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This One Will Hurt You
The powerful essays in Paul Crenshaw’s This One Will Hurt You range in subject matter from the fierce tornadoes that crop up in Tornado Alley every spring and summer to a supposedly haunted one-hundred-year-old tuberculosis sanatorium that he lived on the grounds of as a child. They ruminate on the effects of crystal meth on small southern towns, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are , and the ongoing struggle of being a parent in an increasingly disturbing world. They surprise, whether discovering a loved one’s secret, an opossum’s motivation, or the unexpected decision four beer-guzzling, college-aged men must make. They tell stories of family and the past, the histories of small things such as walls and weather, and the faith it takes to hold together in the face of death.
With eloquence, subtle humor, and an urgent poignancy, Crenshaw delivers a powerful and moving collection of nonfiction essays, tied together by place and the violence of the world in which we live.
With eloquence, subtle humor, and an urgent poignancy, Crenshaw delivers a powerful and moving collection of nonfiction essays, tied together by place and the violence of the world in which we live.
- GenresEssaysNonfictionMemoir
168 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 30, 2018
I finished THIS ONE WILL HURT YOU in bed last night with tears in my eyes and my wife asleep on my lap. This collection of heartfelt, gritty essays hit me in my soft spot. Crenshaw hails from Booneville, Arkansas, about an hours drive west of my hometown. He tackles parenthood, death, life, ghosts, craft, Jesus, and meth houses going up in flames. THIS ONE WILL HURT YOU lives up to its name.
I wanted to highlight some of the lines that have remain lodged in my heart:
"I could find out, could make the long drive back to Arkansas and stand some November with the wind in the trees and clouds racing above me and look down at his name. But I wonder if I would only be doing it for me—that whatever comfort provided by that act would be for me alone, and it saddens me to know this about myself."
"There's a possum out there," I said.
"Give it a cigarette," she said.
"I am thinking of adding a koi pond but stocking it with catfish, or crappie."
"I didn't know when I first read the book about love that could consume you, not until my daughters came crying into the world, but there was in the words a darkness that seemed to linger in the shadows of the trees, and I guessed even then that love could be so strong as to lead to hate, worry to anger, that evil is often more alluring, the suggestion of what would happen to Max if he let the wildness take over."
"I wonder which we are, which way we are turning, if we are coming out of the darkness or sailing straight for it."
"This was the rural South, the thick strap of the Bible Belt, near the buckle."
"...and I am reminded now how fiercely some people need to cling to a reason for living, the strange sadness that sometimes comes up on us that we actually need a reason—whether internal or eternal—to keep us going."
"...and old-time meteorologist who watched the seasons and the sky simply because they were there."
"Let me say now we never prepare ourselves, not at eight or eighty, a thing I knew when she reached for my hand and asked the same old question: "Where am I?" she said. "Do you know where I am going?"
"Truth, but not the whole truth: I don't remember what month it was. I said February for the alliteration."
"She got out of his car and walked until another car picked her up, this one steered by another man with the same impure thoughts, and in this way she made her way across the state, dodging danger in each car driven by men with something else on their minds."
"The night his breath blew out for the last time I drank too much at my computer trying to write him back to life."
"She weighs a hundred pounds shivering wet but calls her biceps Lightning and Thunder."
"A few years ago we went to grad school together to learn to write, and what we came up with were stories about women we'd slept with and fistfights we'd won, the false romantic notion all too often portrayed in male fiction, the Hemingway-esque idea of tough drink and tougher fists, of man embracing his animal nature, his darkness and depravity. When the kitten looks up at me, I realize we had no idea what we were writing about, not a fucking clue."
I wanted to highlight some of the lines that have remain lodged in my heart:
"I could find out, could make the long drive back to Arkansas and stand some November with the wind in the trees and clouds racing above me and look down at his name. But I wonder if I would only be doing it for me—that whatever comfort provided by that act would be for me alone, and it saddens me to know this about myself."
"There's a possum out there," I said.
"Give it a cigarette," she said.
"I am thinking of adding a koi pond but stocking it with catfish, or crappie."
"I didn't know when I first read the book about love that could consume you, not until my daughters came crying into the world, but there was in the words a darkness that seemed to linger in the shadows of the trees, and I guessed even then that love could be so strong as to lead to hate, worry to anger, that evil is often more alluring, the suggestion of what would happen to Max if he let the wildness take over."
"I wonder which we are, which way we are turning, if we are coming out of the darkness or sailing straight for it."
"This was the rural South, the thick strap of the Bible Belt, near the buckle."
