Customer Reviews

Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe,Wingnut's War Against the GAP, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America

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What's it like to be the oddball, the type of "out of the box" person or group that most people pretend to admire - from a distance in reality? What makes such folks tick? And whether or not one judges with the terms dysfunctional, weird, strange, etc., etc., shouldn't one understand these outsiders since the world is full of same? Evan Wright, who previously wrote for "The Hustler" magazine and "Rolling Stone" newspaper brings the reader into the world of men and woman who have a very definite but different outlook on the American Dream.

The author introduces the reader to his own evolution from a rebel using drugs to cope with reality into a sober, reflective person seeking to pen his explorations of what he calls a "tour of the Lost Tribes of America. Therefore, the reader is surprised that the opening account concerns American troops serving in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold in southeastern Afghanistan. The area is a veritable dust storm waiting to happen and one gets an uncensored glimpse into the grinding, tense yet mundane atmosphere these soldiers endure daily, fantasizing and teasing newbies about the happy meals one can get in a nearby village and coping with unremitting sexual tension, fear of being killed and spurts of total inactivity.

The scene then shifts to the world of a professional skateboarder, a daredevil who performs his most dangerous stunts when totally drunk but someone who makes a fortune in this field while claiming to reject most acceptable values and occupations. We continue to meet similar yet different characters, taxi-dance hall girls occupied by would-be fantasy partners, radical protestors with the best of intentions carried out with the most destructive possible means, neo-Nazi groups seriously believing in anti-everything-but-white living, con artists, porn professionals and so much more that defies one's most imaginative moments.

Hella Nation raises more questions than it answers. It stretches the reader's definition from what is acceptable to offer a portrait of men and women who find satisfaction and purpose in unique situations that are rather dark, disturbing, frightening, sometimes funny in a skewed fashion, deceptive, laid back, sacred and profane. In a sense, Hella Nation defies description and in that goal Evan Wright has succeeded in presenting another side of America! The conclusion is yours!

Reviewed by Viviane Crystal on April 9, 2009

I've found it's always a big thrill being a tourist in your own country -America! Hella Nation gathers Evan Wright's award-winning journalism done before and after he wrote Generation Kill. His profiles and encounters across America make Hella Nation an extraordinary and compelling road trip. Through his courageous storytelling, he brings his subjects to light, with humor and surprising compassion - making this genius collection impossible to put down. For a summer trip across America, Hella Nation is a must see!...Like your stop at Yellowstone National Park, only this version is filled with Wright's cast of schemers, dreamers, exotic dancers, Hollywood renegades, and Wright himself, seeking redemption on this journey into the wilds of the American Dream.

Hella Nation by Evan Wright
A collection of essays from Rolling Stone and other magazines, the book is about subcultures and social misfits, weird outliers who are fascinating and sometimes frightening in their weirdness. With the courage of a war correspondent, Wright places himself in harm's way to get stories like one about American skinheads; or a Hollywood producer gone over the edge with drugs and rightwing craziness who is just cagey enough to hold onto a few famous contacts; or, most chilling, a story about the intersection of Russian killers and a deadly white-collar criminal. He once worked as an editor at Hustler magazine and writes a hilarious yet sympathetic story about the porn industry with pitch-perfect dialogue. As a top-notch reporter and writer, Wright lets the scenes and people speak for themselves: comical, graphic, and immediate. Even though the stories have been compared to Gonzo journalism, Wright does not inject himself into the story; but renders his subjects with sympathy and objectivity. He comments that the people he covers, far from being society's outcasts, "gravitated to subcultures because they didn't want to participate in the dominant culture."
My favorite piece was the Introduction itself, in which he writes about the impulse behind this book. Wright endured years of alcoholism and substance abuse, but remained a student of the world and an intellectual with a keen and curious mind and a caring soul. "...The more I learned about man's inhumanity to man, the more I was afflicted with intense bouts of sadness, no matter how remote humankind's injustices were in space and time." In his refusal to posture or interject himself in these bold stories, Wright attains the ultimate cool.

Wright is simply an outstanding observer, writer, humorist. I came to Hella Nation after I saw the HBO mini-series based on his book Generation Kill. Hella Nation includes writing the author did before and after his seminal reporting from Iraq. It really is an insane portrait of America by one of the best writers around. I skipped the introductory chapter when I first read this, which was a mistake, since his personal story in the intro is hilarious and heartbreaking. What I like best across all the essays is Wright just calls things like they are. He has a very unflinching, often funny way way of seeing things, which was true for Generation Kill and for Hella Nation.

Just finished re-reading David Foster Wallace. There is a class at Claremont a college where he last lived and taught that is only about his work. I am so glad I found Evan Wright expressing loss of DFW friendship in some article after DFW's untimely and tragic death. In Wright's world, in Hella Nation, you can see parallels or at least conversations. If you like DFW, you will like Wright for different reasons, but knowing that DFW and Wright are writers who would read each other's work and whose readers have many of the same takes on life in common. Can anyone comment on Harold Hecuba who helps DFW at electronics/porn convention in Consider the Lobster Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays. Hecuba must be Evan Wright, maybe. DFW thanks Wright at end of his collection. As a college student who strongly dislikes textbooks and most books assigned by my honors English program staff, I highly recommend Hella Nation. It is uncensored, relevant, probably not allowed on by most colleges these days because they are so afraid of getting sued or exposing students to controversial material. As if the average college student's life is not controversial in and of itself. Unless you have a suburban life that is immune to reality, Hella Nation should be on your own personal syllabus along with everything by DFW.

