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of the South, and Bennington College, he was the director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where his students included Larry Brown and Donna Tartt.
Sam Lipsyte is author of the short story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and five novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Ask, Hark, Home Land (a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Believer Book Award), and No One Left to Come Looking for You. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories, among other places. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
