#hacketteer self-descriptions
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I know there has been a lot of discussion about how the Quarry characters are described, but do you think they would describe themselves any differently?
I'm so sorry Kat, I wanted to take some time to think about this and then completely forgot it was in my ask box!
This is SUCH an interesting question with lots to consider. I think this depends somewhat on who they're describing themselves to, but let's imagine it's an honest self-assessment and not, like, trying to look good on a job cover letter or college entrance essay or something like that.
Jacob - This one's tough for me because Jacob seems to sometimes believe in his own hype, but he can also see himself as kind of a loser? Like, he prances up in his undies and tells everyone "I'm here to save you!" 😂 But he also mopes and cries and has a tough time even if we don't get the 'I'm not alive, I'm nothing' sad infected boy. I think Jacob sees himself as a leader even if others don't (and some do, I mean, look at Nick). I think he'd say he's brave (and he can be! he runs off in the dark after Abi screams, for example), optimistic, fun-loving, and loyal. He might not be aware of how impulsive his actions are, though he also might be after the extra night he orchestrated goes as badly as it does.
Emma - Emma causes a lot of strife for others in this game for someone who I genuinely think means well most of the time. She's trying to manipulate her friends in ways that she believes will be good for them, but not everyone welcomes her interventions. She has a flair for the dramatic and I feel like she knows that about herself and knows that she's performing a lot of the time. I think Emma would see herself as pragmatic, goal-oriented, charming, and entertaining.
Abi - Abi's a sweet, sensitive type and she seems to know herself pretty well. She's a rule-follower and a peacemaker and while she feels awkward sometimes, I think Abi has a way of putting others at ease. I think she'd describe herself as creative, empathetic, and conscientious, but she'd also admit to being a little timid and prone to over-thinking at times.
Ryan - Ryan also sees himself as a leader, even if he sometimes has trouble getting other people on board with that view. I don't think he sees himself as a brooding loaner, though he comes off that way, but he knows he's introverted and maybe he'd call himself introspective instead. Ryan would probably see himself as humble, dependable, strong-willed, and authentic. He knows he doesn't always come across as confident, but he does stick to his guns.
Kaitlyn - To me, Kaitlyn has the least emotional development of any of the characters, and while I love what we do see of her so much, I wish we saw more of what makes her tick. Kaitlyn's a badass and she knows it, but we see glimpses of a softer side to her with Abi and Dylan that imply she's got more depth to her than she lets on. I think she'd think of herself as self-assured, level-headed, sarcastic, and (sometimes brutally) honest.
Dylan - Dylan refers to his 'blasé' persona as a 'stylish nihilist' in the cut content, but I'm not sure he totally understands what that word means. Because while Dylan can be paranoid and even a little cynical, he's also incredibly hopeful and resilient over the course of the game. I think his self-description might change a lot depending on when you ask him and what path his character takes. But as far as his core personality, I think he'd see himself as intelligent, open-minded, funny (I don't think his humor is an act, I think he just plays up that side more when he's uncomfortable), and intuitive. He's also well aware of his own insecurities. Would he admit to being a hopeless romantic too? He'd probably prefer not to, but I think he knows.
Nick - We get so little of Nick, and what we do get can be tainted a bit by the way the werewolf infection affects him, but I think Nick is very candid about the fact that he can be a bit of a follower when he's around stronger personalities. He knows he has a lot of potential, but he's not sure what he wants to do in the future. I think he'd describe himself as respectful (and he is, until the whole infection thing happens), caring, and sociable, but also unfocused or maybe even directionless.
Laura - Laura's progression over the course of the game feels kind of like if Leslie Knope became a monster-hunting vigilante. Laura seems kind of type-A and perfectionistic, like she has a whole bunch of color-coded binders at home. But she also seems to think that just because she wants something to happen (like Max going to the same grad school as her, or them getting to come to camp a night early), that it will. I think she also knows herself pretty well. Laura would say she's self-assured, ambitious, steadfast, and resilient. She might not go so far as to say headstrong, but she probably knows.
Max - Lovable Max, so silly and so sweet, but he can be a touch gloomy and pessimistic too, especially when he's been kidnapped and is dealing with a mysterious supernatural infection (hard to blame him there). Max would describe himself as easygoing (pre-canon, at least), supportive, and friendly and I think he'd absolutely also cop to being sensitive and a bit meek. He does not mind being the 'malewife' to his 'girlboss' partner at all.
#the quarry#beautiful asks from beautiful people#hacketteer headcanons#hacketteer self-descriptions#jacob custos#emma mountebank#abi blyg#ryan erzahler#kaitlyn ka#dylan lenivy#nick furcillo#laura kearney#max brinly
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The Quarry: Prologue
[ao3]
summary: “Why’d you kill the music?” Max said with a subtle frown, stealing a glance over at her before moving his eyes back to the road.
“I think you know why.”
“Uhm, I don’t think I do,” he replied with an amused grin.
“It begins with an ‘L’?” she pushed. “Like, the ‘L’ word?”
Max paused for a second, and the short silence was drowned out by the tires still fighting against the stone-riddled road. “Lesbians?”
“Lost, Max. We’re lost.”
The game's prologue, in the form of a written story.
words: 6433
rating: M, for descriptions and implications of gore, violence, and death.
note: I’ve been fighting with writer’s block lately, but have recently become obsessed with The Quarry, so I thought it’d be a fun challenge to try and translate the game’s prologue from a visual piece of media to a written one. It was so much more fun than I expected!
99% of the dialogue has been pulled straight from the game, I take no credit for it.
23:50 | June 24 - LAURA
Route 919
Driving through unfamiliar woodland at midnight wasn’t the greatest idea in the world, but after Max, her ever confident, self-assured boyfriend, had insisted they’d be fine, they’d clambered into his mother’s car and set off in the hopes of reaching Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp by ten o’clock, at the latest.
Laura glanced at her watch. 11:50pm.
With a small sigh, she reached over and switched the radio off—earlier, it had been audibly playing their favourite tunes, but now, shrouded by trees and the seemingly never-ending wilderness, the path they were driving down was so rough and bumpy they could barely hear the music over the sound of the tires struggling on the uneven terrain. Not to mention, she was sure neither her nor Max had any inkling of where they actually were.
“Why’d you kill the music?” Max said with a subtle frown, stealing a glance over at her before moving his eyes back to the road.
“I think you know why.”
“Uhm, I don’t think I do,” he replied with an amused grin.
“It begins with an ‘L’?” she pushed. “Like, the ‘L’ word?”
Max paused for a second, and the short silence was drowned out by the tires still fighting against the stone-riddled road. “Lesbians?”
“Lost, Max. We’re lost.”
“We’re just… we’re in geographic flux.”
“Right. So… lost,” she insisted, leaning her head against the window.
“That’s debatable.”
Slowly, Laura turned her head, still leaning against the cold window, to give her boyfriend a knowing look. Before she could think of a witty reply, the car hit a pothole, and the resulting jolt sent Max’s phone, which had been resting on the dashboard, flying towards the floor. She quickly snatched it out of the air and carefully rested it back where Max could see it—not that it was of much use, now. Earlier, it had been displaying their route clearly on a detailed, digital map, but now, thanks to the lack of signal, it was about as helpful as a rock.
“Nice catch, honey.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a pleased smile. “Man, the roads are definitely getting worse out here.”
“I guess it’s all part of the rustic summer camp experience.”
“Oh, right, that’s where we’re going? I lost track like two hundred miles ago…”
“Two hundred miles ago, huh?”
“Yeah.” A beat of silence passed between them. “You know what, Max. It’s okay. It doesn’t make you any less of a man.”
“You know if Columbus hadn’t gotten lost and landed on these golden shores, there would be no United States of America. Goodbye hot dogs. See ya later, apple pie.”
“Columbus never actually landed in North America.”
“What are you talking about?” Max stole another glance at her, features riddled with confusion, before turning back to the road.
“Didn’t even know he wasn’t in Asia.”
“Are you serious?”
“Just another guy who didn’t want to admit he was lost.”
“Well, ‘just another guy’ who’s got a whole day named after him, so… Put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
“Oh my God— Okay, just get us to camp already, before I roll my eyes out of my head, please.” Despite the mild frustration over being lost in the middle of nowhere, soft laughter still made its way out of her.
“I’m working on it. I’m working on it,” Max nodded confidently. Just as it had been doing for the past God-knows-how-many hours, the car continued its merry way down the unfamiliar, winding woodland path. It was only a matter of time before they hit a fork in the road, Laura thought, and clearly their no-bars phones would be of no help, so she turned in her seat and rummaged around in the backseats, sure that there must be a map of some kind somewhere back there. Just as she thought, underneath a few leaflets and stray receipts sat a map, neatly folded and ready to open up and guide them.