"...and I am reminded now how fiercely some people need to cling to a reason for living, the strange sadness that sometimes comes up on us that we actually need a reason—whether internal or eternal—to keep us going."
"...and old-time meteorologist who watched the seasons and the sky simply because they were there."
"Let me say now we never prepare ourselves, not at eight or eighty, a thing I knew when she reached for my hand and asked the same old question: "Where am I?" she said. "Do you know where I am going?"
"Truth, but not the whole truth: I don't remember what month it was. I said February for the alliteration."
"She got out of his car and walked until another car picked her up, this one steered by another man with the same impure thoughts, and in this way she made her way across the state, dodging danger in each car driven by men with something else on their minds."
"The night his breath blew out for the last time I drank too much at my computer trying to write him back to life."
"She weighs a hundred pounds shivering wet but calls her biceps Lightning and Thunder."
"A few years ago we went to grad school together to learn to write, and what we came up with were stories about women we'd slept with and fistfights we'd won, the false romantic notion all too often portrayed in male fiction, the Hemingway-esque idea of tough drink and tougher fists, of man embracing his animal nature, his darkness and depravity. When the kitten looks up at me, I realize we had no idea what we were writing about, not a fucking clue."
March 17, 2019
As a hard core literary fiction fan, I'll admit I'm still quite new to the whole genre of non fiction essay collection. In an effort to broaden my reading horizons this year, I'm trying to read it more often, but I keep finding myself torn with same old question of how-much-of-this-is-truly-true-and-how-much-is-fluffed-up-in-an-effort-to-keep-my-attention-or-fill-in-the-gaps-that-memory-leaves-blank? Paul himself, in his essay "Choke", takes a moment to acknowledge this very thing, stating that memory, and how one unravels or shares the truth, how things are arranged and shared within the essay, can change the story. So how many creative liberties and fill-in-the-blanks-when-we-don't-remember-the-specifics have to take place before the non fiction actually becomes fiction?
What's here is well written, and my preferred essays, though this shouldn't come as a shock, were those that focused most specifically on Paul and his family. I found myself most rapt when reading about his own experiences vs those pages he devoted towards researching and spewing out facts and numbers about his hometown, religious influences, and the like.
Though, counter to what I just said, Paul also manages to cross over into my greatest pet-peeve territory by introducing animals only to kill them off. Only this is 10xs worse because it's for reals and not for the fiction novel shock factor. These deaths will haunt me for a long time to come. I hope he's happy.
What's here is well written, and my preferred essays, though this shouldn't come as a shock, were those that focused most specifically on Paul and his family. I found myself most rapt when reading about his own experiences vs those pages he devoted towards researching and spewing out facts and numbers about his hometown, religious influences, and the like.
Though, counter to what I just said, Paul also manages to cross over into my greatest pet-peeve territory by introducing animals only to kill them off. Only this is 10xs worse because it's for reals and not for the fiction novel shock factor. These deaths will haunt me for a long time to come. I hope he's happy.
January 9, 2019
I first encountered Paul Crenshaw in the 2018 Best American Essays. I admired his story “Cadence” and started to follow him on Twitter. Recently Crenshaw sent me the ARC of his forthcoming collection of essays This One Will Hurt You. These essays read as a whole are a striking insight into the author, his family and friends, and his milieu. The book taken as a whole is similar to a memoir except written in vignettes and out of chronological order. At the end, the reader feels they know Crenshaw well as after a good memoir.
One of my favorite essays is “The Wild Thing with People Feet Was My Favorite.” Referencing the writer’s relationship with the children’s tale, Where the Wild Things Are, the essay moves seamlessly back and forth from past to present, from 4-year-old Crenshaw learning the meaning of words and images to Crenshaw-as-father reading the same story to his daughters. As Crenshaw’s parents fight and later divorce, Wild Things becomes a metaphor for the dangers of real life—change, anger, loss and fear.
About the forest of the Wild Things and of the forests of his own life, Crenshaw writes: “Behind the house the woods closed in, a place that seemed as dark as the forest that grew in Max’s room, and, when I got older, I would walk through to hear the silence of my own heart, much as Max imagines a world waiting for him, a place where there are no rules or regulations, and all the inhabitants are as hard and wild as he wishes to be.” Sendak’s book is well-loved by children and parents alike. Crenshaw lends us his insight here¬ into why this very short story is so important psychologically to children of all sizes. ¬
Other tales in this collection are humorous and sad in turns. Crenshaw doing battle with a “possum” that lives under his house is funny and poignant. The title story, “This One Will Hurt You” lives up to its promise. It is a hard story about a small but awful moment, the kind of moment that makes a grown man cry into his beer.
