Vance the Brave: or, Re-imagining My Poor White Life

Publicity photo of Buddy Ebsen and Phil Silvers from The Beverly Hillbillies. [Public Domain] via Wikimedia. 

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have had this book on my notifications list from Book Depository for some time now, and then I stumbled (or bumbled!) upon it in the tiny English section of the bookstore at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport. 

At the time of writing, I understand Vance was 31 years old. He mocked himself for daring to call a book by someone so young a "memoir". Having read it, he had no reason to mock himself. 

This is the story of a smart kid who grew up with little social capital, but because of a sympathetic grandmother, was able to finish school then join the Marines then finish college and then practise law after graduating from Yale. Change a few place names, sans the drugs and the guns, and I could re-publish this as the story of my own life. 

Even though I would be lying because I didn't experience the familial breakdown Vance experienced, but his ability to get the hell out of a small town by joining the military, getting through university despite himself, and learning the importance of social capital, was as important for a boy from Western Sydney and later Far North Queensland as it was for this ex-Kentucky hillbilly. 

I cannot bring myself to be as honest here as Vance is in the book. Given nobody would bother to read this but thousands must have read Vance, he is certainly brave. I can imagine he must have upset many members of his family to write about such private and personal matters but I am glad he did. 

Assuming, of course, that a kid lacking in social capital would bother to read it. 

For those who have survived, reading the book is eminently cathartic. I found myself nodding in agreement as I read of the trials and travails. At other times, I was screaming at Vance with things like: "You still don't get it!" then remembering that at 31, I didn't get anything at all. 

If I were to sum up this work, I would say it was courageously honest. I cannot remember where I first stumbled upon this book, but it was probably in early 2017 in The New Yorker. It provides a glimpse into the gaining of social capital through constant struggle, being mentored by someone who can see where one is at (even when one's ego wouldn't allow one to be mentored), stumbling from class conscious faux pas to class unconscious faux pas, only to arrive at what Rousseau would have said was buying an experience that was hardly worth the cost. 

We are fortunate that writers such as Vance have the courage to do what most of us will never. The work provides a glimpse into explanations for the intolerant world we are living in at present, while also providing hope that there is a way out of this mess, even our personal messes.

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Turgenev: The End History and the Last Serf: or, A Satirical Sketch of Sherwood Anderson

Illustration for the short story "Lgov" by Ivan Turgenev (from the collection A Sportsman's Sketches) by Pyotr Sokolov, circa 1890s [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

Sketches from a Hunter's Album by Ivan Turgenev

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Turgenev was born into two aristocratic Russian families. His mother had inherited some wealth before marrying, which offset his otherwise titled but broke father. As a young man he lived on the family estate, and this collection of short stories, published in book form in 1852, encompasses his experience with people and places as he hunts throughout Russia during the twilight years of serfdom.

I have read many instances of people claiming that these works are his masterpiece, and that the sketches brought to light the plight of the peasants, ultimately leading to the end of serfdom in 1861. Whether the works had such significance I will leave to the experts, but when I teach social movements as a process of institutional evolution, a key text (such as Martin Luther King's speech during the American civil rights movement) usually motivates the masses towards some form of social change, which concludes with a change in institutions.

Clearly, Sketches played a part in motivating social change, and I use this book as an example of the impetus for the social movement that led to the emancipation of serfs. I also understand that Turgenev adopts the "Russian realist" style in that the narrator is "uncommitted" to the other characters in the work, and this is true of the Sketches in general.

This translation is by Constance Garnett, and I must say that it reads well. Having read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons a few years ago, I recognise the clarity of the prose that I also found in my first reading of Chekhov. My limited reading of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, however, suggests that these two authors have become somewhat dated, at least in translation. Hemingway said as much about Tolstoy's War and Peace in "Old Newsman Writes" (see By-Line, p. 188). Which leads me to all sorts of interesting comparisons I have mentioned previously in my review on Chekhov's comic stories.

