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Comment by gt_ | Hacker News Reader

That book is so full of nonsense. It’s a string of desperate theories that strive to explain present-day tensions in such a way that ignores the context of present-day. The milieus of turbo consumerism and associated economic strife are in conflict with certain less-compatible self-identities, and not others. This underwrites everything the book aims to address with far more cohesion (as is often the case with successful realism) and is an infinitely more fascinating theme at that (also often the case with successful realism). It’s too bad the author was so desperate to avoid it. For whatever reason, the author goes digging where’s simply nothing to dig. The result is boring, hardheaded exoticism.

I know he claims the subjects are his own family, but I’m not buying it. The subjects are his agenda.

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I grew up in the same part of the country around the same time as the author. While I agree not everything in the book is a fully realistic depiction, it is honestly highly accurate in many regards. It goes in depth with the type of inconsistent, moralistic and tribal decision making and thought process in Appalachia in a more detailed and accurate way than I’ve seen in almost any other account.

I’d suggest to also read the book Dreamland about the opioid and prescription drug epidemic in Appalachia.

Between base knowledge of how tribal morals work there, how skills gap unemployment had hit that area, and how the addiction crisis has hit them, it helps dramatically to understand why it creates a conservative-leaning voting bloc that feels scared of modern progressive politics and would generally vote modern Republican despite having deep historical roots in voting Democrat as a worker solidarity signal.

wow. this is so po-mo it's beyond criticism, into conspiracy theory.

are you literally saying he "made it up" or are you projecting something else here?

Steve Case bankrolled the fictional accounts in Hillbilly Elegy so that he would have a sympathetic figure head for his Rise of the Rest movement. Is J. D. Vance even his real name?!!

Haha, I guess this is a fair response, but you're misinterpreting my point. I'll explain.

I don't think he "made it up", and I don't want to accuse him of blaming somebody, but I don't know how else to put it. In so many words, he basically says that, at the end of the day, the culture he's writing about is riddled with it's own shortcomings and needs to be brought to an end. Whether he alludes to historical economic strife or not (he does some), his ultimate assessment is that it's too late to do anything but save these poor souls. He communicates this idea with a lot of contention, because otherwise he would have been dismissed much sooner. A lot of the issues he writes about are legitimate, but he takes a mistaken turn towards accusing the traditions and personalities of his family.

It's not a 2-dimensional issue. Those traditions and parsonalities exist, but they are far more principled than the neoliberal traditions he promotes. And for whatever truth there is to his historical explanations, there is loads more that he avoids. His insistence on attributing present-day tensions to something like "outdatedness" is extremely ignorant.

The word for this turn that he takes is just hopelessly congruent with neoliberalism, and, unfortunately, it does serve his agenda quite well. He's got a partnership with a VC who aims to capitalize on techish business deals in the rust belt. Presumably, the VC aims to play savior and ultimately rip a lot of people off.

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