I feel an affinity to this writer and I don't normally read war books or essay books. I like magazines, short fiction, web comix. My brother and his friends thought Evan Wright's book Generation Kill was like the best book ever. I did not read the book, but got into the story when I watched the HBO series based on it. I love that actor Alex Skarsgaard and the one who plays Person, PJ, and Rudy. Espera is the most deep in my view because he cares so much about his daughter. My brother got Hella Nation for me and I just ordered one for our brother in Orange County, California who is a recovering alcoholic and will LOVE THIS BOOK. The cover has a really obnoxious looking person on it. the publisher should have used the picture of Mr. Wright, a serious and friendly looking youngish man who could be in the movies, that's how good looking he is. Hella Nation looks like the type of book a guy would like, but I felt an affinity right away in Mr. Wright's introduction, an essay where he talks a little about himself. It is hilariously funny, but strikes me deeply since one of my brothers and my aunt have had serous problems with alocoholism. Mr. Wright is as open about himself as he is about his subjects. He writes candidly about his own first job problems with anxiety and going through an interview. I can relate. You would never expect this kind of revelation from a successful person, and a macho looking man. He's very down to earth. I have to admit I couldn't put down the stories about Mr. Wright's life in porn and dealing with LA's underbelly. I also can't believe how sad the story is about the people whose dog killed their neighbor and grown-up man in prison they adopted. It is the strangest story I have ever read apart from the last story in the book which is even stranger than fiction. I can't believe that the subject, Pat Dollard (who has a website I just found), could go to those depths and that he would let anyone write about him. Mr. Wright is good at winning people's trust. You feel like you know him and like you're there in the room with some of the strangest people on earth. I could see the stories in this book turn into a series like Columbo (an old show you can rent) except that the investigator is a writer like Evan Wright. And he meets people like this who finally can't stand their secret anymore, and they confess. I can't judge these people. I've been as sick as my secrets in the past, too. It feels good to read this book and think about your own path in life and why so many people take the wrong step and everything falls apart. I don't even think Mr. Dollard wanted to be anything but a good person who cares about others. It just went all wrong. I highly recommend this book especially if your family is not perfect or if you or anyone is your family has had trouble with alcohol or addictions. You will really relate to the stories in this collection by an author who seems to really care about people.

Not sure you'd enjoy this book? Me, either. My pre-conceptions were not helped by the photo of the cartoonish punk rocker on the cover-- ughh. With little to read at the time (I was on a long cross-country flight and my choiciest reading options were: 1) USA Today, leftover from someone else's hotel stay; 2) the tag team duet of a dog-eared SkyMall catalogue accompanied by a laminated emergency exit schematic of the airplane and DFW airport; and 3) this book, which my goofy brother days earlier had shoved in my duffel bag, with the singular endorsement of "read it." Under the circumstances, I started Hella Nation with some reluctance.

Whenever some big author or politico writes a book, I am skeptical. Having said that, I will say this collection of stories was not what I thought it would be. First off, you wouldn't expect a book titled "Hella Nation," starring various misfits and misanthropes, to be laugh out loud funny, but Evan Wright manages to simultaneously take serious, and sometimes repugnant, subject matter, and turn it into a series of really good reads. I won't highlight the famous, or rather infamous, cast of characters (the author is a former editor at Hustler) as they are discussed in the synopsis and elsewhere. What I really like is that each chapter stands alone--you can easily read them out of order--making this an excellent airport read. Ordinarily, in my view of the world, this might be construed as a put-down, but I say this as a compliment as I am a road warrior. I have started various books, but often don't finish them because I didn't have the time or patience. Not so with this book. It's engaging from the get-go. I also admire how Evan Wright refrains from lecturing about the moral horror of some of the book's topics (i.e. Aryan Nation, environmental terrorists, murder for hire.) Rather, he lets the subjects speak for themselves, often rather profanely, and interweaves his own equally interesting semi-autobiographical experiences into the stories.

This book is not without flaws. The chapter on Motley Crue struck me as gratuitous. Band members are preoccupied with sex and plastic-enhanced women purr at the sight of the them and throw themselves at the rockers. Is this a shocker? The Motley Crue story appears towards the end of the book, but clearly the author's encounter took place many years ago. It's not clear why the chapters are ordered as they are; they are not arranged chronologically. Nevertheless, these are minor infractions. I give Evan Wright's Hella Nation very high marks. This book is real. Forget Angels and Demons and that nonsense. To repeat the words of my egg-headed brother, "READ IT!!!"

"Hella Nation" is an essential collection of previously-published essays about the 'other' Americas out there which exist beyond the dominant paradigm, "mainstream" America, and its variations. It's not a particularly pretty picture, which is probably why the mainstream is so mainstream. Wright's best gift is for deadpan description and the selection of telling detail or quote, like:

"This is Mike calling from Cleveland," a voice crackles over the speakers with a queasy, adolescent timbre that brings to mind pimples and a uniform spattered in deep-fryer grease. "I just wanted to say you guys rock!"

