Hey Jack! was published by E.P. Dutton in 1987. The novel is barely 100 pages — a compressed, elliptical narrative about Homer, a one-legged Vietnam veteran, and his friend Ronnie, navigating the bars, marriages, and disappointments of a Mississippi town. The prose is stripped to its minimum: dialogue and image, with almost no exposition or description.
The novel reads like a condensed version of the entire Hannah oeuvre — Southern men, damaged by war and alcohol, sustained by friendship and language, trying to find something worth living for in a world that has already taken most of what they valued.
Collecting Hey Jack!
First edition (E.P. Dutton, New York, 1987): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $30–$75
- Very good: $10–$30
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Small-Town Mississippi
Hey Jack! (1987) is a slim novel set in a small Mississippi town, featuring a cast of damaged, eccentric characters — a one-eyed man, a deaf-mute, a retired pilot — whose lives intersect in ways both violent and tender. The novel has the compressed intensity of Hannah’s short fiction; at barely 100 pages, it reads more like an extended story than a conventional novel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Oxford, Mississippi, like as a literary town? Oxford is home to the University of Mississippi, William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, Square Books (one of America’s best independent bookstores), and a literary culture that has produced an extraordinary number of writers. Hannah’s presence on the faculty from 1983 to 2010 made it a centre for contemporary Southern fiction.