Lark’s review of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis > Likes and Comments
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Ouch! Awesome review!
Drove me crazy that he wrote half anecdotally and half like a thesis with broad semi-statistical sounding statements but NO references. It’s another flavor of pseudo-intellectualism with the same result of pushing an agenda of opinion despite a lack of evidence.
Thank you for this review! There are so many things wrong with this book, I too, didn't know where to start from. But yeah, the author being a condescending bonehead is a good start.
It is also annoying that when it gets translated in Greek, for example, it is approached with a folklore-ish attitude for that far outlandish part of the US and gets rave reviews, and all political and ideological problems of the book get brushed away.
Amy wrote: "Drove me crazy that he wrote half anecdotally and half like a thesis with broad semi-statistical sounding statements but NO references. It’s another flavor of pseudo-intellectualism with the same r..."
Exactly! Kind of like TIGER MOM...and the author of that book blurbed this one
Karmologyclinic wrote: "But yeah, the author being a condescending bonehead is a good start. ..."
Rumor has it that the author is moving to Ohio to run for political office :-( I heard at my lovely in-real-life book club last night where we had a rousing wonderful discussion and still were friends at the end
So hard to write a book in which people try to burn each other to death, but reader is bored to tears anyway.
I'm also rather speechless after reading this, Lark: It's written by a guy who seems to see himself as the hero but comes across as terribly heartless and short-sighted.
Meike wrote: "I'm also rather speechless after reading this, Lark: It's written by a guy who seems to see himself as the hero but comes across as terribly heartless and short-sighted."
Yes, heartless and shortsighted. And I'm really at a loss about how performative cruelty has become a surefire way to get famous enough to run for elected office.
Reading book reviews is almost as entertaining as reading books, honestly.
It's hard to put into words how disgusted I was by this book and by the idea of its author running for public office. And so I turn to comic relief, which, as Aristophanes knew, can do the job at least as well as righteous anger.
He really is a horse's ass. I might have known his book was full of his ignorance and racism just by a couple of people I've known (and disliked) who praised the book.
Thank you for this, I REALLY don’t need read this.
Julie wrote: "Thank you for this, I REALLY don’t need read this."
He's gotten so much worse since he wrote it. Poor Ohio!
now having read it, i think its absurd that anyone considers this a political "analysis". All he ever really says is that governance cant help. All the while clearly having been helped by it.
Lea wrote: "now having read it, i think its absurd that anyone considers this a political "analysis".
Yes. And yet, now this bonehead is the republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. A little rhetoric is a dangerous thing.
You had me at "The first problem I had with this book is the author is a bonehead." Yep!!
My original suspicion that Vance was always a garbage person just gets stronger by the day.
Serdar wrote: "My original suspicion that Vance was always a garbage person just gets stronger by the day."
I've never known so much about senate races in other states as I do now. Tim Ryan (the Democrat running against Vance) sounds like a regular Republican but maybe that's what he has to do to win in OH. I'm rooting for him from out here in California.
Thank you for this. As a public benefits attorney who works these cases every day, it infuriates me when people spread the misinformation that people regularly abuse public benefits and live a lavish lifestyle via SNAP or TANF payments. Every single state has work requirements for able-bodied adults without very young children and regularly evaluates changes in eligibility for every single household and member receiving payments. This man proudly perpetuating the falsehood that benefits fraud is common tells me everything I need to know about his politics. He has no idea what he's talking about, and worse, doesn't care if the narrative he's selling is patently false.
I see you're from NV...good luck to you in the coming hours...
What these comments on a review of Hillbilly Elegy seem to prove is that there is gross intolerance on both sides of the current political spectrum. I would never have voted for Vance, nor have found his embrace of Trump at all palatable but the book itself is quite another matter. Most capable readers ought to be able to judge Vance's autobiographical book, which I found interesting, or even a novel by Ayn Rand, without the distraction of their political bias interfering with their judgement on the book itself.
I wrote the review long before Vance was a politician, and I wasn't really thinking about his current or past politics at all. I was thinking about what he wrote in his book, and about his plain old odious inhumanity, and about the way he writes so ungenerously and vindictively and judgmentally about his fellow human beings. But some of my dearest friends saw something different in this book and loved it.
It's been more than a few years since I read Vance's novel & did a review of the book but I felt at the time that the author attempted to present a balanced tale, admitting that his grandmother would not have stayed alive but for Medicare and that many of his friends seemed to lack the ability to move or to change their lives. However, in the last decade, West Virginia has lost more of its population than any other state & so at least some of the hillbillies have begun to look elsewhere for their future. That said, Vance's addiction to "Trumpism" can't be forgiven.
