From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful?account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader,?probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.
But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and is a principal at a leading Silicon Valley investment firm. Vance lives in San Francisco with his wife and two dogs.
,阅读过程中的感受,简直就像是坐上了一台老旧却极其可靠的时光机,一下子把我带到了一个完全陌生的、却又在潜意识里有所感应的角落。那位讲述者(作者)的叙述语调,初看之下带着一种近乎坦诚的粗粝感,不加修饰,直击人心。他仿佛就坐在我对面,用一种带着浓厚地方口音的声音,娓娓道来那些关于家庭、关于社区、关于个体如何在时代洪流中挣扎求存的故事。我尤其留意到作者在描绘那些生活细节时的精准度,那种对特定场景和氛围的捕捉能力,让人不禁停下来,细细回味他所描绘的画面。比如那些关于特定节日或者家庭聚餐的场景,那种嘈杂、温暖又略显混乱的氛围,被他用非常精炼的语言勾勒了出来,仿佛我能闻到空气中飘散的食物香气。这并非是一部传统的、逻辑严密的编年史,而更像是一系列碎片化的、充满情感张力的回忆片段的集合,但正是这种非线性的叙述方式,反而增强了故事的真实感和感染力,让人在阅读时产生强烈的代入感,仿佛自己也是那个环境中的一员。
评分这本书的文字风格,在我看来,是一种非常高明的“克制与爆发”的结合体。起初,你会感觉作者的笔触非常冷静,甚至带着一种疏离感,好像他只是一个旁观者,冷静地记录着所见所闻。然而,当你深入到那些涉及情感冲突和身份认同挣扎的段落时,那种压抑已久的情感会猛地喷涌而出,措手不及地击中阅读者的心防。这种叙事上的节奏把控,是极其考验作者功力的,而本书的作者显然是这方面的大师。他知道何时该收,何时该放,使得那些深刻的社会观察和尖锐的个人反思,都镶嵌在了日常生活的叙事之中,显得自然而然,毫无说教意味。读到某些地方,我甚至会停下来,合上书本,望向窗外,陷入长时间的沉思,思考自己与“故乡”、“归属感”这些概念的关系。这种引导读者进行深度自我对话的能力,是这部作品超越一般纪实文学的独特魅力所在。
评分这部作品在构建人物群像方面,达到了令人惊叹的高度。书中的家庭成员,每一个都栩栩如生,他们的缺点、他们的挣扎、他们的善良和局限性,都被描绘得淋漓尽致,没有脸谱化的善恶标签。我特别欣赏作者处理复杂人际关系时的那种诚实——他没有美化那些曾经带来的痛苦或失望,也没有一味地指责。相反,他用一种近乎人类学的视角,去剖析这些个体行为背后的驱动力:是环境塑形,是文化惯性,还是个体选择的无奈?那些长辈们的生活智慧与生存困境交织在一起,构成了一幅幅令人唏嘘的画面。这种对“人”的复杂性的深刻洞察,使得即便是与作者生活背景完全不同的人,也能从中找到共鸣。它提醒我们,无论我们站在何种社会阶层或地理位置,人性的基本内核——对尊严的渴望、对爱的寻求、对不确定未来的恐惧——是共通的,这一点,才是这部作品最强大的普适价值所在。
评分这本书的书脊设计就很有意思,那种带着岁月痕迹的字体和略微泛黄的纸张质感,初拿到手里就有一种沉甸甸的历史感。我记得当时是在一个阳光很好的下午拆开的,阳光透过窗户洒在封面上,让我对即将展开的旅程充满了好奇。这本书的封面设计,也许是为了呼应书名中那种怀旧的情绪,选择了一种比较朴素的色调,没有太多花哨的装饰,反而凸显了一种内在的力量感。装帧的工艺也看得出来是用了心的,精装本拿在手里非常有质感,让人忍不住想多翻阅几遍,感受那种纸张与指尖的摩擦。它不像那些追求视觉冲击力的畅销书,反而更像是一件安静的艺术品,静静地待在书架上,却散发着一种不容忽视的吸引力。光是掂量它的分量,你就能感觉到作者在这本书里倾注的心血,那不仅仅是文字的堆砌,更像是一种对往昔生活的细致打捞。我特别喜欢这种注重细节的装帧方式,它让阅读体验从翻开第一页之前就已经开始了,这是一种仪式感,也是对作者思想的尊重。
评分如果要用一个词来形容读完这本书后的总体感受,那或许是“回味悠长,却又带着一丝难以言喻的惆怅”。它不是那种读完后拍手称快、立刻就能总结出几条人生哲理的“快餐式”阅读体验。相反,它像一首需要反复聆听的古典乐曲,每一次重读,都会在不同的情绪节点上获得新的理解。这本书的价值,并不在于提供一个标准答案,而在于它清晰地呈现了一个特定群体在特定历史时空下的生存困境和文化张力,迫使我们去直面那些被主流叙事所忽略的声音。这种对“边缘”经验的深度挖掘,极大地拓宽了我对当代社会复杂性的认知边界。它让我明白,宏大的社会变迁,最终都落脚于一个个鲜活的、有血有肉的家庭故事之中。这是一部值得珍藏的作品,不仅因为它记录了历史,更因为它以一种近乎残酷的真诚,触碰到了我们内心深处对于“我们从何处来”的终极追问。
本站所有内容均为互联网搜索引擎提供的公开搜索信息,本站不存储任何数据与内容,任何内容与数据均与本站无关,如有需要请联系相关搜索引擎包括但不限于百度,google,bing,sogou 等
© 2025 book.teaonline.club All Rights Reserved. 图书大百科 版权所有