Hillbillies Need No Elegy • Hacker News Board

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#101

Post by gph » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

gffyfnhdv wrote: post #86

gph wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

It isn’t the geographic center of Appalachia either. Pittsburgh, 90mi north, is as much a part of Appalachia as Atlanta, almost 600 mi south. I get it. The author uses “heart of” as an expression, like I use “literally” in a figurative sense. But, it also gives me a sense that it betrays the authors almost complete ignorance of Appalachia; which the article purports to explain :S

>It isn’t the geographic center of Appalachia either. Pittsburgh, 90mi north, is as much a part of Appalachia as Atlanta, almost 600 mi south.

I don't know about that, that's weird logic to me. Atlanta is barely Appalachia, at best it's at the very terminus in the south. Pittsburgh is much more a part of Appalachia to me, though honestly I'd say both those cities have their own unique culture that's perhaps related or influenced by Appalachia (yinzers are kinda Appalachia). I guess somewhere around Roanoke would probably be the true geographic middle, but eh. Close enough.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#102

Post by madhadron » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 6:48 PM UTC

anthk wrote: post #74

madhadron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Trust me

No, thank you. I studied Italian and French (old, middle, and modern), Latin, and Ancient Greek, though most of that has vanished from disuse.

I'm not talking about the grammar (which is simply different in English despite a couple centuries of attempts to make it fit into Latin), or the degree of nuance Cervantes or Rabelais can extract from their linguistic milieu. I'm talking about the range of nuance that a educated, contemporary speaker of the language has available to them. It is simply vastly greater in English than in, say, modern French.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#103

Post by madhadron » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

onlydeadheroes wrote: post #25

madhadron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be fair, English is a vastly more sophisticated language with layers of nuance that constitute codes than Latin.

Did you ever study Latin?

Yes. My parents taught me. They studied it at Cambridge.

I'm not talking about inflection. English doesn't use inflection except vestigially, though our grammar is every bit as subtle (compare English verb tenses to those of a Romance language). I'm talking about the employment of reference, accent, dialect...

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#104

Post by gffyfnhdv » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

gph wrote: post #101

gffyfnhdv wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t the geographic center of Appalachia either. Pittsburgh, 90mi north, is as much a part of Appalachia as Atlanta, almost 600 mi south. I get it. The author uses “heart of” as an expression, like I use “literally” in a figurative sense. But, it also gives me a sense that it betrays the authors almost complete ignorance of Appalachia; which the article purports to explain :S

>It isn’t the geographic center of Appalachia either. Pittsburgh, 90mi north, is as much a part of Appalachia as Atlanta, almost 600 mi south. I don't know about that, that's weird logic to me. Atlanta is barely Appalachia, at best it's at the very terminus in the south. Pittsburgh is much more a part of Appalachia to me, though honestly I'd say both those cities have their own unique culture that's perhaps related o…

I agree Pittsburgh is more Appalachia than ATL; it’s Appalachia proper.

But Atlanta is really close. at the “Piedmont” of the if you will ;)

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#105

Post by 50208 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #57

gerikson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 int…

I had a eerily similar experience in the Pikeville, KY WalMart: Stopped in to pick up some last minute groceries for a weekend excursion to the Russell Fork. While walking around I heard a voice over the intercom that I literally could not understand a word that was said. I looked at my wife (both of us born and raised in KY) and said, "What was that?". She also had no idea what was said. It was a different language, not really English.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#106

Post by 50208 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 8:09 PM UTC

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…

Being from Kentucky, Justified was a laugh-a-minute for us ... it's very authentic, if authentic means filmed in California with the best looking hillbilly's and rednecks anyone has ever seen.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#107

Post by 50208 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

sudosteph wrote: post #67

golemotron wrote: post #53

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...

I'd argue the best way would be to travel there and read actual histories from local sources. While it's nice to imagine a simple root cause to everything - it's not enough. When my great-grandparents settled in Appalachia about 100 years ago, they did it to find opportunity and escape the terrible working conditions of cotton mills. That side of the family are religious democrats who support unions and new-deal styl…

Yes, but don't travel to Asheville or Morgantown ... go to Elkhorn City or Ashland, Ky ... or Nitro, WV. Bring your own water.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#108

Post by 50208 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 8:20 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #77

camelite wrote: post #68

It'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 actuall…

Vance' detailed the large migration of Eastern Kentucky folks moving to Ohio / Indiana for jobs in the generations before he was born ... and noting how they all maintained a lifeline and frequented remaining Eastern Kentucky family. His claim is solid IMO.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#109

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

50208 wrote: post #106

gerikson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being from Kentucky, Justified was a laugh-a-minute for us ... it's very authentic, if authentic means filmed in California with the best looking hillbilly's and rednecks anyone has ever seen.

Haha just like they filmed "Ozark" in Georgia.

Re: Hillbillies Need No Elegy

#110

Post by humanrebar » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

_dczq wrote: post #82

humanrebar wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you wanted him to write a different book? Maybe he had different goals and that's fine.

Not what I said at all. I thought there was an opportunity to make a larger connection between what has happened in the Appalachian towns he focuses on and larger Rust Belt cities who face much of the same issues.

He took other opportunities. Not sure why that's a failing. Someone else can still write the book you want.