Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hillbillies Need No Elegy

bittersoutherner.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 116 posts

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#51

Post by gffyfnhdv »

“Morgantown, West Virginia [...] We were in the heart of Appalachia“

BS! Morgantown is definitely not the heart of Appalachia:

- It’s only 9 mi into WV!

- has population that doubles during the school semester

- has three or four federal agencies (FBI, NETL, NIOSH)

- showered with federal and state largess (thank you senator Byrd)

- has traffic jams worthy of a city with 10x it’s population

- has one of my favorite restaurants in the US

- has a significant private sector economy (Mylan, for one)

-if I recall, technically it didn’t have a recession in ‘08.

I’ve lived in Morgantown for a while. And while I certainly caught a glimpse of Appalachia, it certainly isn’t the heart. Maybe it’s about as redneck as the president of WVU dares to venture.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#52

Post by moorhosj »

mieseratte wrote: post #40
jessaustin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Vance is more "wrong" than his detractors are. He's the one who sees all poor people, and all poor people alike.

Wrong in what regard? I found nothing wrong with Vance’s book. Having a similar family background to Vance, I think he has a great outlook on the matter.

I think his biggest miss was failing to connect the region to the rest of the country. He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection. It could have made the story of the region more approachable to more people. It seemed so obvious to me how the areas are linked by economic circumstances, environmental degradation, poor education levels, distinct culture and problems with drug addiction.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#53

Post by golemotron »

The best way to understand what makes Appalachia what it is culturally, is to read _Albion's Seed_. The people who ended up there came from parts of Britain that required extreme self-sufficiency and had no real functional government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed

https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-se...

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#54

Post by barry-cotter »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #41
csa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New Yorker is a classic example of higher level English that is far above the level of “random comments on the internet”. The typical New Yorker article is CEFRL C2 [1] or ILR 3/3+ [2]. Most internet comments are at CEFRL A2 or so, with some (often faulty) more thoughtful responses at B1 or B2. Said another way, your median high schooler can read and understand a typical internet comment, but the median high scho…

The CEFR is intended to measure the proficiency of foreign language learners and not measure the sophistication of native language speakers. Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily. The standard ways to measure text complexity in English for native speakers are the Flesch-Kincaid readability and grade level tests. These depend on the length of words and on the nu…

> Everyone that speaks English as a first language would pass a C2 level examination very easily.

This is almost exactly equivalent to saying that an average ten year old can read the New Yorker. A ten year old already has their native language down, the rules of grammar and syntax, the accent, the vocabulary, the capacity to discriminate between words with the same denotation but different connotations. There are ten year olds who can profitably read the New Yorker but very few. At least 10% of the adult population will have an absolute score on an IQ test similar to the average ten year old’s.

There are undoubtedly New Yorker articles that a ten year old could completely understand with sufficient exegesis but it’s the US’ premier literary journal and has been for decades. If they haven’t published articles with the depth and complexity of a Supreme Court judgment on some level I will be greatly surprised.

Most people are literally incapable of passing a law degree just as they are of learning calculus. You can write formal logic in English prose instead of using the symbols. The English prose version will be no more comprehensible to an average native English speaker than the one with mathematical symbols.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#55

Post by nabla9 »

mordymoop wrote: post #49
nabla9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will sometimes cause less proficient readers to take away substantial misunderstandings about the contents of the article. The most prolific example of the reading level mismatches causing trouble is Paul Krugman's August 2002 column: Dubya's Double Dip? https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di... ? The famous sentence from the article: > To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snap…

Maybe Krugman’s writing is just actually very unclear. “Difficult” writing is to be avoided, not praised.

One of the marks of a good writer is how they uncomplicate the writing without watering it down. Krugman is really good writer in that regard. His writing skill was probably a big reason why he became regular columnist in NYT.

That kind of writing can still be inaccessible to lower reading comprehension levels. If you are uncertain of his writing skills, I don't know what to say.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#56

Post by barry-cotter »

mordymoop wrote: post #49
nabla9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will sometimes cause less proficient readers to take away substantial misunderstandings about the contents of the article. The most prolific example of the reading level mismatches causing trouble is Paul Krugman's August 2002 column: Dubya's Double Dip? https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-di... ? The famous sentence from the article: > To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snap…

Maybe Krugman’s writing is just actually very unclear. “Difficult” writing is to be avoided, not praised.

This is only true if you aim to reach as wide an audience as possible. If you are writing for a specialist audience making the reader work to connect the dots themselves has an extremely long history.

https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoter...

