Hello Smarties, It's Your Book Wag!
Dear Wags,
July 2024 will go down in history as an epic month. In a handful of days, there’s been both an assassination attempt on the GOP presidential nominee and a shuffle at the top of the Democratic ticket. Somewhere in the middle of that mayhem, 39-year-old MAGA wunderkind J.D. Vance became Donald Trump’s running mate.
That was no surprise, but it got me thinking about political memoirs. We’re used to politicians promoting themselves through biographies. Kamala Harris published The Truths We Hold in 2019. Joe Biden produced two in recent years —Promises to Keep (2021) and Promise Me, Dad (2017). Barack Obama established himself as a generational leader with Dreams from My Father (1995). Trump, a reality star, not a reader, has passed on this publishing ritual—unless you count The Art of the Deal (1987) as his manifesto.
There are notable exceptions, but most of these tomes are bland (even if minions buy them in bulk to ensure they hit bestseller lists). Still, they can be helpful in understanding an author hustling to play a big national role. Where does that leave Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s 2016 memoir? If nothing else, it proves that books still matter. Without one, Vance would never be where he is.
Vance’s book was aimed at the elites he now derides. City slickers—not forgotten Americans in trailer parks—made it a bestseller and ultimately, a mediocre movie. He showed some empathy for the characters in his story, but more than anything it was an indictment of Appalachian America. In his view, it was time for hillbillies to face their problems. The figure who stood before the GOP convention last week read from a different script. Now its his peers on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley who are, at least rhetorically, to blame for those hardships.
Whatever else it is, Hillbilly Elegy is a profoundly disingenuous work. The best memoirs may stray from strictly reported facts, but they ought to convey deeper truths. They aren’t designed to launch their authors as brands, but to depict a human struggle toward self-knowledge. The work of writers such as Mary Karr, Tara Westover, Jeanette Walls, and Frank McCourt speaks to that. What does Vance’s book teach us? Maybe to say whatever is convenient to get close to power.
Ambitious politicians will play fast and loose with facts to get a leg up. Vance once compared his future running mate to an opioid; now he’s all in. Memoirists, on the other hand, show some accountability by exposing their flaws. As a memoir writer myself, I know that’s not easy. But if you sand down your narrative to push an agenda, you end up writing fiction.
When I read Hillbilly Elegy back in 2016, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t reading a memoir but a stump speech. I was eager to for a fresh take on Appalachia, a complicated region that inspires great literature. Instead I got a pitch for J.D. Vance. By the time I got to chapters about his military service and conquest of the Ivy League, I knew I wasn’t sold. Instead of revealing anything meaningful about himself or his roots, Vance was polishing his resume.
A lot people bought it. There’s a lot to say about the dilemmas and promise of Appalachia, but Vance was never serious about that conversation. As Lorraine Berry notes in the LA Times, he seems intent on using the region, its people, and even his mother’s sobriety in a shape-shifting quest for high office bankrolled by coastal billionaires. The hillbilly routine is just a beard grown over a profoundly weak chin. And the more we see of the real Vance, the more synthetic it all seems.
The truth behind such antics won’t be found in Hillbilly Elegy, but in Kevin Young’s searing history, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News (2017). I highly recommend it. It’s not another political memoir, but it will help you spot a phony country mile away.
Yours ever,
BKP
Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum
Applebaum is one of the most incisive observers of a global political crisis, meticulously documenting an ongoing assault on liberal democracy. Her latest effort focuses on the elaborate webs authoritarians spin to enrich themselves and protect their regimes. Autocrats are getting better and better at manipulating information to erode faith in institutions and propagate cultures of distrust; the result is a war on reality itself. She offers no quick fixes, but her exhaustive reportage is an indictment of tyranny and a call to action.
