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Hillbillies Need No Elegy
71–80 of 116 posts
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> life there is pretty normal for rural America I've lived in Appalachia my entire life (West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New York). Although I can't generalize about the people of either the Midwest or Appalachia, there are some big differences between rural Appalachia and some other rural places. 1) Landscape. Due to the difficulty of building roads, some Appalachian places (closer to WV and KY) were extre…
> The stereotypes of the regions just aren't the same, and they do affect people applying for jobs. I've been around motorsports most of my life and I used to see this all the time at racetracks in America. Even in NASCAR country, lots of people assume the "good ol' boy" accent means a person is just a shade-tree mechanic even if they're the most well-educated person in the garage.
Heh, funnily enough, a few years ago I was at a rodeo with some friends, and this was in rural Oregon. One of the announcers was a radio personality on some country station in the Portland area (I think -- something like that, at least).
For most of the rodeo he spoke with a thick drawl, obviously going for the "good ol' boy" vibe.
A few times, he slipped up and spoke with a very plain Portland/PNW accent. It was jarring when I heard it but he went right back to the good ol' boy accent and I don't know how much anyone else noticed. But it came across like it was all an affectation, for the reasons you described.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection.
Did you and I read the same book? Most of this story is occurring in the Rust Belt[0], in Middletown, Ohio[1]. He discusses the mass Appalachian flight into Rust Belt towns and the mixing and clashing of culture.
If anything, I'm glad the author kept things largely, as the subtitle would imply, a memoir of sorts. He focuses on his family history and his life to give a face to the problem, but makes you aware that these are major problems in that community. From there you can draw your own comparison based on your experiences.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is seriously not that big a difference between the reading level of random comments on the internet and the reading level of the New Yorker, or of the average thinkpiece. Self-styled intellectuals love to pretend that they are writing in a sophisticated secret code language, but that hasn't been true since they quit Latin.
And, to be fair, English is a vastly more sophisticated language with layers of nuance that constitute codes than Latin.
Hahahaahahaa!!
The Romances can have hugely brutal nested sentences as nothing.
Would you dare to read Don Quixote in the original and non-modernized Spanish? I think not.
That book mixed a parody of Medieval Spanish and the pre-Enlightentment era one.
The discovering of America put the Church on a lower-closer to the Earth place and became the roots of modern Humanism.
Don Quixote is a pun on the Dark Ages, myth and religion, compared it to Sancho Panza who is a metaphor of the almost Enlightened humanistic/pragmatic folk who doesn't believe on myths and doesn't have crazy religious-like hallucinations on giants.
Trust me, a lot of grammar from the crazy knight is stilL¡l valid today even if looks outdated.
Heck, it already was outdated, as I said Don Quixote was the old fart pun from the 1600s.
English' grammar is a joke compared to the versatibility of Romances. And, even forther back in time, Latin used similar traits.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't believe they were making a case that it has merit, only that it a long history and is a specific writing conceit for its audience...which I suppose gives it merit as being appropriate for its audience.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#76Earlier 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.
Anything by Ben Garrison https://grrrgraphics.com/cartoons
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#77It's really bizarre the lengths to which the author goes to weave the "criticism by outsiders" motif into a critique which ostensibly targets a born-and-bred Appalacian. Three full introductory paragraphs about the guy who says “The thing I like about Appalachians is that they don’t need much to be happy. They’re content with making $24,000 year. They’re not showing off...” A massive full-screen width "When outsiders…
But the force and worth of Vance's take would be ZERO if he was an outsider.
JD Vance was born and raised in Middletown OH. This is far SW Ohio, on the border with Indiana. (It was something of a surprise to me that any part of Ohio is considered Appalachian, but then I've spent most of my Ohio time in Toledo. [0]) There are hills, but those hills are not the Appalachians. JD Vance is from the Midwest. Has he actually claimed to be Appalachian? As far as I can tell he has claimed to be a "hillbilly", which is fine but hardly limited to Ohio or the Appalachians. My neighbors and I in the Ozarks have at least as strong a claim to the term, but we don't seem to get as uptight about this stuff as the folks back East get.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#78“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 r…
The article also has pictures of Asheville and Berea, the former famous for it's ties to the super-rich, the latter a long time artists' colony. Was there even a picture of a trailer in the article? Or a church?
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#79“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 r…
Maybe the author meant more in a geographic sense. Like I've definitely heard people say Austin is in the heart of Texas, but they're mostly saying it's centrally-located in the state not that the city itself is a canonical representation of Texas culture at large.
Edit: And while Morgantown is only 9 miles into WV, really the entire state of WV is the heart of Appalachia. No matter what part of the state you leave from you're still going to be in Appalachia, just in a neighboring state.
Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy
#80“The perception that mountain folk like to be poor serves someone — but it’s not the poor mountain folk. The representation of Appalachia as all white is not only inaccurate, but it preserves a false and destructive ideal of imaginary “pure white stock.” Images of decay and absence allow those in power to turn away from a place that has been forgotten, but has not disappeared. The narrow ideas that circulate about th…
I'm assuming the commentary is about this book: https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture...
This book is specifically written from one (white guy's) point of view -- somebody who grew up in the area.
I'm not sure how the ideas that circulate about this place do active harm. Most (if not all) accounts I've heard about this place are personal accounts. The truth from people who have lived or traveled there.
Sometimes the truth hurts. Denying it's truthful isn't helping anybody.