> This article is a republication, by permission, of a chapter of the author’s book Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (University of Chicago Press, 2014). The piece provides a beginner’s guide to techniques and devices used in esoteric writing. Among the techniques and devices described are the following: dissembling the true message (sometimes by presenting it as from a disputant, beggar, or buffoon, sometimes by arguing against it in ways that enhance awareness of its truth); dissembling the true target (exoterically speaking of Y when the real target is some other thing Z); developing a compelling argument and then taking it back; textual incongruity (for example, departing from a declared plan); conspicuous inconsistency or self-contradiction; the commission of errors that the author’s demonstrated competence and mastery would not allow (for example, altering a quotation in a significant way); dispersal (dispersing argumentation for a tacit viewpoint throughout the text); expressing very striking or intense thoughts in an oblique or ancillary fashion, such as in a meandering digression or in the notes; meaningful silence or conspicuous omission (as when the text creates expectations of coming to something that then remains unaddressed or unstated); alluding subtly to the writings or opinions of a significant figure; and placing thoughts of particular significance in middle of the text or in the exact center of a list or sequence.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#57

Post by DanielBMarkham »

gerikson wrote: post #48
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #47

This is important, not because of Appalachia but because of art itself. As a history buff, I have a difficult time watching many "based on a true story" movies or movies claiming to represent some important person or event in history. It's for the same reason: people consume information through narrative, and narrative forces reality into predefined tracks. This means that any art form claiming to represent a people,…

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I've never visited Appalachia, and I'm afraid my views are filtered through popular media. But even if a TV show like "Justified" (I've seen the first 3 seasons) bends to narrative constraints, I felt it took its setting and the people living there seriously. I'm sure I'm missing a lot though. Another piece of media that I felt was a strong statement about Appalachia is Ever South…

Thanks. It's an interesting place.

I think the saddest thing about Appalachia is the fact that much of the really interesting parts are disappearing. Everything in the country, including Appalachia, is WalMart-i-fied. It's all strip malls and chain stores. Everybody listens to the same music, surfs the same sites, and buys the same swag. As a species we are homogenizing everything.

I have fond memories of walking into a country store in Grundy, Virginia where I bought a coke. The guy behind the counter spoke in a language I couldn't understand at first. Then I realized it was English. I have another fond memory of walking into a startup where they were on their way to making billions. These memories happened only several dozen miles from each other. There's a lot of cool stuff going on here. I can guarantee that whatever media you've consumed about it misled you in many ways.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#58

Post by pmyteh »

fiblye wrote: post #45
C1sc0cat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From all the US satirical cartoons I have seem they seem rather crude and tame compared to the UK and still rely rather old tropes that always seem to require labelling "oh look its the cat with $ signs for eyes and labelled "wall street" whereas in the UK a cartoon might make a reference to a cartoon from 50-60-70 years ago and you would be expected to understand the reference with out labelling

Do you have examples of these sorts of cartoons? I've never seen one so I can't imagine what they're like.

So here's an example of a Steve Bell editorial cartoon. He's a leftwinger, in the fairly angry and vicious tradition of British satire, but this is a fairly restrained one:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jun/0...

It's a comment on the pageantry around the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and directly refers to a famous cartoon from WW2, which was published on VE Day by the (also socialist) cartoonist Philip Zec:

http://www.cartooncounty.com/serendipity2/uploads/Zec2site.J...

The whole genre isn't self-referential, but it's not unusual for leader cartoons to refer to other cartoons, famous paintings, television, or other things.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#59

Post by throw0101a »

bitexploder wrote: post #38
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #2

These sorts of elaborate rebuttals, like the article or the art project it references, aren't that different from the works of outsiders that they seek to prove wrong. It seemingly is the case that Appalachia attracts a kind of journalist-meets-artist who finds plenty of material for a culture-tinged exposé of somewhat-thoughtful poverty and hardship porn, but a curated photoset of Sides of Appalachia You May Not Kno…

I grew up in the Deep South, a related cousin to Appalachia. I spent more than 30 years in the south. I have spent a lot of time in Appalachia, hiking, meeting locals. It isn’t a stretch to say “I get it”. I read Hillbily Elegy. This piece does little to change my mind about my own view point. There are parts of the culture that are worthwhile and valuable (to me) and parts I can leave quite easily. For me it is the…

> Poverty is what it is and it does what it does to people. You either get out of it or it eats you.

Perhaps the people with the compulsion to leave have already done so? Kind of what is being call "The Big Sort", where (politically) like-minded people seem to be congregating to the same neighborhoods:

* https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/10/the-big-sort-revisite...

* https://www.economist.com/united-states/2008/06/19/the-big-s...

Something similar happening to the ambition-minded?

(Someone once remarked / joked that perhaps America is so stereotypically optimistic is perhaps all the people who left the Old Country for the New World were probably the more adventurous, go-go types, and those that stayed behind were more chill.)

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#60

Post by thfuran »

barry-cotter wrote: post #56
mordymoop wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Krugman’s writing is just actually very unclear. “Difficult” writing is to be avoided, not praised.

This is only true if you aim to reach as wide an audience as possible. If you are writing for a specialist audience making the reader work to connect the dots themselves has an extremely long history. https://econjwatch.org/articles/a-beginner-s-guide-to-esoter... > This article is a republication, by permission, of a chapter of the author’s book Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Uni…

>has an extremely long history.

That's really not a meaningful argument as to its merit. In fact, it's so famously not a meaningful argument that it has its own fancy name: argumentum ad antiquitatem.

Post reply on HN