Customer Reviews

The Haunted Hillbilly

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

An interesting little story about vampires that is remarkable for its style. Something in how McCormack writes creates an overwhelming sense of being on a bad bender - one where you know things are out of control and going wrong, but in which you don't have your wits about you enough to do anything about it. You have no choice but to lurch along for the ride, not seeing enough to completely understand what's happening to you, but knowing that whatever it is, it's bad.

One of the best things I've read in years.

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 all wasn't 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.

Derek McCormack's writing fills me with a joy that is usually only triggered by sex, sweeping landscapes, Caravaggio, really good coffee.

His style is so terse and tight it takes some getting used to - we don't expect writers to be so economical with their words.

this book made me wish it was ten times longer.

Nudie, the costume designer for a mysterious carnival, takes a shine to up-and-coming countrysinger Hank. Hank's just been asked to appear at the Grand Ole Opry, and Nudie convinces Hank to allow him to design his clothes. Soon, it becomes clear that Nudie's intentions are more wicked and devious than what Hank is prepared for. With minimal and precise words, author Derek McCormack creates a creepy underworld of country music and vamprisim. He uses only what is necessary and allows the reader's mind to fill in the scenes, offering a very effective story that sent chills down my spine during the last chapter. A fine, quick read.

At 124 generously spaced pages, The Haunted Hillbilly - Derek McCormack's first novel - demonstrates with style and sardonic wit that it's not about the length, it's all in how you use it. McCormack, the author of the short-story collections Dark Rides and Wish Book, as well as half of the Toronto Book Award-nominated Wild Mouse and various small-press publications, is an artisan who prefers working in miniature and consistently produces bijoux-like texts of Byzantine complexity. Halfway through The Haunted Hillbilly, the book presents the reader with a perfect analogy for McCormack's creative process. Nudie, the novel's gay vampiric western couturier narrator, renders down jagged bone splinters from the broken shin of a shopgirl that he's just injured, lets the essence set in a dollhouse muffin pan, then polishes the resulting discs into bone sequins to adorn a garment for his object of lust, an up-and-coming country singer called "Hank." Though Hillbilly is a "phantasmagoria" and "Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental," the "Hank" it describes isn't far off the mark from Hank Williams: a self-proclaimed sadist, dead in the back of a limo at 29 from an overdose of either heroin or a sexual stimulant for cattle called Ampheniamide, depending on whose story you believe. Nudie the narrator also bears a strong resemblance to a flesh-and-blood human, one Nudie Cohen (b. Nudka Kohn), owner and operator for 37 years of Nudie's Rodeo Tailors, and the creator of "Nudie suits" for Hank Williams, Gram Parsons' infamous white suit adorned with sequined marijuana leaves, opium poppies, peyote, buttons and amphetamines, and even Elvis's $10,000 gold lame suit. (To my knowledge, Cohen was neither gay nor a vampire, but as director John Ford used to say, when you have a choice between printing facts and printing the legend, print the legend). The quality of McCormack's prose, as usual, is superior - dense, precise, highly evocative. If James Ellroy was gay and from Peterborough, Ontario, he'd be Derek McCormack. This book is not really an alternate queer history of Nashville so much as an unflinching look at aspects of our cultural icons that we choose to ignore. The Haunted Hillbilly runs through the Country Music Hall of Fame with a baby sledgehammer, smashing all of the prettified displays that mask the somewhat grittier and uglier face of country music - what critic Nick Tosches calls the "twisted roots" of rock and roll. Novels like The Haunted Hillbilly make it difficult to pretend that the veneer of "pastness" that our culture maintains, not only about country music but about the bucolic world portrayed in Canadian realist fiction, is still intact. Not that McCormack shirks his CanCon duties. There's an amazing alchemical change in the very last line of the book, where, among various other changes of state, by virtue of one of McCormack's ultracompressed puns, "Hank" (whose patronym is never specified) actually becomes a Canadian country music star: Hank Snow. How, exactly, that transformation comes about, I leave as a mystery for the reader to explore."

A factious Hank Williams, a factious Grand Ol' Opry, a factious Nudie (the Western Wear guy) who happens to be a gay vampire who runs a sideshow on the side complete with wax museum and abnormal babies in jars...thing is as funny or interesting or entertaining as it might sound, it's not. I don't remember laughing once and the only reason I finished the book was because it's so short. The horror factor wasn't there either perhaps due to the minimalist wording. It just falls short of depth.

