The Haunted Hillbilly

by Derek McCormack

A comic book in words, episodic and eerie, The Haunted Hillbilly is a carnivalesque thrill-ride that reads both like a vintage 1950s issue of Tales from the Crypt and a 21st century re-imagining of Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. The Haunted Hillbilly is an historical first-person narrative, told by Nudie “The Carnival Couturier” (the name’s a twist on “Nudie, the Rodeo Tailor”, a real-life figure perhaps best known for dressing Elvis Presley), a gay couturier who, in Derek McCormack’s spellbinding world, also happens to be a vampire. As the story evolves, with its magical poetic cadence, Nudie makes, then breaks, the career of country-and-western legend Hank Williams.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, LGBT, Canada, Gay, Fantasy, Music

130 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 1 out of 5]

some sort of gay vampire/wizard/clothier decides to help a hillbilly country singer hit the big time by making him a bunch of rhinestone cowboy suits, feasting merrily on his blood and ass all the while.



poor Hank: catapulted into the fame of the Grand Ole Opry, and soon after, national celebrity, while also being manipulated into an obliterating alcoholism. not to mention being raped repeatedly while under sedation. best not to discuss the beyond gross things that happen to the two girls in love with him. this is an exceedingly cruel horror tale, mainly told from the perspective of the smug and sadistic villain. the narrative has shades of Pygmalion; the tone is comic; the style channels affectless Dennis Cooper. and so it makes perfect sense that Cooper himself provides the book's first laudatory quote on the blurb page. LOL well I also like people who are similar to me. I think this is some sort of indie cult classic? in Canada? in that subset of queer postmodern writers & readers who worship at the altar of Dennis Cooper? anyway, I despise sadism (at least in others) and so found this to be a very repulsive experience.

despite the 1 star and the fact that I loathed this book, must be said that there is a quantity of distinctive prose and an excess of originality on display.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very minimalist and sparsely written semi-bizarro story of a clothier named Nudie who claims to be a vampire and his violent and sexual relationship with Hank, the country music star, and the fall-out that results... I thought it was okay, a little humorous at times and a little tragic by turns. Many intelligent people have made very positive comments and posted very positive reviews, but, instead of saying that the emperor's new suit is the best thing ever, I'll just say that it must have been over my head because I just didn't get it. It was okay.

[Blake Fraina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derek McCormack’s prose is honed to a razor sharp point. It’s so precise, the words are so well-chosen, that you scarcely notice how few of them there actually are. This is a lean, mean little novel that packs a thrilling punch. There is not one extraneous word. I am in awe.

And while it’s tempting to focus on the technical wizardry alone, which is considerable, truth is, this is no case of style over substance. The story McCormack has concocted is weird, creepy, crude and very funny.

The Haunted Hillbilly is an alternative history of the rise [and premature demise] of country crooner Hank Williams. In McCormack’s hands, he is a slightly dimwitted pawn who is taken under the wing of Nudie, a manipulative couturier, who also happens to be a gay vampire. Dressed in Nudie’s gaudy, bespangled creations, Hank wins over the crowd at the Grand Ole Opry before the Svengali-like vampire subjects him, and the women who love him, to one Grand Guignol torment after another. It might get downright disturbing if it wasn’t all so outrageously camp. I loved it.

McCormack is a real find. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the rest of his work.

[Ryan Akler-Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible book about Hank Williams and his horny gay vampire couturier. People like to praise writing with platitudes like “no wasted words” but there’s no truer description of McCormack’s prose. This is what the Elvis movie should’ve been…

[chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

unforgivable ass man...... best thing I've read in centuries

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

If your favorite book ever is somehow Rent Boy by Gary Indiana, boy do I have the book for you.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

great fun! short. macabre. campy. grotesque. "the haunted hillbilly" is an alternative history of hank williams imagining his couturier as a sadistic gay vampire. i don't know quite what to think about the gay predator thing -- i think mccormack's sensibility for camp makes it self-aware. it's got a tongue in cheek quality made possible by mccormack's clipped, somewhat deadpan style -- "thunder. lilac sheets of lightning. the night engrossing ink. / a bat makes a moustache on the moon." -- the novel was obvs written with delight, and with equal devotion to both classic vampire films and the culture of country/western.
also, interesting use of first person -- it starts off as though omniscient and then the narrator steps right in. this happens frequently.
anyway, i liked it.

[Richard]

The Haunted Hillbilly is an historical first-person narrative, told by Nudie "The Rodeo Tailor" (perhaps most famous for dressing Elvis Presley) a gay couturier who, in Derek McCormack's spellbinding world, also happens to be a vampire. As the story evolves with its magical poetic cadence, Nudie, in grand Svengali-style, makes, then breaks, the career of Hank, a country-and-western singer at the Grand Ole Opry. A blend of fact and fancy, The Haunted Hillbilly conjures the seamy gay underside hidden beneath country music's sparkly, sequinned surface.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a lovely, gonzo hybrid of Southern life (aka country music), horror (a Vampire story), and a seriously effed up, one-sided love affair. I could have done without the rape-iness of it all, but I guess vampire stories are stories of rape, from time immemorial.

McCormack's lines are bitingly sharp, rhythmically hypnotic. One example: "A hearse crawls up Commerce."

Don't let the shortness of this one fool you. It's a lot of story in a little package.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

A funny, dark, weird, and original tale about a vampire tailor who brings a young country musician to stardom while preying on him.

A very unique story and so short that I may reread it one day but I didn't really get it.

[Chelsea Pittman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have absolutely no idea what I just read.

