Bread and Bread

1. battle hymn of the rust belt over-achiever “Our men suffer from a peculiar crisis of masculinity,” writes J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir of growing up in a Rust Belt town inhabited by economic migrants from Appalachia, “in which some of the very traits that our culture inculates make it difficult to succeed in a changing world.” I wanted the book to feel more like its cover. I imagine New York agents and editors sending his manuscript around in emails sprinkled with “zeitgeist” and “the white working class” and “fresh, underrepresented voices.” I imagine them filling an unspoken quota that demands more work by conservative writers (Vance claims a conservative identity, although the book is only lightly political). If that sounds like an ungenerous impression, it’s because the book doesn’t quite accomplish what it explicitly sets out to do: represent for an economic and cultural underclass, and offer some loose suggestions about what this group needs, and ...

If you like hookworm and Honey Boo Boo, you'll love this book. I only finished one book in the whole month of February. And when I say that to people, in my usual self-flagellating way, they’re like, “Yeah, but you have a lot going on.” By which they mean cancer. I think what I have going on is Words With Friends and an inability to go to sleep without watching bad TV on my laptop. Of course, these things are not unrelated. I’m helping my aunt build a website for her therapy practice, and in going through “other resources” links, I stumbled on a quiz that told me there was a good chance I was mildly depressed, but I should consult with a professional to be sure. Part of me was like, Fuck, another diagnosis? Another part of me was like, I’m only mildly depressed? Well, that’s pretty good. You could live your whole life like that. My belief that It Doesn’t Get Better—which is also a stubborn refusal to put all my eggs in the Future basket, when who knows if that basket even ...