Review of Hillbilly Elegy from 2016

From nowhere, the lad has made it big

The Sturbridge Times Magazine was a regional publication from our beloved nowheresville. Thanks to Covid, it has ceased to exist.

Anyway, back in the day, your correspondent was motivated to read, without remembering why now, about a fellow from an Ohio backwater who had done well and wanted to tell the world about it.

J.D. Vance had a story, and told it well enough. He had gone from a dysfunctional lower class fam to Yale Law and the future was bright enough.

Now, he has booted it almost all the way home, or maybe he has been booted there. He certainly seems more aware than Mike Pence, the acceptable face of Trump circa 2016, and a much better choice than the man who someone used to call Little Marco back then.

Anyway, in all probability, apropos of nothing, below is the review:

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis

If you’ve been looking for a book about a dysfunctional family and a hellish childhood, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a must read.  It is also a book about a man’s triumph, yet elegy is certainly the right word.

The author, J.D. Vance comes from a tribe of people known as Scots-Irish.  They were the original white settlers of the region known as Appalachia.  Stereotyped as backward and inbred, Hillbilly Elegy is not the book to break that image.

The picture he paints is not pretty.  There is the quaint practice known as “Mountain Dew mouth.”  It is the result of ingesting sugary soft drinks leading to rotted and misshapen teeth.  The author’s mom, not someone to miss the line of least resistance, put Pepsi in his baby bottle.  Vigilant grandparents put a stop to it in his case.  This is not the only bad example.

Still, there is much to like in the culture.  Vance learns about loyalty and honor from his beloved “Mamaw.”  That’s Grandma to the rest of us.  If you insult someone’s maternal ancestry or mistreat their sisters, expect fast and brutal retribution.

That same loyalty would lead to vehement denial when ABC News exposed the Mountain Dew Mouth phenomenon. 

It is rare that a people reflect on the historic and cultural influences that make them who and what they are.  Here in Western Central Massachusetts, can we define ourselves and the influences that shape us?  In all probability, almost none of us would even try.

In the author’s milieu, the same statistic is probably as valid.  So how did he come to write the book?

Two factors standout.  The clichéd term, “sharpest tool in the shed” is overused, but if it applies to anyone, it’s Vance.

The other fortunate aspect of his life is that essential support of others came to him when he needed it.  It may have not happened with perfect timing, nor was it planned, but it did arrive including in the form of a Marine Corps enlistment.

Then again, if you are a kid from a disastrous social and economic environment and you make it to Yale Law School and beyond, it is probably destiny that you will ask, “why me?”

Mom went through many short-term relationships, dragging offspring with her.  Most of the men were not horrible, but neither did they contribute a surplus of stability.

J.D. hated it when adults asked if he had any brothers and sisters.  When someone writes they have “about a dozen stepsiblings” from various relationships, you can understand they might not find the question fun.

His last name would change with his mom’s latest husband.  That Vance survived at all, let alone got to the point where he could write his book, is impressive

J.D. begins to see the stark contrast between his culture and a different America as a child.  His mom had gone off the deep end and had perpetrated a fair amount of domestic violence on her son and ended up in court for it.  The author had to testify and as hers was not the only case in court, he noticed two classes.

In court, his people were ill dressed and the lawyers, judge and social workers had suits and talked with “TV accents” as opposed to his drawl.  As he put it, “The people who ran the courthouse were different from us.  The people subjected to it were not.”

The author does not spare TV accent folk.  The overclass are filled with solutions to save the poor and are as clueless as the underclass.  A case in point is payday loans.  Among the great washed, the practice is excoriated as another oppression of the plebeians.

It is true, many fall victim to its excesses due to an inability to budget.  Vance would use the loans to his advantage.  Before he left Ohio, the state senate was debating a bill to curb payday lending practices.  The solons were not of his class and would never get it.  The author tells of his own credit problems that limited his options.  There was a mismatch between payday and due date on some bills.  By taking out a three-day loan, he could say, avoid a $50.00 late fee on the rent for a small interest charge.  There is no economist worth his salt who would have argument with Vance’s wisdom in the event.  As J.D. put it, “Powerful people sometimes do things to help people like me without really understanding people like me.”

His analysis of lower-class problems seems cogent and if he were made the policy “czar” he might do some good.  That will not happen.  Legislatures, committees and bureaucracy will have their way and prove there is no solution.

Eventually, the author goes to and graduates from Yale Law.  His passage through finds him now in a class he should never have been part of.  At Yale, more people were there for him, including the woman who would become his wife.  It is implausible, even though it is all true.

No matter how far he has gone, the book is a fond remembrance of his home and people, though it must have been hard to write.  For all of that gritty world, Hillbilly Elegy is a love story, warts and all.

That’s the J.D. story. what now?

As things are shaping up now, he is probably on board with the Trump policy assuming electoral victory. That probably includes coming to peace in Ukraine, opposing China and supporting Israel. Domestically, boilerplate free-marketism.

It may seem a contradiction in terms, but if a second Trump admin can be quieter than the first, 2028 could be a good year fo the man from Buckeyeland.

Up on Long Hill, we are placing no bets.