A Provocative Question

[Matthew Taylor]

I haven't read Hillbilly Elegy, though I'll admit that this review
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hillbilly-elegy-review-jd-vance-national-review-white-working-class-appalachia/>
turned me off from the very idea of it.

On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe Hillbilly Elegy was all finished before Trump even started
> running...certainly conceived and mostly written before...I can imagine his
> publishers MAKING SURE Trump was not mentioned because......no way he'd get
> nom much less win.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Nov 25, 2016, at 4:35 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > I’ve read Hillbilly Elegy - it’s a great memoir but it has other things
> to say.   The author,  J.D. Vance, a self-proclaimed ex-hillbilly who
> understands he was very, very lucky,  calls on the now chronically
> unemployed in the Kentucky coal mines and Cincinnati areas to pull
> themselves up by their bootstraps and stop being lazy.  He also calls for
> more effective assistance in re-training.  He says other things too - It’s
> mainly because of this book that I have only lately come to really support
> Bernie - (Bernie goes much, much further in the area of re-training and
> tuition free college.)  Vance is Republican but didn’t vote for Trump  (I
> had to look that up - it’s not in the book.  The book was NOT written to
> “explain” Trump but it goes a long ways toward doing that.  He’s not
> mentioned that I remember.)
> >
> > I’ve currently almost finished reading  White Trash - about 50 pages to
> go.   It’s a history of the lowliest whites in our society and how they
> came about from the days of pre-colonial Massachusetts and Virginia through
> the swamp people of North Carolina,  the Civil War,  Westward Expansion,
> the Wars and Depression,  through Elvis and LBJ and so on.   Trump is
> mentioned in passing at the tail end. (I did a search.)   This book is
> dense - jam-packed with all sorts of tidbits I’d like more information
> about.  But there’s an extensive Notes section so … ??? -  it’s kind of
> overwhelming but Isenberg writes nicely.  Definitely a history book.
> >
> > I’ve got Strangers in their Own Land  on my radar but I might have to
> give the subject a break for a few weeks -
> >
> > Becky
> >
> >
> >> On Nov 25, 2016, at 5:16 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> i was reminded yesterday by David Kipen that Pynchon wrote of the
> inability of the student (New) Left to connect with the working class in
> the intro to SLOW LEARNER.
> >> And this reminds me that it is still identity politics to think and say
> 'white working class' as I and most are doing. Always respect Pynchon' s
> precision, I repeat to myself.
> >>
> >> New relevant books: Strangers in their Own Land ( excerpts around),
> White Trash and Hillbilly Elegy.
> >>
> >> I learned from a polling strategist that since race is ascertainable
> from voting records, they report and the mainstream media simply uses
> "whites" and "blacks" ( along with Hispanics and Others (say) in their
> reductionist way, fostering the bad shit.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>>> On Nov 24, 2016, at 3:09 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Am 23.11.2016 um 20:48 schrieb kelber at mindspring.com:
> >>>>
> >>>> http://fortune.com/2016/11/11/trump-voters-lynn-nottage/
> >>>
> >>> Very interesting, thank you.
> >>>
> >>> I would like to learn more. Are there any other contemporary writers
> addressing the situation of the working class in the US today? The impact
> of the war on terror, the impact of globalisation?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >
> > Becky
> > https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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