Harold Bloom and Italo Calvino saw the relationship in style between Turgenev, Chekhov, Maupassant, and Hemingway. Having now read each of these authors, I feel that way about their prose technique. But while reading a little about Turgenev, I discovered that Sherwood Anderson "echoed" Turgenev (according to Ridout), and that Turgenev had also written a short work entitled The Torrents of Spring. Now I see the greater part of the humour in Hemingway's novella The Torrents of Spring, which was written as a parody of Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. I immediately purchased a copy of Turgenev's Torrents to see what else I can learn about this interesting clash of egos.

Given that Sketches is now 166 years old, and has well and truly stood the test of time, I can see how it is a classic of the highest order. That other brilliant Russian author, Nabokov, rated the great Russian authors with Tolstoy first, Pushkin and Chekhov second, and Turgenev third (ahead of Gogol and Dostoevsky). According to Nabokov, of the Russian authors, Pushkin loses the most in translation.

What I find most interesting is not so much the actual reading of the book, which of course is worth every moment, but how Turgenev and this particular work fit into my bumbling reading scheme. I met a man just recently who had an achievement style he coined "Managing by bumbling along". It seemed to work for him, and, in my reading, at least, it seems to be working out quite well. While there does seem to be a logic that a smarter reader might follow, I do enjoy the various surprises I discover while reading back and forth between the classics, the early twentieth century authors, and the present.

Turgenev gives an eye-opening account of life during the end of Russian serfdom. One imagines it was eons ago, but one only has to consider that the transportation of convicts was still in full-swing in 1850s Australia to understand that this period in history was far removed from life in the Anglo democracies today. Without Turgenev's work, we would lack many primary sources into the life of the Russian peasant. That one can read and still enjoy reading such works today is remarkable.

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Snakes on a Train: Can You Imagine?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Reptilian Horror Story. Photo via Pixabay [CC0].

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I recently read Juan Gabriel Vásquez's New York Times review of this book and bought the book immediately. An actual railroad? What a re-imagining! Yet the story works. Never mind that even today, with Chinese technology capable of tunnelling vast distances at lower costs, it seemed as improbable as it was then impossible. Yet Whitehead doesn't miss a beat. Who built it? How did they build it? How did they keep it a secret? As far as the story goes, it doesn't matter. You often wish the runaways would just get back on the damn train and keep going all the way to Canada. I recall Hemingway writing about truth and good books (By-Line: Selected Journalism, pp. 188-9 but originally "Old Newsman Writes" in Esquire December 1934):

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

Clearly, Colson Whitehead is and has done just that.

I don't want to harp on about the plot, but rather about the use of imagination in Whitehead's writing. I have a little story I have been thinking about writing; something I saw during a previous winter that haunts me to this day. In fact, just thinking about it makes me shudder.

I put a small round log with a narrow hollow through the middle on the fire. I closed the glass door and sat watching the flames as they worked on the log. Shortly after, a small snake emerged from the hollow of the log. It extended some four inches out of the log, then shrunk back into the hollow and disappeared as if it had been pulled back in by the tail just as the log burst into flame. I imagine it was me. I am comfortable in my space, and then it gets hot. Unbearably hot. I decide to get out, but it is even hotter outside and I am trapped by glass and flames and heat and the air is sucked out of my lungs and I try to retreat and then nothing. What did the snake think? Did it feel helpless? Did it have time to think or feel? Would I?

The scene repeats over and over and I try to imagine the scenario and it makes me shudder. Could I write such a thing? Is it even a story? Maybe The Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Reptilian Horror Story.

I daresay I do not have Whitehead's gift of imagination, yet he makes a story that is not only believable, but despite its implausibility, the railroad exists as if it were true. Could I be that snake? And what the hell does that have to do with this book? But that is the point of a novel like this. What would it be like to be a slave and to exist in an implausible yet believable reality?

And that is why I like to read broadly, and sometimes without reason, or as Emerson or Oscar Wilde's Vivian (of The Decay of Lying), on a Whim. It challenges us to imagine, it makes us fill in the blanks and develop an imagery that makes the unreal real. Surely this is what Hemingway meant, and Colson Whitehead does in this haunting yet wonderful novel.

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