In a collection like this not every essay will be perfect but if you enjoy reading personal essays read these. I highly recommend you add this to your to be read list.
One of my favorite essays is “The Wild Thing with People Feet Was My Favorite.” Referencing the writer’s relationship with the children’s tale, Where the Wild Things Are, the essay moves seamlessly back and forth from past to present, from 4-year-old Crenshaw learning the meaning of words and images to Crenshaw-as-father reading the same story to his daughters. As Crenshaw’s parents fight and later divorce, Wild Things becomes a metaphor for the dangers of real life—change, anger, loss and fear.
About the forest of the Wild Things and of the forests of his own life, Crenshaw writes: “Behind the house the woods closed in, a place that seemed as dark as the forest that grew in Max’s room, and, when I got older, I would walk through to hear the silence of my own heart, much as Max imagines a world waiting for him, a place where there are no rules or regulations, and all the inhabitants are as hard and wild as he wishes to be.” Sendak’s book is well-loved by children and parents alike. Crenshaw lends us his insight here¬ into why this very short story is so important psychologically to children of all sizes. ¬
Other tales in this collection are humorous and sad in turns. Crenshaw doing battle with a “possum” that lives under his house is funny and poignant. The title story, “This One Will Hurt You” lives up to its promise. It is a hard story about a small but awful moment, the kind of moment that makes a grown man cry into his beer.
In a collection like this not every essay will be perfect but if you enjoy reading personal essays read these. I highly recommend you add this to your to be read list.
October 28, 2020
Dense sometimes. Difficult read, but good. Choke was very thought provoking and interesting. I enjoyed it. Maybe i’ll have to read it again and not be rushing to finish it for class.
April 21, 2020
I love the straightforwardness and vulnerability in Paul Crenshaw's essays, and this collection does not disappoint.
May 27, 2019
This is a compelling, beautiful essay collection. Paul Crenshaw masterfully delves into memory, pain, and joy through stunning imagery and skillful form. When Crenshaw describes the cold, you will feel your skin chill. When he writes of heartache, your chest will pang. Crenshaw is surely one of the finest essayists working today—and this book is a worthy addition to the "21ST CENTURY ESSAYS" series from Ohio State University Press.
April 7, 2020
This book will indeed hurt you.
Crenshaw's collection is staggeringly beautiful, and equally heartbreaking. His essays slide between the deeply internal and extraordinarily universal as he examines violence, death, and masculinity alongside subjects as seemingly mundane as weather and walls. Even with the shifting subject matter of each essay--the death of a nephew, an affinity for Where the Wild Things are, the history of walls, the origins of a ghost story--Crenshaw's tight prose and deftness with metaphor makes these once disparate ideas feel like a whole.
This One Will Hurt You is a provocative gut-punch of a read that will have you thinking about the violence that looms over our everyday lives. That's what makes the book so successful: the ordinariness of it all. Crenshaw finds tragedy in an afternoon watching a football just as easily as he does in tornadoes. And the book is indeed about tragedy, which makes it all the more relatable, and necessary.
Crenshaw's collection is staggeringly beautiful, and equally heartbreaking. His essays slide between the deeply internal and extraordinarily universal as he examines violence, death, and masculinity alongside subjects as seemingly mundane as weather and walls. Even with the shifting subject matter of each essay--the death of a nephew, an affinity for Where the Wild Things are, the history of walls, the origins of a ghost story--Crenshaw's tight prose and deftness with metaphor makes these once disparate ideas feel like a whole.
This One Will Hurt You is a provocative gut-punch of a read that will have you thinking about the violence that looms over our everyday lives. That's what makes the book so successful: the ordinariness of it all. Crenshaw finds tragedy in an afternoon watching a football just as easily as he does in tornadoes. And the book is indeed about tragedy, which makes it all the more relatable, and necessary.
April 19, 2019
I recently decided to expand my reading list to include non-fiction and essays and poetry, and, generally things other than fiction. Not long after this decision, I came upon an essay by Paul Crenshaw. I clicked the link on my Twitter feed, I read the essay, and then a few minutes later I ordered his collection, “This One Will Hurt You.” I dove right in when it arrived, but I decided I would only read one essay every day or so. For some reason I thought that was the way to digest a collection of essays. Fiction is meant to be binged; I’ve been known to read an entire novel in a single sitting. But essays and poetry should be savored. My approach was flawed, and it failed after the first couple days. I could not stop turning the pages. I read the remainder of the collection in a single sitting.
Reading “This One Will Hurt You” has taught me some things. First, I didn’t think I knew how to read or review a collection of personal essays. I’m comfortable with fiction. I know how to analyze characters and plot. I understand the structure. I suspected the general connection between the two, fiction and non-fiction, would be the prose, the sensory elements, the words and sentences themselves. I was wrong. Stories are stories. Some are attempts at truth based on real events we have experienced, and some are complete lies based on real events we have experienced. As evidence of this truth, you can open directly to page 91 and read one of the best stories/personal essays/poems I have ever read, but I implore you to travel the way Crenshaw intended. To quote Ondaatje, “Meander if you want to get to town.”
The second thing I learned is that I should expand my own writing. As I read Crenshaw’s essays, they evoked memories of my own, things I have experienced that I never considered writing down. Perhaps it was because I grew up around the same time, or that I’ve chosen a similar path for my life. Either way, I connected with these essays more than I expected at the outset. When I came upon this sentence, it made sense: “If the girl is real, then we share the same past in the same place, with a similar hope for leaving it, and I can indulge the notion that we are all trapped by place and circumstance and random forces beyond our control, forever looking back with the sad silly sense that if we could just understand the tragic world we survived as children, we could somehow be better adults, and our lives would fall into the neat categories we have created for them.”
Bottom Line: When I first opened Crenshaw’s collection, I expected to read some good prose. I expected to experience a unique perspective on the world. And I expected to walk away with new insight to my own writing. “This One Will Hurt You” far exceeded those expectations.
Reading “This One Will Hurt You” has taught me some things. First, I didn’t think I knew how to read or review a collection of personal essays. I’m comfortable with fiction. I know how to analyze characters and plot. I understand the structure. I suspected the general connection between the two, fiction and non-fiction, would be the prose, the sensory elements, the words and sentences themselves. I was wrong. Stories are stories. Some are attempts at truth based on real events we have experienced, and some are complete lies based on real events we have experienced. As evidence of this truth, you can open directly to page 91 and read one of the best stories/personal essays/poems I have ever read, but I implore you to travel the way Crenshaw intended. To quote Ondaatje, “Meander if you want to get to town.”
The second thing I learned is that I should expand my own writing. As I read Crenshaw’s essays, they evoked memories of my own, things I have experienced that I never considered writing down. Perhaps it was because I grew up around the same time, or that I’ve chosen a similar path for my life. Either way, I connected with these essays more than I expected at the outset. When I came upon this sentence, it made sense: “If the girl is real, then we share the same past in the same place, with a similar hope for leaving it, and I can indulge the notion that we are all trapped by place and circumstance and random forces beyond our control, forever looking back with the sad silly sense that if we could just understand the tragic world we survived as children, we could somehow be better adults, and our lives would fall into the neat categories we have created for them.”
Bottom Line: When I first opened Crenshaw’s collection, I expected to read some good prose. I expected to experience a unique perspective on the world. And I expected to walk away with new insight to my own writing. “This One Will Hurt You” far exceeded those expectations.
December 18, 2021
I've been following Paul on Twitter for a while now. As an essay writer myself, a recent Tweet hit close to home, especially as I'd just set out to start AND finish my first thing since Covid hit: "Writing an essay is putting the leaves back on the trees while knowing they’re already on the wet pavement." Totally.
This past fall I finally got to ordering his book. Which I finished in October, and I'm finally catching up on some Goodreads goodness.
I loved it.
I read the first essay, After the Ice, while on one of my walks around my neighborhood (walking-reading practiced on my commutes to and from various downtown Chicago jobs over the years) and I knew I was in good storyteller hands. It also throws down the emotional gauntlet that the title promises.
Our backgrounds are different, but we're around the same age. A comforting connection as I got to know the times and places of his world. (Also, as a fellow Gen-Xer, I loved his online essay on Choose Your Own Adventure books. Read it HERE.) .
Favorites in this collection include Cold, Of Little Faith, Girl on the Third Floor, and A Brief and Selected History of Man, Defined by a Few Walls He Has Built.
This past fall I finally got to ordering his book. Which I finished in October, and I'm finally catching up on some Goodreads goodness.
I loved it.
I read the first essay, After the Ice, while on one of my walks around my neighborhood (walking-reading practiced on my commutes to and from various downtown Chicago jobs over the years) and I knew I was in good storyteller hands. It also throws down the emotional gauntlet that the title promises.