These Americas are a bit skewed. Largely, they are all about different white Americas, and, excepting perhaps the San Francisco lawyers, fit neatly in the middle to lower-middle class demographic. But, you write what you know about.

The material is often dated, since the essays have been published previously, some, quite some time ago. It would have been a great strategy to invest some time in 'updates' as to the characters and their projects. As it is, I was curious and invested enough in these stories to do my own legwork on Wikipedia to find out the current fates of UFC champ Tito Ortiz and San Francisco attorney-cum-Aryan Nation prisoner adopter Marjorie Knoller.

The essays are generally tied together with the idea of presenting different sub cultures of America existing outside the mainstream, like neo Nazis or environmental anarchists. However, a few of the stories are just idiosyncratic and lurid, like the Diane Whipple murder, or portrait of the techie con artist Seth Warshavsky.

The stories of many of these characters and incidents can be strangely unsatisfying, perhaps in part because they each lack a coda. Wright is clearly influenced by "Annales" historians, who were "supremely uninterested in arriving at a unified theory of anything." Wright quotes a professor he admired who would say what matters "is the investigation, not the outcome." As such, the essays often just sort of have the effect of describing information, and stopping at a point that is often arbitrary. He takes us on tour with Motley Crue from Cleveland to New York, and then things just stop, as if maybe the per diem bankroll from Rolling Stone just dried up. The mind generally likes a story, and these 'accounts' can be resistant to the usual satisfactions of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Also, although Wright does an admirable good job of generally just letting the (carefully selected) facts speak for themselves, he does sneak in an occasional editorial idea, which can slightly detract from the overall effect.

The most personal essay involves the porn industry, where Wright was an entertainment editor. In a 'just the facts ma'am' manner, he describes his own involvement through anecdotes, in an exercise that sometimes feels like a therapist told him to keep a journal. "The persona had merged with the person, and I found truth in my own mean-spirited Hustler copy." Ultimately, Wright is his own poignant, alternate story, in a compelling collection of like-spirited personalities.

I stumbled upon this book after reading some comparisons between the essays of Evan Wright and the essays of David Foster Wallace. On that score I was temporarily disappointed. Other than having facilitated Wallace's entree for his essay on porn industry awards, Evan Wright seems to be a very different writer and thinker. Wright's style is much more descriptive; though he inserts himself in the essays, he does so as a matter of story-telling rather than offering the unique types of creative interpretation and provocative social commentary that made David Foster Wallace an icon. But in doing so Evan Wright and Hella Nation crafts an interesting style of its own by letting stories about the "lost tribes of America" create their own intrigue. I particularly liked some of the shorter essays, such as those about the self-destructing skateboard star, the anarchist making sense of the WTO protests in Seattle, and Motley Crue on a reunion tour. There is something fascinating in learning about these fringe players in major social trends on their own terms. They are the type of people you see in the news, or on television, but don't recognize until a book like this subtly demonstrates that they represent America as much as those in the center of the frame. This all makes for great pop ethnography.

The essays in this book have all been published before; having never read them previously it does appear that Evan Wright has grown more ambitious over time--several of the more recent essays seemed to be longer and more oriented towards a version of investigative journalism that necessitates less pure description and more judgment. These essays, such as those about a tangle of ambition and crime in Arizona or about a self-destructive Hollywood agent who becomes infatuated with promoting the "war against terror," seemed of a different ilk than the earlier essays--in some ways for better and in some ways for worse. I suppose an evolution of essays is to be expected since the author's own story evolves through the pieces, having moved from the fringe writing of porn movie reviews for Hustler to writing major, award winning features for Esquire. That strange transition is fascinating in itself, and ultimately makes for a distinctive and thought provoking perspective on American society.

I saw the author on a CSPAN book fair interview and thought he sounded interesting, having written for Hustler magazine when he could find no other work and was down on his luck, then moving on to more "traditional" work. The book is eclectic and deals with subjects from pathetic, slacker youth to the "enlightened" maniacs inside politics. It is essentially a group of short stories or magazine articles in book form. It deals with topics like the inner workings of the porn industry, the convoluted plot of a murder in Phoenix, Az, the fall and rise of a conservative pundit to interviewing and following a group of dysfunctional, alcoholic skateboarders. The author seems to be able to slip into the background and capture his subjects in a pure light and tell who they really are, warts and all, but doesn't look down on them, even if they are pretty screwed up. We have all screwed up at some point and he isn't their to judge - only to report what he sees from his unique point of view colored by his own past. I may even read his other book about soldiers in Iraq. This is a really good nonfiction book, written with a funny, half-twisted insight that goes very quickly, page after page. I think his time in the porn industry and the shocking things he was exposed to had the effect of making the shocking seem everyday to him. Now he can report about bizzare behavior with a partially callous but respectful viewpoint that is both empathetic and distant at the same time. It is hard to explain but at the same time I highy recommend it. A very entertaining book.