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  • Issues
    • See You in Another World (2023) >
      • Editors' Note (2023)
      • Voices of the Summer Night
      • Lightning Glut
      • All The Little Things
      • From a Distance
      • Confined
      • The Night Hours
      • A Contrapuntal for the Girl in My Dreams
      • Go Back (before they do)
      • Snippet of Thought
      • The Darkness
      • Her Nature
      • I Listen
      • Stranger In The City
      • What Music Does
      • Fallen Stranger
      • The Black Dress
    • A Fire of Words (2022) >
      • Editors' Note (2022)
      • The Floor Wallows Lower
      • Cornflowers
      • Erudite
      • That One Morning
      • mom, im afraid
      • selenophilia
      • Roses and Rainbows
      • If a poisonous snake bites itself, will it die?
      • Rochester
      • Crown of Branches
      • Stairs to the Sea
      • A Poem Written Entirely From Advertisements
      • Pyromania
      • silhouette of a bird against winter stars
      • thunderstorm in the bedroom
      • A Night in Recovery
      • sleeping gypsie
      • paper dolls&goodbyes
      • We Are Women
      • Village Air
      • Sunshine's Laughter
      • the male gaze
      • The Forensic Entomologist
      • Lacking
      • Drowning
      • Adelie
    • Create the Wonders We Dream (2021) >
      • Editors' Note (2021)
      • Zove
      • I'm Sorry
      • Fake Smile
      • My Friend the Balloon
      • Eyes Intertwined
      • Perfect
      • Only a Moment
      • A Dangerous Word
      • My Dreams
      • The Last 100 Meters
      • The Green Void (Villanelle)
      • The Whimsical Galaxy (Sestina)
      • The Silent Kindness
      • Pressure
      • Table on the Hill
      • The Yukon
      • The Shore
      • Repentance
      • Her and I
      • Infections of the Soul
      • Threads
      • Dream of a High Schooler
      • Empty
      • little flame
      • scars
      • black and white
      • The Cat
      • Joy
      • Sweet Honey Bee Stings
      • If There Were One Day
      • Delete
      • Our Hearts to Central Vietnam
      • him or Him?
      • Ocean
      • Es Llaner Beach
      • Sewn Together
      • Rain
      • Yes, I Like
      • The Legacy of the Moon
      • The Wind Whimpers
      • From Here I See
      • To Feel Clean
      • Red
      • Survival
      • Substance
      • Golden Lies
      • Midnight Tango
      • Ode to a Spleen
      • Modern Siren
      • The Night's Diamond Tears
      • Beats In Double Time
      • A Day in the Flight
      • Carved By Venus
      • Lifeline
      • Everest
      • Education
      • How Much of Reality Can Be Observed
      • What is a Spork
      • What is the difference between love and in love
      • What would you have wanted? me to say
      • Planet Caravan
      • The Journey of a Minute
      • The Circus of Scars
      • Mosaic
      • Color
      • Love and Acceptance
    • Colors I Never Knew Existed (2020) >
      • Editors' Note (2020)
      • Two Weeks' Notice
      • A Curious Man
      • An Eternity Swathed in Cobwebs
      • Hidden Memories: A Villanelle
      • A Better Place
      • Conscription
      • Just Breathe
      • Akko
      • The Hungry Dark
      • And Then Something Shuffled
      • Deodorants are a Girl's Best Friend
      • The Old House
      • Willow
      • Perfection
      • She Will Be Queen
      • Nothing But Space
      • a wicked thing
      • Anthony
      • Cheesecake
      • Za
      • Coco
      • Coexist
      • der böse Mann
      • Feeding
      • Catharsis
      • I HAD TO RENAME THIS POEM DUE TO COPYRIGHT ISSUES
      • For All The Kids Who Were Told They'd Never Make It... and Believed This
      • i Will Always Love You
      • Our 4
      • Rainy Day
      • Space
      • The Ocean Cares Nothing of Man
      • Sickly Sweet Love
      • I call the eating disorder hotline
      • Bright and Sunny Day
      • Grandma in the Moon
      • Interminable Education in Seventeen Syllables
      • Macrocosmic Creation
      • Middle Class Psyche
      • My Sister
      • From a Park Bench
      • Rain
      • A Recollection of Our Memories
      • Sadie Got Me in My Feelings
      • Uranium Rose
      • When I Grow Up - Paige Rhoads
      • Who am I?
      • 49-53
    • Words Become Reality (2019) >
      • Editors' Note (2019)
      • Bear Down: A Sestina
      • Kidnapped & Killed
      • Lemonade
      • Rise
      • Someone Who always Pays
      • A Simple Story
      • The King's Battle
      • Aftermath
      • Aging Population
      • Can we still be friends?
      • Carpe Diem
      • Coffee
      • Day to Day
      • Do Not Hold me Closer, Let me Go
      • Gift of Time
      • Love Everlasting
      • A Message to the Youth
      • Peach
      • Randy
      • The River & The Earth
      • The Show Goes On
      • Summer Love
      • Sundae
      • Waiting for the Bell
      • West Coast Wishing
    • Watch Every Second (2018) >
      • Editors' Note (2018)
      • White
      • eleven eleven
      • Growing Up
      • Claustrophobia
      • The Cage
      • The Soldier's Return
      • Spacing Out
      • Depression
      • Mona Lisa
      • Childhood Cancer
      • Puberty
      • Languish
      • A Magical Ending
      • Life
      • Barter
      • Descent into Space
      • Red Water
      • The Short Film
      • Starting Line
      • And I Am From?
      • Such a Foreign Concept
      • You Say
      • My Creator
      • The Most Common Illness
      • Reflection in Time
      • Ode to My Mirror
      • Time
      • See Me
      • Consequences
      • Where I'm From
      • Unstoppable
    • Her Voice Remains (2017) >
      • Editors' Note (2017)
      • Alone in the Halls
      • Ideal Love
      • Cliff at Dusk
      • I Will Never Forget You
      • Lost
      • OCD
      • Cannibal Animal
      • A Poem for Grandpa 2
      • Solvent
      • Risky
      • Shannen and Graces’ Long Road
      • Dear Bubbles
      • A Tree in the Air
      • Losing Myself
      • ABC's Poem
      • My Glorious Flight
      • Birth Giver
      • Flat Line
      • Eternal Beauty
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Book Review: Bats Out of Hell

