Jason Mott's Hell of a Book is just that--in more ways than one. I'm not surprised it won the National Book Award (2021).
The most striking thing about the book, most readers would agree, is its insights into race in America, with particular attention to police violence against Black men.
But another striking thing--at least to me as a ruralist who grew up in a tiny town in the American South--is the role of the small town in the story. Indeed, more precisely, it is the role that growing up in a small town, Bolton, North Carolina (population 691), plays in the narrative. Bolton, by the way, is not only the hometown of the novel's protagonist--the narrator telling the story in first person--Bolton is also the hometown of author Jason Mott. Thus, Mott comes by his insights honestly.
The book's opening vignette is set in a farm house, but the reader has no idea that this is of any significance until relatively late in the book, when the protagonist reveals his own small-town roots. The author/protagonist returns there, which gives him an opportunity to comment on the impact of growing up in such a place. Here are some representative excerpts, all from his return to visit his hometown after he becomes a famous author. In the first, the narrator is entering Bolton with his agent, Sharon. This excerpt at least hints at the attachment to place associated with rural America, as well as the major role played by religion:
[Sharon] scans the small town as we pass. Coming through, we cross paths with nine churches over the course of the town. “Why does a town this small have so many churches?” Sharon asks.
“Because God needs the little people more than he needs anyone,” I say. There’s a knot in my stomach the size of Texas all of a sudden. I haven’t been back to Bolton in years, and with good reason. It’s a town with tendrils. And as soon as those tendrils get into your skin, you can never get rid of them. You can never get away. The truth of the matter is that I’d managed to get out of Bolton only because I snuck away under cover of darkness and something akin to invisibility. I never really fit into this town when I was a kid. I was always too much of something for the other kids I grew up with. I was too much of a bookworm. Too nerdy. Too weird. Too clumsy. Too skinny. Too black of skin. Too white of temperament. I never liked hunting and fishing enough. I never liked fighting or chasing girls enough. I never liked God or hated the devil enough. I never grew things in the garden. I didn’t eat okra and butterbeans. I couldn’t stand dumplings.
My family did the best they could to not make me feel like the freak that I always was. My cousins, God bless ’em, they loved me like I was one of their own even though I’d argue that I didn’t really belong to anyone. Especially after the emergence of my condition [elsewhere revealed as an overactive imagination that causes the narrator not to be able to distinguish between reality and the imaginary].
I can’t say exactly when it began, but I can definitely say that it’s linked to this small town of Bolton and my childhood. From what I remember, I’ve always been living in a different world. My therapist says that can’t be the case, not for the type of condition I’ve got. She swears that what I’ve got comes about only after a person has gone through some sort of trauma. And, typically, when you talk about this type of trauma, it’s got to be something beyond the scope of school bullying and general low self-esteem—both of which I had no shortage of in my youth.
My therapist and I have been through more than a few loops about what might have caused my imagination and persistent daydreaming to work the way it does.
“Can you think of any event that might have occurred?” she asks, over and over again, for the past five years since I’ve started seeing her.
“No,” I reply. “I had a pretty normal childhood. I grew up in a small town that nobody’s heard of in the ass end of North Carolina. Well, now that I think of it, maybe you could count that as a trauma.” (pp. 221-23)
This, too, is quite negative about small-town America, in particular small towns in the American South and how they treat Black folks:
Nestled in the sweaty armpit of Carolina swampland, surrounded by gum trees, and pines, and cedars, and oak, and wild grapevines, the town of Bolton is the land that time forgot. Go back far enough into the town history, and there used to be a railroad stop and a sawmill here. And that was at its pinnacle, somewhere around sixty years ago or so. Back then, the town had a population of maybe around three thousand people.
The main exports of Bolton are lumber and Black manual labor. The wood comes from the forests and swampland—all of which are owned by the local paper mill—and the labor comes from the town’s seven-hundred-odd residents. I wish that I could tell you that something more than those two chief exports comes out of Bolton, but there’s nothing else. Bolton isn’t a town that gives, but neither is it a town that takes. It’s the type of place that keeps to itself. It’s self-sustaining, the way the past always is. And though it changes a little now and again, the way an old piece of metal seems to change colors over the years as some thin patina comes along and begins to grow over it, at its core the town is the same that it has always been. And that’s how the people like it. (pp. 220-21)
The next excerpt reminds me of the nostalgia associated with rural folks--which this :
“There’s a field like that not far from my house too. Looks almost the exact same. My daddy said that it was where they used to grow cotton a long time ago. My daddy was always talking about the way things used to be back before I was born.”
“That a fact?”
“Yeah. It was like that was all he wanted to talk about. He used to have these books he would read to me on the weekend. These encyclopedias about Black people.” (p. 227)
Then there's this--also about religion--a familiar phenomenon for those who've grown up rural:
Bolton Town Hall also doubles as a church because there is no separation of church and state in southern Black towns. God is everywhere, especially in the law. At least, He’s supposed to be. But I can tell by the tone and timbre of the people inside the walls of this small, ruined church that they’re beginning to believe less and less in the ability of God to come along and do the right thing in their lives. (p. 242)
This scene reveals both positive and negative associations with rurality in relation to the power and pain of memory:
And one thing I always forgot is just how much I love the quiet of small towns and the long roads that seem to lead nowhere and everywhere all at the same time. Only a fistful of buildings to speak of. Houses that pop up like memories along the side of pavement and gravel sometimes. It’s a hell of a splendor.
But maybe it’s a good thing that I can’t remember everything the right way. I know what happened to my old man. But the old lady . . . something tells me not to think about that. It’s like the thought of having lost them both is too much to fit in my head so it chooses not to know either way. But there’s a catch to convincing yourself that you don’t know a thing: yeah, it keeps your life on track, but for the thing or person you’re choosing not to see or know, you’re taking away their whole entirety. And ain’t that something to do to a person? To a group of people? Ain’t willful ignorance a hell of a thing?
Being back here in my hometown, I think I can feel that box opening . . . and it terrifies me. (pp. 253-54)
And then there's this, which shows Mott really knows a thing or two about the practicalities of living in rural America:
“I wonder if there’s internet out here,” Sharon asks, eyeing the house suspiciously. “How in God’s name do people live like this? It’s barbaric.”
I can’t help but smirk. (p. 226).
In any event, while the book is not primarily about rurality and the small-town phenomenon, Mott does show off his home-grown observations of rural culture and rural realities--as well as how urbanites (Sharon, the literary agent, is the quintessential city dweller of the northeastern variety) view them.
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