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Hill William
by
"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 mou ...more
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 mou ...more
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Kindle Edition, 200 pages
Published
October 14th 2013
by Tyrant Books
(first published August 13th 2013)
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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 ...more
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 ...more

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 i ...more
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 i ...more

Jun 10, 2019
Karmologyclinic
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
ebook,
contemporary-fiction
"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 McClanah ...more

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 ...more
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 ...more

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.
...more

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.
...more

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
...more

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. ...more
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. ...more

Mar 03, 2014
Judy
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
21st-century-fiction,
tournament-of-books
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

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.
...more

I love Scott McClanahan so much it's unbelievable.
...more

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. ...more
I was the winner. I was better now.
God I wish I was a man who felt righteous in his anger. ...more

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

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
...more

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 W ...more
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 W ...more

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. ...more
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. ...more

Raw and hard as fuck, sometimes painful to read but above all sincere and essential reading for people from nowhere.
“i sat and looked over shining rainelle and had no idea that this was going to be the place where i found out what it was like to die. this is the place where all of the joy of the world would come to me and where i’d fall in love with my life”
“i sat and looked over shining rainelle and had no idea that this was going to be the place where i found out what it was like to die. this is the place where all of the joy of the world would come to me and where i’d fall in love with my life”

There's some rough raw content here about growing up in Appalachia, in the midst of violence to both nature and humans. But I thought the voice was way to MFA - faux innocent interspersed with "deep" truths. Slight and skippable.
...more

McClanahan writes like a child sputtering out a story he isn't supposed to be telling. McClanahan writes like he hasn't been drilled for years on a right or wrong way to write. McClanahan doesn't write so much as speak, conversationally and accessibly, to you, whoever you are. And you can be anyone. He desperately wants you to know his world. I don't know if I can call it minimalist or realist, because there are certainly times when this verges on the poetically surreal.
The other night I was at ...more
The other night I was at ...more

I have mixed feelings about the book. I like the spare and raw writing style. Reminds me in certain ways of Cormac McCarthy without the vocabulary or batshit observations on the cosmic, and probably more closely Bukowski or Hubert Selby with its subject matter. I got the most interest out of the portions involving Sarah, but those are definitely informed and supported by the bulk of the story in the protagonists’ childhood, which is packed full of dysfunction that surely a large portion of reade
...more
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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-foun
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“I couldn't believe it.
Something wasn't right.
I thought, "Batman smokes cigarettes."
I couldn't believe it. "Batman smokes fucking cigarettes."
I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside my own heart, where even Batman couldn't help me.”
—
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Something wasn't right.
I thought, "Batman smokes cigarettes."
I couldn't believe it. "Batman smokes fucking cigarettes."
I walked away and saw that Batman was just this stupid guy dressed up in a rubber suit, just as afraid as I was, and that I lived in a lost place inside my own heart, where even Batman couldn't help me.”
“That night I dreamed about flying turtles and forest fires and fucking the earth...The next morning I awoke and I listened to the tree company tearing away the woods and the timber. I heard the chainsaws ripping outside my open window and I heard the dynamite exploding all the mountain tops away for the black rock below. And instead of feeling sad like I did most mornings, I felt something else now. I found myself saying, 'Explode. Explode you mountains. Rip them down you fuckers. Take this stinking dirt and leave this land with hatred and death.”
—
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