WILMETTE – Visitors to the Wilmette Library were treated to a presentation on October 27 by author Nathan Hill, who has made a big splash in the literary world with his debut novel The Nix.
The Nix is being compared to legendary works by Tom Wolfe and John Irving, but Hill appeared charming and grounded as he read passages from his novel and answered questions about the book.
The Nix takes place in Chicago and is the story of Samuel Andresen-Anderson, assistant professor and stalled writer in search of the true story of his mother, who abandoned him as a child and is caught on camera committing an absurd crime against a politician. At 620 pages, the novel takes the reader on a comedic adventure that took Hill 10 years to write and was 1,000 pages in the first draft.
“Chicago has felt like a second home to me,” Hill said. A native of Iowa, Hill grew up all over the Midwest and currently lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife. The couple spend summers in Chicago, where Hill’s wife performs with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra.
Hill said he was influenced to move to New York in his 20s and become a writer by such luminaries as Truman Capote and Alan Ginsberg. But the experience didn’t turn out as expected. In 2004, Hill’s car was burglarized and the computer and back-up drive containing all his writing was stolen. “About three years of writing just gone,” he said.
Hill said a friend recommended that he try out the computer game World of War Craft and he was hooked. “I loved it. I don’t know why I loved it. I was never a gamer,” Hill said. He played 20 to 30 hours per week until he finally quit cold turkey in 2007 or 2008 after realizing he was playing instead of writing.
But Hill eventually got to writing, a process he described as akin to tending a garden. “I started to think about writing the way people think about gardens,” he said. Focusing on the process of writing — instead of the hope and dream that the book would one day be a success — allowed Hill to find joy in the act of writing. And he believes the humor in the book came from that joy.
During the 10-year span that Hill wrote the book, he continued to add anecdotes from what was happening around him. “I kind of let the world creep in,” he said. For example, Hill included the Occupy Wall Street movement in the story.
Hill also described his daily work routine. Every morning he has coffee, reads a novel “to get into language” and then takes pen to paper. The entire first draft was handwritten and then typed up later in a computer. His goal is to write five to seven pages per day. “I find that even when it is going poorly I can get five pages,” Hill acknowledged. But he always stops himself at seven pages.
“You just trust the process that it will go well,” Hill said.