Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” has shot to the top of book charts as the movie adaptation hits #9 on Netflix following his ascension to Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate.
“Hillbilly Elegy” is currently ranking #1 on the New York Times nonfiction lists for both print and digital. Vance nabbed the top spot on Publisher’s Weekly and USA Today’s book charts, beating out popular fiction titles like “It Ends With Us.” The movie adaptation of the book, starring Gabriel Basso, Amy Adams, and Glenn Close is also back in Netflix’s Top 10 movies at the time of writing, having been viewed more than 3 million times. (RELATED: Forget Hillbilly Elegy. This Column Is The Best Thing JD Vance Has Ever Written)
While I’ve not seen the movie, the book is arguably one of the best written. It tells a devastating yet inspiring personal journey through a childhood in working-class America, offering a sharp insight into the places forgotten by coastal elites and almost every politician …
Until Vance got himself out of the military, graduated from Ohio State and then Yale, started a family, became a best-selling author (when the book was released) worked in the private sector, and is now a senator who may be Vice President … all by the age of 39. (RELATED: ‘That’s My Boy’: Vance’s Teary-Eyed Mom Spotted In RNC Crowd)
If you’re feeling like you’ve wasted your career, don’t sweat it. Take some time for yourself today. Go read a book, or watch a movie. I’ve got a great one I can recommend!
Check out Mr. Right’s article on J.D. Vance:
Forget Hillbilly Elegy. This Column Is The Best Thing JD Vance Has Ever Written
A little-known column Vance wrote while serving as a Marine resurfaced Wednesday, and it is easily one of the best, if not the best, pieces he has written to date, better, even, than his best-selling memoir.
In the Aug. 27, 2006, edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer, Vance recalls the night he watched his favorite team, the Cincinnati Bengals, lose in the AFC Wild Card game as he was stationed in Iraq. You can already see Vance’s gift for storytelling that would later return in “Hillbilly Elegy”. Just in the opening paragraph alone, he closes it out with a beautiful sentence, a perfect juxtaposition, that sets up the column’s entire theme: “Yet my focus wasn’t on the war, but on a 19-inch TV.”
From there, Vance riffs on his love for the Bengals and the challenges that it brought deployed in Iraq (usually, only one NFL game could air at a time), how the new franchise quarterback Carson Palmer brought “pride back” to his city, and how watching football is much more than an excuse to pound beer and eat wings:
Watching the Bengals wasn’t about just football: it was about seeing that beautiful Cincinnati skyline every time they cut to commercial break; it was about watching the barges roll down the mighty Ohio like they’ve done for more than a century; it was about listening to the announcers talk about Cincinnati like it was a city of culture, not a city of losers.