Book Review
Hillbilly Elegy (by J.D. Vance)
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- The book isn’t just a first-person narrative, but also contains academic research interspersed within the anecdotes. For example, Vance cites a paper showing that “Only 6 percent of American voters believe that the media is ‘very trustworthy’” when describing how disinformation has muddled the beliefs of his community. This and other similar citations about life in Appalachia connect his story to policy and it soon becomes clear Vance is a critic of Democrats. It is also clear he is a Republican and will run for office.
- Hillbilly Elegy has two major issues. Firstly, it is not consistently well-written. Some sections are flush with beautiful sentences and varying structures and words that sound like music. But many passages are clunky and unwieldy. The sentences have too many words, or don’t have enough, or are too long or too short, or leave the reader wondering why this or that word was chosen. The book appears to owe much of its popularity to the 2016 election at a time when liberals sought to understand why vast swaths of the country had voted for Donald Trump. They said “Here is a man who grew up in Appalachia and went to Yale Law School. He speaks the tongue of both liberals and conservatives. Surely he is a messenger from the heart of the country sent to explain to us the greatest cataclysm in American history.” This in itself is no reason to reject the book, but it does explain the book’s popularity in spite of the inconsistent writing.
- More problematic, though, is that Hillbilly Elegy tries to represent a culture, namely the white working class people of America. Many times, Vance writes, “We as a culture believe X” or “We as a people suffer Y” or “We as a community must do Z.” For example, when he talks about disinformation, he writes, “To many of us, the free press…is simply full of shit.” Again, “Many in the white working class believe the worst about their society.” Yet again, “We (the white workers of America) can’t trust the evening news…politicians..universities…”
- No one can or should write for a whole culture. Cultures are diverse and complex and varied. There is a lot of gray, not just black and white, and it is impossible to capture every spectrum of opinion. Plenty of poor white people do go to college. Plenty vote for politicians too. The point isn’t that Vance’s analysis is inaccurate, it’s that he shouldn’t be making such an analysis. His book is a memoir, not an academic work. It should recount his story and let the readers draw conclusions.
- Hillbilly Elegy is still worth a read, but is no match for “Educated,” which has set the yardstick for memoirs (at least to my mind).