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 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.
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.
