Samantha Cheuvront

Not a particulars long or difficult read - finished it in about 4 hours. A lot of the content consisted of him (Vance) explaining what his family, his community, or those he met in passing thought and did ... but relatively little self-reflection to be found. The times he got close to reflecting, he tended to switch to talking in terms of the "hillbilly culture" in general (which he seems to both disparage and admire). When he does offer insight into his own thoughts and feelings or beliefs, they usual come with caveats and disclaimers. Overall, he tends to shift the blame for his actions (both negative and positive) to those around him. You get the sense - because he states it several times 😅 - that he struggles with his own identity and models himself off of others, because it looks like they have some sort of advantage. It made getting through sections of the book a little frustrating, because it felt like he was just sort of mendereing between different ideas without ever really investigating any of them. He contradicts himself almost constantly and there's no real sense of personal growth throughout the story. Even the people he claims to admire, he talks about almost solely in terms of what they can do for him and how they've benefited him in the past. A rambling account from a self-absorbed (mostly) middle-class individual who perceives himself as an underdog, because he didn't have a picture perfect childhood.