7/8/2019

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Picture
By Clayton Van Horn

I was assigned to read Bats Out of Hell by Barry Hannah (1978). This book is just under 400 pages and is filled to the top with ridiculous humor; at least it was humor in my eyes. Barry Hannah has written many works that precede this collection of short stories. Those works include Airplanes, which many would say is beneficial to read before diving into Bats Out of Hell, which is exactly what I did.

I loved the work, but I must admit that I caught on to the story-telling, and humor strategy slowly. I understood the stories at the end of the collection far more fully than the stories at the beginning of the collection. This collection of short stories is a very acquired taste. They are an acquired taste in the same sense that The Office (US) is an acquired taste. It takes a season or two to understand the humor and jokes. Just like while I was reading Bats Out of Hell it took a few stories for me to fully enjoy the stories.
​
My favorite story was High-water Railers. And the title of this short story is hilarious when you think about what this story is about. And that goes for every story in the collection. This short story, High-Water Railers, is about two old fishermen that go fishing and talk about how they missed out on sexual experiences, and they regret their decisions that led them away from their sexual fantasies. It is quite funny to me because Barry Hannah did a great job about showing the “old man’s back in his day” type of humor. This old man theme goes for the entire short story collection. Almost every main character in the collection reminds me of the old man from Pixar’s UP, the movie about the house that can fly by balloons. And after doing some research into Barry Hannah’s other works, there is a very similar form of humor and writing throughout Hannah’s works.

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