Lark wrote: "I wrote the review long before Vance was a politician, and I wasn't really thinking about his current or past politics at all. I was thinking about what he wrote in his book, and about his plain ol..."
I remember when the book was new, someone I had worked with and never liked much was talking about how great it was. The last time we spoke, he told me I was experiencing "cognitive dissonance" because I refused to see there was no difference between HRC and Trump.
Now, I realize his attraction for the book was more about looking for excuses for white people while ignoring the many obstacles POC face daily.
There is a considerable variety of cognitive dissonance, some of it to be found at Goodreads. I am the farthest thing from a Trump supporter but in his book, Vance quite readily condemned poor white folks who refused to move from places that offered no potential for the future. Beyond that, he admitted that his grandmother, Vance's sole source of support at an important point in his life, would not have survived without medicare & other forms of welfare, policies that Vance otherwise could not support.
We don't endorse the behavior or lifestyle of Richard Wagner, Picasso & many other artists, musicians & writers but to exclude their art because of this would be to put oneself at a cultural disadvantage. I would never have voted for Mr. Vance & disagree with his embrace of Trump but Hillbilly Elegy stands as an interesting, fairly well-written coming-of-age tale.
Quo wrote: "There is a considerable variety of cognitive dissonance, some of it to be found at Goodreads. I am the farthest thing from a Trump supporter but in his book, Vance quite readily condemned poor whit..."
I'm going to have "Cognitive Dissonance" put on my tombstone (not that I'm in any rush) just for you.
Equating Vance with Richard Wagner and Picasso is more than a stretch.
Guy: You've missed the point, which is that, in my view, it is the job of the reader (or viewer or listener) to attempt an objective appraisal in spite of any potentially distracting background information on the creator of that work. Thus, just as an example, if one read's Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, the review ought to be of Ayn Rand's novel, not her politics, her love-life, her background in Russia before she emigrated to America & changed her name, etc.
Yes, the poor are poor because they are lazy and undisciplined. Any word to describe women that get welfare and have more kids out of wedlock to increase their welfare checks while not taking good care of them would become derogatory no matter how nice it begins.
He didn’t except himself from the criticism of his culture. He gave examples of when he got violent or wanted to. And his grandma was badass, I’m a lot like her. Sometimes violence is justified and sometimes a man needs to be caught on fire to teach him a lesson. And he did learn his lesson!
Ugh! I can't believe that so many people are loving this book. If he had just stuck with the memoir without all the generalizations, I would have rated it much higher. As I suspected, many of the people of Appalachia are horrified. He kept talking throughout the book like he spoke for everyone. "Poor people don't wear pajamas. " Just because he didn't, doesn't mean that's the case for everyone. And pushing the payday loans! Argh!
Lark Thanks for your review. I’m trying, unsuccessfully to remain positive…..
Lark wrote:
"Rumor has it that the author is moving to Ohio to run for political office :-( I heard at my lovel..."
And look where we are now, so many years later.
I'm also trying to stay positive, Royce!
I spent the day making homemade soy milk, sort of a homesteading, back-to-basics impulse, I guess, just in case the economy collapses.
Funny Lark. I'm making all sorts of decisions based on the thinking that chaos is descending. Getting my cataract surgery out of the way...I may need good eyesight to cope with what's coming down!
Well you need to keep reading to survive the apocalypse so smart to get the eyes in top condition!!!
P.S. For the record, I always despised the Three Stooges.
Great review.
I loved the use of the wonderful technical term “bonehead”.😁
Reading this today, sickened - your “three stooges” metaphor has come to a sort of nightmare reality, with the GOP two stooges convention. I’m thinking of you and your daughter, others I know in the community, damn- just everyone, Gods and Goddeses help us all.
(Pls let me know if you’d like this comment removed, apologies, I was upset -)
of course not, Gila--we're in a ludicrous and scary place.
Lisa wrote: "P.S. For the record, I always despised the Three Stooges."
yeah, me, too, Lisa. I never understood why people thought it was funny to inflict pain, even fake pain.
Ana wrote: "Great review.
I loved the use of the wonderful technical term “bonehead”.😁"
It's strange to remember when I read this in 2018, I was thinking gosh, this guy is a bonehead...and now, here we are.
How strange and wonderful that today for some reason people are searching out the 1-star reviews for this bonehead-book on goodreads, and you are commenting here,...it makes me feel like 'community' is real, and that we the people will find one another in the real world, too, and not just on goodreads, and even if it looks a little bleak just now we will find a way to slay the dragon! ...
Yes - we have to find our people so we can have some hope.
Thanks for the much-needed laugh! Go Blue. ;-)
Should I read this book? After reading your review I feel like it would be a total waste of my time to read this book. Loved your review! :-)
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Dec 03, 2018 06:05PM
Ouch! Awesome review!
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Drove me crazy that he wrote half anecdotally and half like a thesis with broad semi-statistical sounding statements but NO references. It’s another flavor of pseudo-intellectualism with the same result of pushing an agenda of opinion despite a lack of evidence.
Thank you for this review! There are so many things wrong with this book, I too, didn't know where to start from. But yeah, the author being a condescending bonehead is a good start. It is also annoying that when it gets translated in Greek, for example, it is approached with a folklore-ish attitude for that far outlandish part of the US and gets rave reviews, and all political and ideological problems of the book get brushed away.
Amy wrote: "Drove me crazy that he wrote half anecdotally and half like a thesis with broad semi-statistical sounding statements but NO references. It’s another flavor of pseudo-intellectualism with the same r..."Exactly! Kind of like TIGER MOM...and the author of that book blurbed this one
Karmologyclinic wrote: "But yeah, the author being a condescending bonehead is a good start. ..."Rumor has it that the author is moving to Ohio to run for political office :-( I heard at my lovely in-real-life book club last night where we had a rousing wonderful discussion and still were friends at the end
So hard to write a book in which people try to burn each other to death, but reader is bored to tears anyway.
I'm also rather speechless after reading this, Lark: It's written by a guy who seems to see himself as the hero but comes across as terribly heartless and short-sighted.
Meike wrote: "I'm also rather speechless after reading this, Lark: It's written by a guy who seems to see himself as the hero but comes across as terribly heartless and short-sighted."Yes, heartless and shortsighted. And I'm really at a loss about how performative cruelty has become a surefire way to get famous enough to run for elected office.
Reading book reviews is almost as entertaining as reading books, honestly.
It's hard to put into words how disgusted I was by this book and by the idea of its author running for public office. And so I turn to comic relief, which, as Aristophanes knew, can do the job at least as well as righteous anger.
He really is a horse's ass. I might have known his book was full of his ignorance and racism just by a couple of people I've known (and disliked) who praised the book.
Thank you for this, I REALLY don’t need read this.
Julie wrote: "Thank you for this, I REALLY don’t need read this."He's gotten so much worse since he wrote it. Poor Ohio!
now having read it, i think its absurd that anyone considers this a political "analysis". All he ever really says is that governance cant help. All the while clearly having been helped by it.
Lea wrote: "now having read it, i think its absurd that anyone considers this a political "analysis". Yes. And yet, now this bonehead is the republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. A little rhetoric is a dangerous thing.
You had me at "The first problem I had with this book is the author is a bonehead." Yep!!
My original suspicion that Vance was always a garbage person just gets stronger by the day.
Serdar wrote: "My original suspicion that Vance was always a garbage person just gets stronger by the day."I've never known so much about senate races in other states as I do now. Tim Ryan (the Democrat running against Vance) sounds like a regular Republican but maybe that's what he has to do to win in OH. I'm rooting for him from out here in California.
Thank you for this. As a public benefits attorney who works these cases every day, it infuriates me when people spread the misinformation that people regularly abuse public benefits and live a lavish lifestyle via SNAP or TANF payments. Every single state has work requirements for able-bodied adults without very young children and regularly evaluates changes in eligibility for every single household and member receiving payments. This man proudly perpetuating the falsehood that benefits fraud is common tells me everything I need to know about his politics. He has no idea what he's talking about, and worse, doesn't care if the narrative he's selling is patently false.
I see you're from NV...good luck to you in the coming hours...
What these comments on a review of Hillbilly Elegy seem to prove is that there is gross intolerance on both sides of the current political spectrum. I would never have voted for Vance, nor have found his embrace of Trump at all palatable but the book itself is quite another matter. Most capable readers ought to be able to judge Vance's autobiographical book, which I found interesting, or even a novel by Ayn Rand, without the distraction of their political bias interfering with their judgement on the book itself.
I wrote the review long before Vance was a politician, and I wasn't really thinking about his current or past politics at all. I was thinking about what he wrote in his book, and about his plain old odious inhumanity, and about the way he writes so ungenerously and vindictively and judgmentally about his fellow human beings. But some of my dearest friends saw something different in this book and loved it.
It's been more than a few years since I read Vance's novel & did a review of the book but I felt at the time that the author attempted to present a balanced tale, admitting that his grandmother would not have stayed alive but for Medicare and that many of his friends seemed to lack the ability to move or to change their lives. However, in the last decade, West Virginia has lost more of its population than any other state & so at least some of the hillbillies have begun to look elsewhere for their future. That said, Vance's addiction to "Trumpism" can't be forgiven.
Lark wrote: "I wrote the review long before Vance was a politician, and I wasn't really thinking about his current or past politics at all. I was thinking about what he wrote in his book, and about his plain ol..."I remember when the book was new, someone I had worked with and never liked much was talking about how great it was. The last time we spoke, he told me I was experiencing "cognitive dissonance" because I refused to see there was no difference between HRC and Trump.
Now, I realize his attraction for the book was more about looking for excuses for white people while ignoring the many obstacles POC face daily.
There is a considerable variety of cognitive dissonance, some of it to be found at Goodreads. I am the farthest thing from a Trump supporter but in his book, Vance quite readily condemned poor white folks who refused to move from places that offered no potential for the future. Beyond that, he admitted that his grandmother, Vance's sole source of support at an important point in his life, would not have survived without medicare & other forms of welfare, policies that Vance otherwise could not support.We don't endorse the behavior or lifestyle of Richard Wagner, Picasso & many other artists, musicians & writers but to exclude their art because of this would be to put oneself at a cultural disadvantage. I would never have voted for Mr. Vance & disagree with his embrace of Trump but Hillbilly Elegy stands as an interesting, fairly well-written coming-of-age tale.
Quo wrote: "There is a considerable variety of cognitive dissonance, some of it to be found at Goodreads. I am the farthest thing from a Trump supporter but in his book, Vance quite readily condemned poor whit..."I'm going to have "Cognitive Dissonance" put on my tombstone (not that I'm in any rush) just for you.
Equating Vance with Richard Wagner and Picasso is more than a stretch.
Guy: You've missed the point, which is that, in my view, it is the job of the reader (or viewer or listener) to attempt an objective appraisal in spite of any potentially distracting background information on the creator of that work. Thus, just as an example, if one read's Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, the review ought to be of Ayn Rand's novel, not her politics, her love-life, her background in Russia before she emigrated to America & changed her name, etc.
Yes, the poor are poor because they are lazy and undisciplined. Any word to describe women that get welfare and have more kids out of wedlock to increase their welfare checks while not taking good care of them would become derogatory no matter how nice it begins. He didn’t except himself from the criticism of his culture. He gave examples of when he got violent or wanted to. And his grandma was badass, I’m a lot like her. Sometimes violence is justified and sometimes a man needs to be caught on fire to teach him a lesson. And he did learn his lesson!
Ugh! I can't believe that so many people are loving this book. If he had just stuck with the memoir without all the generalizations, I would have rated it much higher. As I suspected, many of the people of Appalachia are horrified. He kept talking throughout the book like he spoke for everyone. "Poor people don't wear pajamas. " Just because he didn't, doesn't mean that's the case for everyone. And pushing the payday loans! Argh!
Lark Thanks for your review. I’m trying, unsuccessfully to remain positive…..
Lark wrote: "Rumor has it that the author is moving to Ohio to run for political office :-( I heard at my lovel..."
And look where we are now, so many years later.
I'm also trying to stay positive, Royce! I spent the day making homemade soy milk, sort of a homesteading, back-to-basics impulse, I guess, just in case the economy collapses.
Funny Lark. I'm making all sorts of decisions based on the thinking that chaos is descending. Getting my cataract surgery out of the way...I may need good eyesight to cope with what's coming down!
Well you need to keep reading to survive the apocalypse so smart to get the eyes in top condition!!!
P.S. For the record, I always despised the Three Stooges.
Great review. I loved the use of the wonderful technical term “bonehead”.😁
Reading this today, sickened - your “three stooges” metaphor has come to a sort of nightmare reality, with the GOP two stooges convention. I’m thinking of you and your daughter, others I know in the community, damn- just everyone, Gods and Goddeses help us all.
(Pls let me know if you’d like this comment removed, apologies, I was upset -)
of course not, Gila--we're in a ludicrous and scary place.
Lisa wrote: "P.S. For the record, I always despised the Three Stooges."yeah, me, too, Lisa. I never understood why people thought it was funny to inflict pain, even fake pain.
Ana wrote: "Great review. I loved the use of the wonderful technical term “bonehead”.😁"
It's strange to remember when I read this in 2018, I was thinking gosh, this guy is a bonehead...and now, here we are.
How strange and wonderful that today for some reason people are searching out the 1-star reviews for this bonehead-book on goodreads, and you are commenting here,...it makes me feel like 'community' is real, and that we the people will find one another in the real world, too, and not just on goodreads, and even if it looks a little bleak just now we will find a way to slay the dragon! ...
Yes - we have to find our people so we can have some hope.
Thanks for the much-needed laugh! Go Blue. ;-)
Should I read this book? After reading your review I feel like it would be a total waste of my time to read this book. Loved your review! :-)
