Leave It To A Southerner To Bring A Pepperoni to a Gun Fight

Friends,

I wanted to hold off writing this post because I would like to hear about the question I asked in the post under this in regards to writer responsibility/audience expectation at literary readings, but I found something kind of funny.

Some of you know that I am a fan of Barry Hannah. And I am in fact using the Barry Hannah story Nicodemus Bluff in my comps. I was plucking my way through the story a couple minutes ago and I noticed something that I can't believe I've missed the many other times I've read this story.

See, I have a photocopied version of Nicodemus Bluff from when it was in Best American 1994, and I also own the collection it was in (Bats Out of Hell). I was reading out of the collection, and I got to the point in the story where Gomar, he's the narrator's dad, is being beaten by Mr. Pool, a businessman who had loaned Gomar a substantial sum of money, but had recently lost the debt to Gomar in a chess match. Oh, I should also tell you that when playing chess Gomar becomes "invested" by the spirit of a courtly woman from the 19th Century.

Anyway, here's the way the beating is written in the Best American:
Mr. Pool was beating my father on the neck with a pistol. It was a long gun. He kept whacking it down. But my father, holding his hands over his head and trying to dodge, kept cackling and yipping. Thing was, he was laughing, down on his knees, fingers on top of his head, knee-walking and sloshing through the pools. It was there where the water lay rotten-smelling in the tops of the stumps, putrid and deep back in your nostrils.
"It's all mine, free and clear. I wont it, I won it!" my father was shrieking in that woman's voice.
He couldn't know we were standing all around him. He was shrieking at the ground. Mr. Pool didn't knwo we were there either. He hit my father, Gomar, again. The gun made an awful fleshy thunk on him.

Good stuff right? Anyway, here's the way that same passage exists inBats Out of Hell:

Mr. Pool was beating my father on the neck with a hard pepperoni sausage. It was a long pepperoni. He kept whacking it down. But my father, holding his hands over his head and trying to dodge, kept cackling and yipping. Thing was, he was laughing, donw on his knees, fingers on the top of his head, knee-walking and sloshing through the pools. It was there where the water lay rotten-smelling in the tops of the stumps, putrid and deep back in your nostrils.
"It's all mine, free and clear. I won it, I won it!" my father was shrieking, in that woman's voice.
He couldn't know we were standing all around him. He was shrieking at the ground. Mr. Pool didn't know we were there either. He fit my father again. The pepperoni stick made an awful fleshy thunk on him.


I don't know about you, but I get the feeling that Mr. Hannah wrote a story that has something to do with maleness.

I wish I could see that note Hannah got from the editors that suggested the pepperoni get changed to gun, and the battle that must have ensued over it, (along with the italicizing of thunk and the extra comma when Gomar is shrieking). If I were to rank the effectiveness of phallic symbology, I would have to say that getting hit with a pepperoni stick does outrank gun it obviousness and deliciousness, so that mean "a long gun" is actually the winner on subtlety. Huh.

Viva el mustache (now scroll down to the other post, please)