That Horrible Pen

  Or—Big Boy, Big Problems: “This might be normal in your family, but it’s not right.” Actual content aside, “ Hillbilly Elegy ” is a hell of a title, and I’ve had it stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. (The subtitle, “ A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis ,” is pure, dry, unwieldy conservative-speak, and I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist.) You’ve got the unlikely pairing of “hillbilly” with the big-boy poetic noun “elegy”; the rhyme, I honestly could do without (it tickles my brain in an annoying way), but the consonance with the “L” sound is a real treat for how… atypical it is. I find it quite the evocative title overall and think that it’s unfortunate it sits atop THIS: alleged couch-humper, soon-to-be Vice President, and confirmed Online weirdo JD Vance’s 2016 memoir, which I will almost certainly never read, and Ron Howard’s 2020 film adaptation, which I only finally watched this past summer out of morbid curiosity. The word that now comes to mind, re. t...

After recently, finally, watching the new season of True Detective , I wanted to put together some thoughts, but I’m going to call these “impressions” rather than “thoughts” since I’m not approaching this assessment as really comprehensive/final. If I was to write such a thing, it would probably need to come after some time has passed. I just revisited season three prior to watching season four, and I found my feelings about it significantly improved after some time away. I would assume my evaluation of Night Country could similarly change with time. Honestly, I’m a little driven to write this now out of relief—My Twitter feed was nothing but negative reactions to the show at the time of its airing, and I was actually surprised that it performed so well in terms of ratings based on the impressions I was seeing. Certain big complaints seemed consistent: that the mystery wasn’t compelling (or didn’t progress in a compelling way), that the show was too overtly supernatural in contrast...