‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Gets a Blockbuster Sequel
“I am not a senator, a governor or a former cabinet secretary,” J.D. Vance wrote on the first page of “Hillbilly Elegy,” by way of establishing his regular-guy bona fides. That was all true in 2016, when Vance was a former Marine and Yale Law School graduate with “a nice job, a happy marriage, a comfortable home and two lively dogs.” His memoir reads a little differently now.
This is partly because Vance is, in fact, a senator, and also, as of Monday, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential candidate. Much has been made of his political evolution over the past eight years, from never-Trump conservative to MAGA loyalist, from analyzing right-wing populism to embodying it. While Vance’s critics view this as brazen opportunism, he has explained his ideological shifts (including in a recent interview with Ross Douthat of The New York Times) as a result of a twofold intellectual awakening: It turned out that Donald Trump wasn’t as bad as Vance had thought, and that American liberals were much worse.
This turnabout is notable because part of the legend of “Hillbilly Elegy” is that liberals were its intended audience and biggest fans. Published by a major trade house, respectfully (if at times skeptically) reviewed and widely discussed, it was both a message to the establishment and an application for membership.
The book tells the story of two migrations. One is the large-scale movement of poor whites, among them the author’s maternal grandparents, from rural Appalachia to the cities and towns of the Rust Belt. The other is Vance’s path from one of those places — Middletown, Ohio — to the geographic and demographic precincts of the ruling class: New Haven; Silicon Valley; Washington, D.C.
To the extent that “Hillbilly Elegy” is a bootstrap narrative — the chronicle of a young person’s rise in the face of adversity — it can be read as a vindication of the status quo. An imaginary reader, comfortably ensconced in the seat of relative privilege, will be gratified to learn that this ambitious Ohioan has pulled up a neighboring chair, and fascinated by the story of how he got there. The tale is painful but also inspiring. Vance’s childhood was shadowed by his mother’s struggle with opioid addiction, but he was saved by his loving grandparents, in particular by his salty, tenacious grandmother, Mamaw, whose portrait is the book’s most memorable literary achievement.
Mamaw, the Marine Corps and Ohio State lifted young J.D. out of Middletown and helped give him the confidence and the skills to write “Hillbilly Elegy.” (Yale did its part to supply him with connections, most consequentially his mentor and contracts professor Amy Chua, author of “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” among other books.)