[holden · Rating 4 out of 5]

efficient, weird, gay, great.

[r. fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely a lot less funny than his other books. It's a lot scarier and crueler. Ick it's so ominous and sinister. Genius as always!

[nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derek McCormack might be the non poetic master of using as few words as possible to make such amazing stuff

[Yureka Eric Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

so....I guess..... this guy wrote all the cooper stuff, huh? dang...

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm gonna need to read this at least 7 more times to fully comprehend its genius

[Megan]

Absolutely fascinating. Must recommend to everyone I know. Also not worth the price I paid for it, but that's not the book's fault.

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think this is my favourite novel by McCormack, but it makes a lot more sense as an entry-point for someone who’s never read him before. This novel is a lot fuller than The Show That Smells, or The Well Dressed Wound, fuller in the sense that the scenes seem to make sense whether or not you’re familiar with the cultural references, maybe even longer, or I’m not sure what it is, but he’s showing a lot more per page then he does in his later work. The wild punning and language-play is still present here, but it doesn’t feel like I need to construct 50% of it on the fly like I felt reading the later books. There’s a real pleasure in reading a book that is so brief, so precisely articulated, that zooms by in a two-hour waiting room riot for the chiropractor (still waiting now, actually). The vampire-queer camp stuff is cringe-worthy sometimes, the way all uncompromising parody/satire/gag must be, pulling few punches; someone tagged this book as “temporal-drag,” which is a nice way to describe veering queering halfway historical writing, and I hope readers will detect the camp and understand how vital it is (and not shy away from the ‘problematic’ content)(context context context). Definitely worth a read, especially so if you like country western / clothes / vampires.

Edit:
Re-read after 5 years. I think I’ll stick with my earlier conclusions, that this isn’t my fav McCormack. It doesn’t travel the way Wish Book does, and it’s less angry than Castle Faggot, Well Dressed Wound, Show that Smells. Not quite sure what’s missing here. I think maybe just the gay/evil camp stab gets less mileage herein? There’s less “stuff,” might be the problem? Less set dressing, less toys, less to gawk at and less to covet.

Thinking I’ll read Christmas Days tomorrow, to round out a year of new (to me) and old McCormack reprisals.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beware of gay, vampiric clothing designers, no matter how famous they can make you.

This is the story of Nudie and Hank. Nudie is pretty much who we know him to be, the iconic Hollywood designer of flashy outfits who in this story is also a gay vampire enamored of Hank, referred to only once as Hank Williams in the text, but who else would he be. But he is more than Hank Williams. He is the uberHank, the beautiful, talented, dim young man with the simple wife who sews him ill-fitting suits and wishes him all the best in his debut on the Grand Ol' Opry. He is Hank who catches the lustful eye of vampire Nudie who can transform him into a glittering vision of show biz masculinity. But Nudie will also infect Hank's wife with the worse case of clap ever depicted in literature, take his pleasure on Hank's anesthesized body during surgery, and even sew his label into the sutures. He is Nudie with his minion Dr. Wertham and a thousand bats at his command.

McCormack is a Canadian author whose short novel comes heavily praised by the likes of Dennis Cooper (big surprise) and Lynne Tillman. It's about one half hour of solid entertainment. Publisher Soft Skull Press make themselves sound foolish by claiming The Haunted Hillbilly "conjures the seamy gay underside beneath country music's sparkly sequinned surface." Such a statement can only belittle a story that ends with Nudie enjoying a taste of Johnny Horton's O negative hemorrhoids.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I L-O-V-E Derek McCormack. His writing is dark, morbid, humorous. This, like most of his writing is short and sweet, making me adore it, yet yearn for more. His words are so perfectly chosen that anything extra would be just filler. The plot line of this book is so far out there. He uses real people's names, nut in a fictional plot. 'Nudie' Cohn, is a gay vampire-esque tailor for Hank Williams. Yes, you read that right. This isn't Anne Rice though. It is a short book and well worth the risk.

[Joey Comeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first of Derek McCormack's weird, hilarious trilogy. Hank Williams and his flashy suits, made for him by a gay vampire obsessed with his ass. His wife doesn't like that one bit, but things don't go very well for her when she tries to stop it.

The writing is spare and beautiful, and the story is original and unexpected in a way I'd never seen. You don't need to read this to enjoy The Show That Smells (which I feel is his masterpiece!!) but you'd be missing out if you skipped it.

I think Derek McCormack is easily the best writer in Canada.

[Rick Urban]

A gay, predatory tailor (who may or may not be a vampire, his narration is not exactly reliable) physically and psychologically abuses men trying to make it in the world of country western music...spare and poetic, this sure is a one-of-a-kind fiction, inhabiting a world somewhere between Dennis Cooper and John Steinbeck.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

funny and dark!

[Whiskeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tale of Hank William's vampire tailor blew my mind a little bit! THOSE SEQUINS WHAT

[Vestal McIntyre]

A grotesque and utterly delicious little shocker. I read it years ago, but still get a chill when I think of the last line.

[Jade Elzien · Rating 4 out of 5]

So creepy and poetic. Loved the line "A bat makes a moustache on the moon."

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

now here is a vampire story with more than a twist!
warped, weird, wonderful, creepy!

[Russell Hubley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange, strange tale...very original. This guy is twisted in a very cool way.

[dimwig · Rating 4 out of 5]

hank's bones. hank snow.

[L.C. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very weird novella. Interesting in its use of the supernatural to comment on the over-the-top marketing and cult of personality of the country music industry.