Hella Nation

Rating: 3 of 5

Hella Nation is a collection of long form magazine articles written by the semi-famous journalist Evan Wright better known for his work on Generation Kill

I did not “read” Hella Nation but rather listened to the audio book on a long drive.

A lot of the chapters in Hella Nation are actually reprints of long form magazine articles and not original work. I do feel that the book is a bit of cash grab after the success of Generation Kill. The book has no over-arching theming or narrative. Sometimes the book is pure semifirst person reporting of the people that Evan Wright meets. Sometimes its his personal story. The book seems to jump from one type of telling to the other semi-randomly.

Since the book really just a mush-mash of magazine articles you’ll likely enjoy some parts and become bored in others. The stories I found the most interesting was Evan’s own experience in the porn industry. The story I found the most boring was his profile of Jim Greco a alcoholic skate boarder.

Probably the most common theme in the book was substance abuse. A good majority of the people profiled in the book were alcoholics or heavy drug users. I suspect this comes with being on the fringes of societity so its not surprising.

I found a great deal of the book very depressing. People with mental health issues and substance abuse issues are not usually in a good place. Their lives are sad and slightly dangerous. They’ve likely been abused in the past. There was no one profiled in Evan’s book I was actually interested in meeting personally or who I had any envy for.

At a high level the book covers:

• Jim Greco - Jim comes off like a sad drunk asshole. I guess he sobered up and lives an ok life now.
• Priscilla - a “Taxi” dancer - basically a soft core stripper. There are no public records for Priscilla that I could find.
• Craig Marshall AKA WingNut - an Eco Terrorist. I can find no records for Craig Marshal outside of his prosecution for destruction of property.
• Richard Girnt Butler the creepy and fearful leader of the Aryan Nation more or less takes credit for the shooting of Larry Flynn
• Paul “Cornfed” Schneider - a strange story about a man in prison obsessed with breeding dogs. His dog Bane murders Diane Whipple. Which I wish was the least strange part of this story.
• Konstantin Simbergs murder hired by Troy Langdon and Sean Southland. Terrible people doing terrible things to each other.
• Tito Ortiz and Vladimir Matyushenko before and after UFC 19. Talks some of the Zuffa aquisition of the UFC
• A profile on Seth Warshavsky a 1990’s internet Porn scammer. Somehow after breaking every possible law Seth ends up living in Thailand. Potentially interesting about The Seth chapters is that Evan and Seth worked together a great deal so Even seemed to know him well.
• Motely Crue is profiled. They feel like losers.
• Pat Dollard, when drugs and mental illness collide in interesting ways. I am shocked that Pat Dollard is still alive.
• Even Wright himself spends a lot of time talking about his how substance abuse problems and his own work in the porn industry. These chapters are interesting but I found them a little disturbing. Mentally well balanced people do not seem to be common in porn. Some discussion of Larry Flynt is found here.

After reading the book I enjoyed listening to Evan Wrights interview on the Longform Podcst.

A choose to rate Hella Nation only a 3/5 for a couple of reasons.

• I found most of the stories sad and not in a good way.
• There’s no real theming or message to this book. Its just a mush-mash
• You may have already read one or more of these stories in Rolling Stone or other publication.

Evan Wright is a good journalist. This book is still good to read, but if you only have energy for one Evan Wright book, I recommend Generation Kill over this.