In a way, Irvine Welsh is responsible for Bill Hillmann’s new memoir, Mozos: A Decade of Running With the Bulls of Spain. The two met outside a White Sox game a decade ago. At the time Hillmann was 23, a former Golden Gloves boxer, a current coke dealer, an aspiring novelist, and a self-described complete mess; Welsh was twice his age and already famous as a chronicler of Edinburgh’s low life in novels and screenplays, most notably Trainspotting. The two men became friends. When Welsh got married in Dublin that summer, he invited Hillmann, who scraped up the money for the plane ticket and then realized that, for $60 more, he could go on to Madrid, and then to Pamplona, setting of The Sun Also Rises, the first book he ever read cover to cover. The annual running of the bulls, he dimly recalled, happened sometime in the summer.
Bill Hillmann: Oh, man, the Huffington Post got me real bad. When the article came out, the writer—because she found out I was a Buddhist—was like, “Bull delivered a tremendous force of karma when it gored him.”
How do you feel about bullfighting as opposed to the running?
[Laughs] You’d fit right in, man!
No. When things are going good, I have a buzz that lasts 24 hours a day for the whole time I’m there. I can’t sleep, but I don’t need any sleep. I feel stronger than I’ve ever felt, happier than I’ve ever felt. But when things go wrong, man, I fall apart. I lay in bed all day and avoid people and totally lose it.
Do you think it’s because you stayed closer to the action than a lot of people would, you were a bit more reckless so you could get a bit more buzz?
By Bill Hillmann (Curbside Splendor) Reading Wed 6/17, 7 PM Book Cellar 4736 N. Lincoln 773-293-2665bookcellarinc.com Free
