We can begin to understand the book’s subtle plug for elitism when we consider the appeal on college campuses for a book about “hillbillies” and “rednecks.” “Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash,” says Vance. Hillbilly Elegy isn’t so much “resonating beyond traditional elites,” as justifying elitism under Trump. Hillbilly Elegy’s presence on student bookshelves is but one sign that Thomson has it wrong. Indeed, its selection as summer reading, good for about another 10,000 copies a week, helped shoot the book back up to number one in 2017. Robert Thomson - CEO of News Corp, which owns Vance’s publisher HarperCollins and which is one half of Rupert Murdoch’s now-divided media empire - attributed the book’s success to its ability to “resonate beyond the traditional elites.” But Hillbilly Elegy’s sales figures were buoyed by its widespread acceptance on university campuses, where “traditional elites” are born. Vance is our authentic voice from that realm. No one is recommending it because it is the best-written memoir of its era they’re recommending it because it is the genteel way to peer into Trump territory. And in one of his op-eds for The New York Times, David Brooks tells his readers that it is “essential reading for this moment in history.” In the year and a half since its publication, Hillbilly Elegy has become part of the American curricula, both official and not. A judge in Orange County, North Carolina, demands book reports from white college students brought up on drug charges as part of their community service. ![]() In 2017, administrators at more than a dozen colleges and universities chose it as the summer reading of choice for their incoming students. This is partly because everyone seems to be assigning it. But instead of slowly drifting down the sales charts, Hillbilly Elegy has shown remarkable staying power. Quickly touted as a prescient explanation of the Trump phenomenon, it floated around the top five for the rest of that year. Hillbilly Elegy climbed to number one on the New York Times best-seller list two months after it was published. Rather than urging Americans to read it, as so many of its first reviewers did, we now need to examine why we’ve bothered and what we’ve taken from it. The runaway success of Hillbilly Elegy means that it is now firmly established as the single most popular attempt to understand the “cultural crisis” underlying Trump’s victory. Without a sizable social media presence, without a successful movie or TV series to drive sales (unlike #1 overall Wonder and #7 The Handmaid’s Tale), Vance’s book had made its way in the world anyway Vance was no longer a wide-eyed novice just happy to be published. And now, Mitch McConnell has reportedly contacted Vance about a bid for the 2018 Senate seat now occupied by Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). ![]() By the end of 2017, Vance was a seasoned veteran, holding forth on cable news and at the Brookings Institution, half-heartedly denying his political aspirations. Was.įor Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was actually published in June 2016. ![]() But where both Manson and Tyson had enormous built-in audiences and huge platforms for promotion, Vance was a novice from nowhere. Hillbilly Elegy finished just behind Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, a blog-driven self-help book, and just ahead of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s volume of popular astronomy. Vance’s memoir about escaping the drug-depressed rust belt and landing at Yale Law School, was the second best-selling nonfiction book at Amazon. THE END OF THE YEAR is the time critics draw up best-of lists, but it is also a time to tally the verdicts of the marketplace: the biggest movie, the hottest toy, the most viral tweet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |