In the movie, though, Vance’s story plays out quite differently. Professors and classmates seemed genuinely interested in what seemed to me a superficially boring story: I went to a mediocre public high school, my parents didn’t go to college, and I grew up in Ohio. Yale made me feel, for the first time in my life, that others viewed my life with intrigue. But he has mostly kind things to say about his fellow students and faculty: In the book, Vance describes his life at Yale as bewildering, since he was among the small number of students from poor backgrounds and constantly felt like he was playing catch-up, learning that Cracker Barrel is not actually fine dining and figuring out which fork to use. This fancy dinner scene shows exactly why. The book was published in June 2016, and mostly drew attention from conservative outlets until it started to develop a reputation as crucial to understanding the white working class, many of whom became Trump voters.īut whatever your opinion of the book, the movie is a different animal, and a startlingly terrible one.

It was also sharply criticized by many who saw it as advancing rhetoric and old myths about the poor, and eliding the racist roots of antipathy toward Barack Obama. The book is a memoir-slash-sociocultural critique that was heralded upon its release as “a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election,” and praised by some publications as a skeleton key to Trumpism. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-markīoth of these anecdotes appear in the real-life Vance’s account of this real-life dinner, which he recounts in his bestselling 2016 nonfiction book Hillbilly Elegy, now adapted into a Netflix feature film. He excuses himself and calls his girlfriend, who is more sophisticated than he is, and she walks him through fork selection. sits down at the table and panics about the number of forks on the table (look, we’ve all been there). asks for white wine and the waiter asks what kind he would like, he freezes, then is saved by a kind dining companion’s choice on his behalf.

But the obvious purpose of the dinner scene is to show us just how not-Yale he really is. So far, he has spent his time at Yale feeling like a fish out of water. hails from Middletown, Ohio, where his grandparents moved from the hill country of east Kentucky. is a first-year law student at Yale, and the event is supposed to introduce students seeking summer internships to law firm partners who wish to hire them. Vance (an inert Gabriel Basso) attends a dinner reception. Near the beginning of Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy - possibly the worst movie I’ve seen in years - J.D.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance