I am a big proponent of knowing what you criticize, and boy do I criticize JD Vance. Couch-fucking aside (no he didn’t really fuck a couch, yes it’s hilarious how believable it is that he sank hog into a sofa) he’s a creepy fascist with no morals apart from what gets him further up the ladder. It’s a little scary to criticize someone like that, especially on the internet when he’s so cozy with a handful of tech mogul creeps, but the ability to criticize someone like that is the bedrock of free democracy, so here we go.
First of all, Hillbilly Elegy is mostly fine. Without the political moment of Trumpism and the liberal desire to understand the world, it wouldn’t have been much of anything. It’s a pretty typical memoir, unique only in the target demographic it purports to represent. It’s also woefully obstinate in the things it ignores. It talks about a crisis of culture and will (which as I write this, given Vance’s political turn, I shudder and think of Triumph of the Will) but ignores details like the hollowing out of high school diploma-level jobs in the wake of the ’08 financial crisis.
Second, while I 100% believe Vance as he describes the horrors of his home life, I call absolute bullshit on some of his claims. There is no way his mamaw asked 8 year old JD if he wanted to suck dick when he worried he was gay, and if she did, that’s just a messed up story down to his worrying about this due to hellfire preaching. I doubt some hillbilly took a circular saw to another over a yo mama joke and they both laughed it off as a matter of honor. And there is simply no way JD Vance, after having made it through Yale Law, had never experienced sparkling water before, to the point he spat it out in horror. That is just some aw shucks ho hum bumpkinism straight out of Ma and Pa Kettle.
I bought this with a stale Audible credit and had to listen through Vance’s voice for six heinous hours. Don’t be like me, swipe left.