Hillbillies Need No Elegy

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 number of words in sentences so they're obviously not perfect, in particular they do not measure the use of rare vocabulary or references nor of difficult content.

I tested the OP and found: Flesch reading ease 53.2 (fairly difficult)

Gunning Fog 11 (hard to read)

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10.1 grade

Coleman-Liau 10th grade

SMOG Index 9.6 grade

ARI 9.5 grade

Linsear Write Formula 11.4 grade

Where the references to grade are to American school grades. In other words this text can be read by average American 10th graders without difficulty.

I ran an article from the current New Yorker through as well (the one on Basquiat) and that came out as 11th grade reading level.

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, region, person, or event must necessarily be lying to you. The better the art the more likely the lies are big ones.

And so storytellers are forced to lie, both by drastically-reducing scope and by smoothing out the edges. Then they consolidate characters, generalize over things that are not part of the narrative. They find a hero. They bump the contrast up a bit to make the narrative consumption more enjoyable.

I love this, I love art and storytelling, but it means that there are great masses of people who don't know jack squat about a ton of topics that they think they do.

I grew up here. I've traveled all over, spending quite a bit of time in SF and other very cosmopolitan places, but this is home. If I were forced to scope it down, I'd probably start with the mountains, then the coal mines, then the Scots-Irish cultural backdrop. The writer made an astute point when they mentioned all the outsiders passing through and screwing us over in various ways for their own selfish reasons. That's been a persistent theme, but it is slowly dying off. There's also the tent revival culture, but that's also going away.

The only other generality I'd add if I were scoping down a story about this place is the stereotype of the ornery eccentric. This character has been played up for comic relief over the years, many times making them out to be simpletons. Instead, there are a lot of PhD-level folks who just don't give a damn about society and don't want to. They're nice enough. They just want to be left alone. You find that plenty of other places as well, but Appalachia has a long history of those folks and we tend to cherish them, even if we're making fun of them.

Andrew Jackson almost beat a man to death with his cane after he tried to assassinate him (His gun misfired. He grabbed a backup. It also misfired. Jackson commenced to beating on him and had to be pulled off). After the Civil War, Ewell went back to his home, picked back up his law practice, and started writing books about what a bunch of jackasses all those people who misunderstood the war were. We always wave at people here: the best way to tell if people are from far away is when they don't wave. Had a neighbor once that when I waved at him he would make various obscene gestures and curse. He just wanted to be left alone.

I wouldn't live anywhere else, and it's not because I haven't tried out a bunch of other places. There's something about the mountains that keep calling me back. I don't know what.