Our backgrounds are different, but we're around the same age. A comforting connection as I got to know the times and places of his world. (Also, as a fellow Gen-Xer, I loved his online essay on Choose Your Own Adventure books. Read it HERE.) .
Favorites in this collection include Cold, Of Little Faith, Girl on the Third Floor, and A Brief and Selected History of Man, Defined by a Few Walls He Has Built.
June 16, 2019
Have you ever put down a book at its end and sat shaken, short of breath, unsure of where you were, as if you'd just been through a scary, exciting car wreck, and yet somehow still wished for more? That's what this fine book will do to you. Crenshaw is a damn good writer. His spare prose, not a single word wasted and leavened with humor, invite you into a very specific world, the hills and trees and storms of western Arkansas. The magic of these essays is that each in its own way opens out from a backyard, a field fallow and windswept in winter, or a child's empty crib into universal truths, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say universal ponderings and at times grave doubts about those supposed truths. My personal favorite, "Cold," stands out stark and clear as a fable that could have been set at any time in human history in any place in the world where humans shiver alone and huddle together for warmth in winter. Crenshaw's mastery is to bring you here, to this house, on this road, staring into this fireplace, shivering alongside your brother as you wait for your stepfather to come home and build the fire that will finally warm your bones. An apt metaphor, I suppose, for tales that lead you out beyond the fire-lit campsite, where we live our lives in some semblance of safety, and deep into the frightening forest beyond, only to offer just enough light, perhaps, to find our way back.
April 14, 2020
I've taught a few of Paul's essays in my comp and creative writing courses through the decades, and students never fail to connect with some aspect of his work. If I were blurbing this book, I'd point how brutal and bare its honesty is (hence the title), but what makes this book special is how eloquently and artfully the author crafts that honesty. Also worth noting: this book is also quite funny at points, and has a ton to offer any type of reader.
I think the essay about walls was actually my favorite--deceptively complex despite its seemingly commonplace subject matter.
I think the essay about walls was actually my favorite--deceptively complex despite its seemingly commonplace subject matter.
August 26, 2021
This was a serendipitous read- I chose it at random off the shelf of essays at the library and am so glad I did. The title is not lying. Every essay delivers an emotional wallop about life, death, the inexorable unfairness of existence, the transience of childhood. It's pretty rare that I cry while reading, but this had me tearing up multiple times and full-out sobbing during one particular essay. It's been several months since I finished this book, and the stories and insights and writing still stick with me. Definitely one of the best reads of the year for me.
October 9, 2019
Paul Crenshaw’s essays peel back the layers we humans pile on ourselves to cover our perceived faults and failings in an effort to fit in with a notion we have of ourselves. Achingly honest, his prose reveals his experiences growing up in small town USA in such a way as to become universally relatable. I highly recommend this book.
December 25, 2020
Just knowing you are hidden somewhere
Deep in the 1990s
A transistor radio
Hanging awkwardly from your neck
You can call anything an essay -
Absolute literary corruption
Maddeningly, nonsensically
A free-for-all
mostly, lastingly unremembered.
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint of Part-Time Humans
Deep in the 1990s
A transistor radio
Hanging awkwardly from your neck
You can call anything an essay -
Absolute literary corruption
Maddeningly, nonsensically
A free-for-all
mostly, lastingly unremembered.
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint of Part-Time Humans
November 5, 2019
Read and loved the Longreads essay "Girl on the Third Floor," so I put this book of essays on my list and I'm glad I did. I knew vaguely what was coming with the final essay but it still hit me in the gut and left me crying in a food court.
April 9, 2020
Mind-blowingly good. Captures perfectly so many real, authentic emotions through vignettes of life. Love, terror, despair, joy, regret... somehow each scene from Crenshaw’s life brings something up from my own life.
April 14, 2020
I savored this collection. I won’t write a long review; what can I say about such a personal collection of essays with such depth and character? Do yourself a favor: buy this book, sit down with your favorite beverage somewhere quiet, and lose yourself in the wistful memories of Paul Crenshaw.
July 2, 2019
Crenshaw is a master of the essay. This collection does a masterful job at walking the line between sentimentality and deep pain.
July 25, 2019
Essays, 3-1/2 stars.
October 10, 2023
Strong, well written essays, those structured around his family were the best.
June 9, 2019
The title does not lie. This collection of essays is beautifully written and is filled with friends and family, love and loss, heartbreak, and humanity. It will hurt you. This collection is truly something beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews