Hill William

by Scott McClanahan

"You can tell McClanahan feels something when he writes and when he lives. He wants you to feel something too."—The Huffington Post I walked up to the side of the mountain like I used to do when I was a little boy. I looked out over Rainelle and watched it shine. The coal trucks and the logging trucks were still gunning it through town. They were still clear cutting the mountains and cutting the coal from the ground. Then I heard my mother calling and it was like I was a child again. Beginning to read Hill William is like tuning into a blues station at 4:00 a.m. while driving down the highway. Scott McClanahan's work soars with a brisk and lively plainsong, offering a boisterous peek into a place often passed over in West Virginia, where coal and heartbreak reign supreme. Hill William testifies to the way place creates and sometimes stifles one's ability to hope. It reads like a Homeric hymn to adventure, to the human comedy's upsets and small downfalls, and revels in its whispers of victory. So grab coffee, beer—whatever gets you through the night—and join Scott around the hearth. Lend him your ear, but be you might not want it back. Scott McClanahan 's work has appeared in New York Tyrant , Bomb , Vice , and Harper Perennial's Fifty-Two Stories. His books include Stories II and Stories V! In 2013 Two Dollar Radio will release his book Crapalachia .

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary, Southern, Literary Fiction, American, Novels

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2013

About the author

Scott McClanahan (born June 24, 1978) is an American writer, filmmaker, and martial artist. He lives in Beckley, West Virginia and is the author of eight books. His most recent book, The Sarah Book, was featured in Rolling Stone, Village Voice, and Playboy. NPR called the book "brave, triumphant and beautiful — it reads like a fever dream, and it feels like a miracle." McClanahan is also a co-founder of Holler Presents, a West Virginia-based production and small press company.

Reviews

[Michael Seidlinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I punched myself in the face after reading this, it was so good. I punched myself again, and then I forced myself to eat the pages.

Every single page, until the book became a part of me.

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Beginning to read Hill William is like tuning into a blues station at 4:00 a.m. while driving down the highway. Scott McClanahan's work soars with a brisk and lively plainsong, offering a boisterous peek into a place often passed over in fiction: West Virginia, where coal and heartbreak reign supreme. Hill William testifies to the way place creates and sometimes stifles one's ability to hope. It reads like a Homeric hymn to adventure, to the human comedy's upsets and small downfalls, and revels in its whispers of victory. So grab coffee, beer—whatever gets you through the night—and join Scott around the hearth. Lend him your ear, but be warned: you might not want it back.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt, lucky number 13, asks us to discuss a novel with the best title. I think this is about it.

Now surely y'all remember my review of Crapalachia: A Biography of Place from 2013, right? How I warbled myself hoarse over its 4.5-star glory? Sure! Okay then, go take a quick peek at it and get back in the head of appreciating hillbilly noir or hick lit or whatever we've decided to call it.

And here he is again, Scott McClanahan, to make the fat and oblivious mainstream look, really look, at life among those who don't have much, and that includes hope. This time it's explicitly labeled fiction, so no one's going to run up to McClanahan on stage at a reading and demand to know if Event X happened and when.

Yeah, right.

The reason that's still going to happen is simple: Scott McClanahan inhabits this book the way a djinn inhabits a lamp. He's on your bookshelf. He's lookin' paper-pale, somebody feed the boy some vitamin D-for-decoding! We vivify the writer as we read the writing.

I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop because it felt good.

Just like right now I find myself getting ready to do it.

I hit myself.

I feel the blood surging to my head.

I hit myself.

I feel my jaw tightening.

I hit myself.

It feels like a prayer.

I hit myself.

It feels like something strange.

I hit myself.

It feels like something beautiful.

And that's before the page count gets to double digits. Now, some several of you aren't liking this too terrible much. It's not your favorite thing, it's not going somewhere you're interested in going...yes yes, I get it, it's challenging your definition of entertainment. It did mine, too.

Go on the trip. Yes, it's off your route, past your exit, beyond your slip. Fiction, fact-ion, roman à clef, metafiction, whatever tidy label you need to smack on the package, smack it on and open it up and settle in for an afternoon with someone who doesn't speak Cultured like a native because he isn't.

In a world that celebrates the bland venality of getting and spending, a moment like this...a scant two, maybe three hours' read for most of us serious bookheads...is uncommon and worthy of note and celebration. This isn't bland, and it's less venal than venereal. It won't lull or cosset you, but Hill William (isn't that a great title?) will not send you to bed wondering what you read that day. If anything.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Linked short stories about a boy’s hardscrabble coming-of-age in a small West Virginia town. Felt like a window into a place and way of life I know little about and aspects of American life that are rarely explored in contemporary fiction. Sometimes harrowing (scenes of child abuse, animal cruelty etc) but there’s beauty too, and it’s effective. Reminded me of a couple of novels I read years ago and otherwise wouldn’t have recalled, Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman and Young God by Katherine Faw Morris, and also seems like a precursor to more recent alt-lit-adjacent stuff like Gabriel Smith’s BRAT (albeit better, as more authentic-feeling).

[Tyler Crumrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott McClanahan is shaping us into swords.

[Karmologyclinic · Rating 4 out of 5]

"My cousin was so lonely one night he went out and fucked the earth"..."Yeah, he went and thumbed a hole in the ground and started humping the dirt."

Humping the earth sounds poetic. But the reality of it is raw and bloody and painful. Kind of like the difference between the self as the fictitious work we all present to each other in our day to day lives, and the deeper self, where the pain and trauma and general unease lurks. The flimsy membrane that separates the two, that is where McClanahan attacks with words, that is where his short story novel resides, that is where he stabs and slaps. When an individual decides to remember and tries to heal, that membrane must be torn apart. It is always painful and messy. If there is no honesty in the process, the tears and pain are useless. And you can feel the author feeling very honest feels. Do you feel me?
I felt each story slapping me, like the protagonist slapped himself. Some stories were worse, I felt like being stabbed. In others I felt gross and wished he would stop. In a few I smiled the smile of childhood nostalgia. One or two, I was bored with.
All this, McClanahan achieves with a language style that now, in his third book I read, I consider his signature style. Deceptively simple, poetic cadence, spoken word rhythm. It kind of places the author's voice inside your head, reciting like a performer. Wrapping simple words around terrible thoughts and painful reality is not an easy task. Brutal is more brutal when not adorned. In some stories he takes you by the hand and you naively follow, because it is easy to do so, and then BAM! he slaps. It's brutal as I said and admittedly he senses that this all is best served in small doses. One slap at a time. Recover. Repeat.
Seemingly simple, the stories create a whole childhood narrative and in retrospect, are well thought of and planned for maximum slapping...I mean effect.
I might have enjoyed the other two books a little more. As the next day starts and they have stripped the mountain bare and he is bleeding, I want to ask him, was the story Vaseline inspired by Barthelme's The Red Balloon? I am annoying, I know. But was it?

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/9715500...


Not sure I even know a Scott McClanahan. However, I have read five of his books now and I have seen him on TV, or my equivalent of TV, if you can count and consider youtube as part of my inadequate equation. I have also heard him speak to me, again on my machine that allows me this enterprise, in a voice that is somewhat gravelly and raw and at times a bit, I think, deranged. Similar to a defrocked but still far too-serious preacher. Sort of also like an insane construction character I used to know who I named Alphonso Bow in a feature film I wrote a few years ago. I have been around a lot of fellows who talk like Scott McClanahan and who I would consider authentic rednecks, and more than a little dangerous. Therefore I believe I do have the proper credentials to give me credibility regarding the points I am about to make. Even if it turns out that McClanahan made all these people up, fact is, I have not. I know all of them in some form or fashion. I best believe we can probably lose the lyrical and rhythmically embroidered, but still fucked-word, “fashion” in a future editing somewhere.