Boy, after reading the reviews, I can only assume the author asked 3 friends to write reviews.

This book was rather dreadful. The entire book consists of sentences averaging 5 words in length. It made everything extremely choppy and difficult to get into. Here is a random excerpt:

"A men's store. Might well be a bank. Mahogany and mirrors. Ties displayed in wickets. Dust swirls like paisley. A clerk leads Tubbs to herringbones."

Really, I opened to a random page... The above might not seem bad, but imagine 130 pages of 'story' just like this. I've never before craved for conjunctions, adverbs and adjectives before.

If the above doesn't make it clear, this has to be vanity publishing. There is virtually no character development. You are told the action as it happens, with no way to get into it. The entire story can be summed as 'A gay vampire tailor will get the man he wants, no matter what.' The storyline is simple, at best, and there is virtually no setting or anything that helps you care about where the story is going.

I have a high tolerance for mediocre writing, and I absolutely love gay vampire items. But after 4 or 5 chapters, I gave up and skimmed faster and faster.

If you want a gay vampire story, there are many others out there that will meet your needs. Try 'Sons of Darkness,' 'Brothers of the Night' or even 'Queer Fear' (I or II).

The Haunted Hillbilly combines elements of country music history, fantasy, horror, and most of all, incredibly funny looks at the world of Hank Williams and his contemporaries. Nudie is a gay vampire with a clothing store that caters to people like Hank Williams. He starts a trend toward flashy clothing, rhinestones and all, among other stars, such as Ernest Tubb. Nudie is the maker of Hank as a star and also his downfall. Scenes with Hank's wife, his mistress and a jealous Tubb are falling down funny. A great read and a marvelous look at the country and western music scene. The author has obviously been to Nashville and is familiar with the stars that he lampoons. A good book to give for Halloween or any other time.

Derek McCormack's short-short novel, THE HAUNTED HILLBILLY, is the definition of edgy queer lit. McCormack has already proved his capabilities as one of the best upcoming writers with his debut, GRAB BAG, and THE HAUNTED HILLBILLY does not dissapoint.

Set in the carnivale atmosphere of rural Canada, Nudie is a vampiric tailor with an unhealthy sexual appetite for the simple minded struggling folk singers. While the characters resemble country/western singer icons, Derek's incarnations are of a much darker breed. Nudie, himself, who molds the impressionable (and simple minded) Hank into a folk singer, wearing his signature gawdy outfits. However, the true story focuses on Nudie's obsession, manipulation and eventual destruction of his unsuspecting protege. McCormack masterfully combines the elements of horror, sexuality and the carnivalesque musical scene like a tailor would mend fabrics. He truly is marvelous.

The vampire element is almost an undertone to this novella. Nudie's mere undead presence goes unnoticed by the other characters, as his thirst for blood is subdued with his rapture of Hank on both a physical and mental level. THE HAUNTED HILLBILLY seems more like a morality tale: beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. McCormack's signature writing style is near perfect: simplistic but literary, full of mix-matched details that all seem to bare some relevance, but not so complex that the average reader has to reread the story to understand what's going on.

Derek McCormack will soon be a major name in the indie-publishing scene. For fans of Dennis Cooper and Kevin Killian, he is a must-read.

Nudie Cohn was neither gay, nor a vampire - but . . . he did cause macho cowboy, country and western stars to dress in outrageously embroidered and rhinestoned outfits. Check out "Nudie the Rodeo Tailor - the Life and Times of the Original Rhinestone Cowboy" for the real deal. Nudie often parodied himself in his work - his "peacock" suits were quite popular, after all - what were men doing in their crazy Nudie Suits, but wearing their peacock syndromes on their sleeves? Nudie had fun with it all, but if a few of his self destructive clients such as Hank Williams, Jimi and Janis, Elvis, and Gram Parsons, couldn't keep a grounded, fun-loving, humorous approach to their lives - don't blame Nudie - he tried to keep them all in glad rags. He made himself a star by bringing dazzle to others - shine on Nudie lovers and check out "Nudie" online and in bookstores now.