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Hill William

Scott McClanahan

3.93 · Rating details · 744 ratings · 126 reviews

"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

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Kindle Edition, 200 pages

Published October 14th 2013 by Tyrant Books (first published August 13th 2013)

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Aug 19, 2013 Michael Seidlinger rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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.

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Jul 12, 2014 Richard Derus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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Nov 03, 2013 Tyler Crumrine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Scott McClanahan is shaping us into swords.

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Jul 19, 2014 M. Sarki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

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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 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? ...more

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Jan 17, 2015 Garry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Jan 03, 2018 Charles Beauregard rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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.

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Aug 20, 2013 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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.

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Nov 19, 2015 Kyle Muntz rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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Nov 09, 2012 Matthew Savoca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Here is a beautiful man.

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Aug 11, 2014 Ben Loory rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thank you Lord for letting me see Mountains.

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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
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. ...more

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Feb 27, 2014 outis rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

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.

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Feb 19, 2014 Jamie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: the-dirty-south

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

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Feb 22, 2014 Melissa Rochelle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: library, read-2014

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

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Jan 07, 2014 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read2014, around-the-usa, location-usa-wv, tournament-of-books

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

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Jan 26, 2014 Amy rated it liked it · review of another edition

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.

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Jan 09, 2014 Elaine rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2014

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.

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Jan 14, 2014 Juliet Escoria rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Scott McClanahan is a genius.

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Mar 13, 2018 Daniel Eastman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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Feb 02, 2020 Greg rated it liked it · review of another edition

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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Nov 24, 2019 Ted Prokash rated it liked it · review of another edition

Pretty good. Affecting. There's just so many writers going for the same thing. This one does it better, more "realistic and gritty", than most. This book is like that one friend who you know is gonna get drunk and get off on that fucked up satire of the squalor of his own fucking life and you hate seeing it again but you have to admit, it's pretty convincing.

I think I liked this better than the Sarah book. Which I probably gave a better rating. IDK. You tell me.

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Jul 13, 2019 Ville Verkkapuro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Never read a book more suitable for me. I was shocked to see that McClanahan writes exactly like I do. The rhythm, topics, everything. The subject matter was raw but beautiful. Something in the likes of Gummo, I think. The world I love. White trash nightmares. A light that shines through the cracks.

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Jan 31, 2017 Brian Tucker rated it really liked it · review of another edition

If Larry Brown had wrote shorthand...

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Aug 10, 2017 Alison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I can't get enough of his work. He writes simply and beautifully about *the* most difficult, awful things in this world.

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Jan 07, 2013 Hosho rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 05, 2013 Downward rated it really liked it · review of another edition

there is a lightweight quality to scott mcclanahan's voice that lulls you into thinking you are being told a story by someone at a bar, and sometimes that story is going to be funny and sometimes that story is going to be sad, but it will most likely be lightweight. scott mcclanahan is not a lightweight, his casual approach just makes you think he is. there is a rural poetry to the casual viciousness of hill william, a novel that catalogues a traumatic childhood (the ignorant malice of early sex ...more

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Jan 22, 2014 Julie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Sadly mesmerising
Both charms and unnerves

This is not mainstream storytelling, certainly a road less travelled. It is prose stripped back to bare essentials. It is full of ugliness. You somehow feel dirty just looking in on the narrative.

The calmness of pace and language set up an inner vibration of trepidation. It is hauntingly honest with characters that, at first, seem stereotyped, but, at their dark heart, are well crafted and intimately nuanced. The West Virginia setting resonates. The deva ...more

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Dec 01, 2013 Christopher Bundy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Picked this up after seeing Scott McClanahan read at Atlanta's Letters Festival (wonderful first (annual?) festival put together by Scott Daughtridge & others). Knew of Scott and his work already but so moved by his reading that night that I grabbed this new book from him (would have grabbed Crapalachia too but wasn't on the table). Stark but humanizing look at growing up in W. Virginia. Feels largely autobiographical though it's called a novel - either way, I don't care. I liked the short, pros ...more

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Jan 08, 2014 Tracy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, ebook, fiction

I admit, I had a visceral reaction to Hill William that made me really dislike it. It was very short - maybe 200 pages - and probably about half the content just made me feel gross and slimy.

But I feel like the book completely failed even *beyond* the gut-reaction. It just didn't hang together - it was fragmented and inconsistent and very muddy regarding the PoV character and how much is recollection and how much is just skipping around temporally.

And at the end of it, there was just nothing the ...more

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About Scott McClanahan

Scott McClanahan

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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 ...more

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Quotes from Hill William

“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.” — 10 likes

“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.” — 1 likes

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