Hill William is quite the disturbing book for those of us already irritated to extremes by hearing similar sickos rant, and in too-loud voices insisting on explaining to the rest of the world their pitiful troubles and violations performed on and against them. On the other hand, for those of us somehow having escaped this peculiar kind of life and living, or those of us who have been engaged among this certain brand of hillish person and thusly discovered the general experience to be fascinating with all the foibles, perversions, and deceptions daily cooked-up, then the book becomes important for what might be heard somewhere else between McClanahan’s lines. As diseased as these people are it only compounds the problem to not acknowledge their existence. Their anger at themselves and life in general is real and justified. There are permanent stains on their lives that can never be cleansed or repaired or even clarified in a language acceptable to the so-called normal person. Most likely all that can be hoped for is a personal McClanahanic satisfaction knowing that the words in his book have found a closure of sorts, and that a reader like me actually finished devouring this typically ugly smorgasbord all the way through unto the very last page.

In the paragraph above I called the characters frequenting this book “hillish”. Note I use this term loosely. These people are everywhere. The culture of the poor and oppressed. A way of life that offers little escape, especially if an individual (or family) intelligence is found lacking or non-existent at all. Even someone possessing a superior intelligence is often not enough to overcome the permanently engrained culture born of generations of abuse and bad information. Belief systems reinforced by consistently improper behavior and lack of social training. Parents and grandparents guilty of carrying on the sins of their own fathers and mothers, and the hopelessness of a situation that rarely evolves past the lowest common denominator.

It is difficult, at best, to maintain a hearty and healthy appetite while reading this book. There is plenty enough crap inside it to get sick over, or upset in your stomach, or your head. If you are “the feeling sort” your heart can reel about and swirl in its almost-constant despair. Scott McClanahan’s words are exactingly humorous only if you think they may not be so true as the author makes them out to be. The high-wire cleverness he adroitly presents comes from an intelligence obvious to anyone who gets to know this type of person. But still, if he or she is really real then the burden becomes too great to carry anyway. Which is what occurs in this tale as well. The burden becomes too great for anyone but the narrator to handle. And he has struggles of his own managing the demanding largeness and dread of it all. Revolting and appalling incidents are commonplace and accepted as so. Bad teeth and bad manners are the norm. Inappropriate responses are expected and often encouraged by the leaders of these households and communities. No amount of charity and church-going has, or ever will, correct this plague of ignorance that profits within and by this chronic disease born and prospering since its inception. There is no hope, and only through steadfast denial can there be even a delusional morsel of it left to be chewed and spit in the faces of those who attempt to clean or at least curb it. It is a way of life. And even a prideful attitude among these sorts exists beyond any culpable reason.

It seems Scott McClanahan has come to the masses to proclaim and own his heritage. To show the world from which he came. This may all be a lie involved in creating his fictions. But the truth nonetheless exists in what he is saying. He is reporting the facts of a too-real existence. And for that he may be commended, or perhaps, if he gets too close, he might end up getting himself crucified. At the least, he gets my attention. The most significant problem with reading this work is that it came too swiftly on the heels of my reading his previous four collections. That is perhaps too much for any man or woman to handle within a time period of say a month, or two. Every few moments or so I felt I had made a grave mistake in tackling this title after having been beaten, almost to death, by his first four installments. But I persisted and made the best of my difficult situation.

Scott McClanahan, the character, has an innocence about him that must also be recognized. He narrates in a manner respectful of these same pathetic people, and he has a love beyond understanding for his so-called friends and relatives, even those who harm him. Be it also understood that his character, named after himself, is neither without sin nor anger about his place and standing in the world. But he does employ help in his attempts at getting better. And he seems to see a possible way out of all this misery. But in another way he accepts it all as a sort of parallel life, outside himself, rich in its absurdity and ambiguity, and the offering seems somewhat redeemable in how his characters all bear on their backs the same heavy and awkward cross that has been made for all of them to carry to their graves.

And now that I have finished my reading of the fifth book produced by the author Scott McClanahan, and after having allowed myself to have been dutifully written upon by him, this gifted writer from West Virginia trying like hell in some way, anyway, to get himself inside me, in some strange and perverted manner it seems he did get the fuck he wanted and thought he deserved, and had a good time with it, in me, despite my attempted, and failing, indifference.

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A list of the top ten types of people who won't like Hill William

1. Delicate people.

2. People who want to spend weeks or months with a novel.

3. Nuns. (This is a bad generalisation. Some nuns might like it.)

4. People who despise prose that reads like poetry.

5. People who want to turn their books into doorstops or paperweights.

6. People who dislike reading about violence and cruelty.

7. Parents who don't want their children reading distasteful literature.

8. Traditionalists.

9. People who don't like squirming.

10. Not me. I loved this book.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It really is something to see how McClanahan can hit readers with such penetrating emotions with a narrative voice that is both calm and non-manipulative. He just lays it out there, though the words still have an essential poetry to them, and it seems so straightforward that you don't even see it coming. Then it hits you. There is some real power there, and it's all the more impressive because McClanahan makes it seem effortless. It just 'is' something that moves.

[Ben Loory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Lord for letting me see Mountains.

[Charles Beauregard · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is unfortunately not the type of book I like. It doesn't fare well when compared to McCarthy, who I can't help but compare a southern 'realist' author to. His style is tepid.

[J.A.]

Comes out of nowhere, turns into everything. Poetic, angry, poignant.

[final muzak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was 17 in one sitting and when I was done I wept like a child. Now, every time I think of it or re-read it (which I do once a year), I cry a lot.

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice book that has most of what I love about Scott McClanahan's writing (his collected stories and Crapallacia are both favorites of mine), though this one feels a bit too much like a fix-up novel, with a bunch of collected short stories that don't quite add up to a novel. It's much darker than Crapallacia, made up of penetratingly insightful, sad moments of childhood, particularly centering around Scott's (the narrator's) unpleasant, mentally unstable friend Derrick (probably the "Hill William" of the title), with great digressions on Scott's family and a few glimpses forward to his marriage with a woman named Sarah. I especially appreciated these, since they feel like a preview of "The Sarah Book," McClanahan's new novel which should hopefully be out soon. As a whole it just doesn't have as much identity as his other work, but it supplements it in interesting ways and the writing is still fantastic. It begins with the narrator punching himself in the face and ends with a hole in the ground, and along the way there are so many great moments, though this still wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be, so I think I'll settle somewhere around a 3.5.

[Matthew Savoca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is a beautiful man.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes!

[AB · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say that I was a bit disappointed by this one and this is coming from a big fan of Scott McClanahan. Ive read everything he's written and I waited for a long time to get my hands on Hill Williams. Maybe I went into it with way too high expectations but now that I've had a couple of days to think it over I have to say it's just ok.

One of my favorite things about McClanahans style is how the entire book comes together. Hill Williams is an introspective as to why Scott is the way he is. The big reveal is that we are becoming privy to something personal, something shared with a psychiatrist. We share in his pain and we both become something new. I love the idea but I cant help but think its not as well done as the other times he's used a similar trope. The individual chapters were okay but pailed in comparison with his other novels.

While I'm a bit upset that I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, I'm still happy that I read it. I like Scott's style, and while its not his best, it still delivers what I expect from him. What I really liked about this book was how it bridged the gap between what I consider to be more light hearted ( Stories 1, 2, V! And a bit of crapalachia) with his more serious The Sarah book. Now that I think of it, The Sarah Book is exactly what I think this book was trying to be but Hill Williams had to exist before that one could.


Ive completed my journey with Scott and I have to say I'm happy I stumbled upon his blurb on Niko Walkers Cherry.

[🐴 🍖]

the laudatory blurbs are accurate insofar as it's a quality read but couldn't be wronger in calling it a "fever dream" or like the stories of a "methed-up uncle." it's the lucidity here that lends it any kinda power. fellow alumni of rural hellholes everywhere will feel new empathy for that one kid who smelled bad.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is another book I would never have come across if not for The Tournament of Books. It is a coming of age tale but not much like any such story I have read before.

The opening sentences: "I used to hit myself in the face. Of course, I had to be careful about hitting myself now that I was dating Sarah. One night we got into a fight and I went into the bathroom to get rid of that sick feeling in my shoulders, and I did it. I wasn't feeling any better afterwards, so I hit myself in the face one more time."

I don't know to whom I could recommend this book. It is dark and gritty and unrelievedly disturbing. I guess I could recommend it to people like myself who like to read dark and gritty stuff. It is the story of a boy who grew up in poverty in Appalachia with bad parenting and numerous sociopathic types for boyhood friends and neighbors.

It is also a story of this young man trying mightily but not completely successfully to overcome his origins. I'm pretty sure it is autobiographical so the fact that Scott McClanahan has written and published six books is proof that he is in some ways winning his battle.

I read stories like this to remind myself now many people in the United States live so far from the "American Dream," lest I forget. Whatever the American Dream is though, it is a powerful force and here is this guy reaching for it in his own way.

Reading Hill William, I felt ridiculous for ever once complaining about my life. I realized again what an awesome responsibility it is to be a parent. I wondered for the billionth time why life in the world has to be the unbalanced mess that it is. Yes, the resilience of the human spirit, that driving force of fiction, produces amazement whenever we contemplate it, but I can't help wondering if the optimism with which I regard that resilience is misguided.

Getting better, making progress, being and doing and having more? Is that a worthy plan for a sentient being? Is there even an answer to that question? It's what we do no matter the cost.

[outis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read this one because it made the Tournament if Books list. Mercifully short - it would have been a painful experience if it had been any longer. Not terrible, but I don't think I would have missed it if I never picked it up.

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so holyshit good! Read it in one sitting. McClanahan is a force.

[Juliet Escoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott McClanahan is a genius.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this one, McClanahan wrote the story he needed, not the story we wanted. All I can say is, thank God he did.

[Kate Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks, Scott McClanahan! That felt like a warm hug and a punch in the face at the same time. I will be thinking about the ending for the rest of my life, I think!

[Anna Mallon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Scott McClanahan so much it's unbelievable.

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I told her, "You make me want to hit myself in the face, but i'm not hitting myself in the face, and this shows i'm doing better."
I was the winner. I was better now.

God I wish I was a man who felt righteous in his anger.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She wasn't crying, but I took my hand and wiped away her tears.

Even now I still reach across the years with my giant hand and wipe them away." (p. 180 Psychiatrists and Mountain Dew)

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This man is an exciting and devastating writer

[Melissa Rochelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew making my way through the Tournament of Books shortlist would be a challenge. I read for good stories, not good writing. I don't care if a writer comes from some fantastic MFA program in Iowa or NYC. I want a book that entertains or educates or something. This little book takes everything bad that could happen to a kid and makes it happen. It was a tough read -- like watching 12 Years a Slave -- you know these things have happened to people, but it doesn't make it any easier to read/watch.

And IS this a memoir? Is it fiction? And what is the title about? Did I miss a Hill named William? Is it supposed to remind me of a higher class of hill billies in Appalachia?

I have no idea. Scott's story -- the guy in the book which could be the author -- is full of lots of bad and lots of odd and lots of stuff. At the end, he tells me he loves me, but the ending didn't make any sense to me anyway.

I swear, sometimes people rave about books just so they can seem smarter and I am SO not that person. SO...yeah...not the book for this reader.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read most of this while standing around at an airport gate, waiting for a friend to arrive. It's a quick read.

But not an easy read. I was first exposed to Scott McClanahan when I came across Crapalachia: A Biography of Place. It was realistic but funny, taking moments of the author's own life. In the case of Hill William, I'm less certain I want to know if is based on the author's experiences. Where Crapalachia was quirky, Hill William was uncomfortable. Where Crapalachia made me laugh, Hill William made me cringe.

Still, I think it takes ability in a writer to get those reactions from me, which is why I'm giving it four stars. If I had to recommend a book by the author, I'd probably be more likely to tell you to read Crapalachia.

This was on the list for the 2014 Tournament of Books, which moved it up my reading list.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm being a tad curmudgeonly and cutting 1/2 star because I get annoyed by novels in which the protagonist has the name name as the author, and the book is dedicated to a woman who has the same name as the protagonist's love. Stop it. Just stop it. If you want to write a memoir, write a memoir.

Otherwise, this is an oddly compelling, at times vicious book. I can't say I "liked" it, and at times it was hard to read (explicit sexual abuse of kids), but also some really good writing in spots.