“Ah, viola!” she quietly exclaimed, moving the phone from the dashboard and using the space to rest the map on as she unfolded it.
“What is that?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“No but seriously, hun, what happened to the— the normal map?”
“This is the normal map.”
“The one on my phone.”
“No bars,” she explained, amused as to how he hadn’t realised that fact earlier.
“Of course not,” Max said after a defeated beat of silence.
“Okay, let’s see… So, we are… Huh. Well, I guess they don’t put summer camps on maps. Have you seen any signs for it?”
Max stared at the map in her hands, studying the twists and turns of the lines. If Laura knew anything about Max Brinly, he was likely still feeling the defeat of having to admit he had gotten them lost. It was eating at him.
His staring lasted much too longer than it should have, however.
“Hey, eyes on the road.”
Max dragged his gaze back to the windshield, back to the gravelly road, back to the never-ending trees… and back to the strange, pale, hunched figure sitting in their path.
“Whoa—” he gasped, instinctively pulling the steering wheel to one side, then the other, desperately trying to avoid whatever that thing was whilst also attempting to keep the car on the road.
“Max!”
The car swerved, and swerved again, and before Laura could register the feeling of the car’s tires falling off the road and onto the soft ground of the woods, the car had already crashed through the fences and was hurtling down a slope, further and further into the trees, further and further away from the road.
To say it was bumpy would be an understatement. God bless the fellow who invented seatbelts, and God bless herself for having the sense to use it, because if it weren’t for that thin piece of polyester strapping her to the seat, she was sure she’d have been through the windshield in seconds. Tree roots threw the tumbling car this way and that, and as she gripped her seat and tried to stop herself from being thrown around herself, Max desperately fought with the steering wheel and pressed down on the break so hard she thought his shin might snap.
Eventually, after what felt like hours, the slope evened out, the car slowed, and Laura and Max came to a stop in a small opening in the middle of the wilderness.
“Are you okay?” were the first words out of Max’s mouth. He sounded breathless, flustered, and in shock, which matched Laura’s own current state perfectly.
“Yeah, yeah. I mean… still in one piece.”
“Jesus Christ, what do you think that was? A bear?”
“What? No, no, Max, that wasn’t a bear.”
“What was it?”
“I think it was a person…” she trailed off, unsure of herself. It had all happened so quickly, the figure was there and then it wasn’t, they’d barely gotten a glimpse of it before the car had flown off of the road.
Max’s face dropped, features suddenly stony. “Laura, are you serious?” His eyes were wide and full of concern. “Do you think we hit a person?”
“I don’t know… I mean it was really close. Like really close, but maybe we didn’t… I don’t know.” Her words came out jumbled and shaky, the shock making her stutter through the syllables. She didn’t like the feeling of weakness, of helplessness. Her limbs were shaking just as much as her voice.
Max shook his head and got out of the car, making his way to the front to inspect the damage. After a mere second of looking at it, he looked back up at Laura with sagging shoulders and a sombre look.
“What is it?”
“I really F’d this car up.” He bit down hard on his lip and stared at the bonnet.
“Maybe it looks worse than it is.”
“Ah… I should check out the damage before we try to start it up again,” he insisted, trying to keep the panic from seeping into his voice and failing ever so slightly. “Hun, could you grab my uh— my toolbox, from the trunk?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Laura nodded and clambered out of the car slower than Max had. Her legs felt like jelly. Outside it was unnervingly quiet; only crickets and a handful of birds were audible, and walking through the forest’s detritus was louder than either of those. Each step felt like a clap of thunder in comparison to the wilderness’ peacefulness.
Using her phone as a torch, she took a quick glance at the front of the car.
“It’s not so bad,” she said over Max’s shoulder.
“My mom’s gonna kill me.”
“I’ll… I’ll go and get the toolbox.”
Walking around the car, it was reassuring to see that only the front of it was seriously damaged; the rest of the body had merely suffered some scratches and other minor cosmetic damages, but nothing too serious. The trunk was still in tact and opened with ease, and within sat their bags and an array of other miscellaneous items that Max hadn’t bothered to clear out before he threw their things in and left for camp with her.
After pushing a bag out of the way, she found his toolbox at the back, along with a small pile of letters and papers. Laura, most of the time, was never one to snoop, but the large, red, REJECTED stamp across the top of the first letter she saw was hard to miss. She daren’t pick it up and actively snoop, but a glimpse (or two) of the letter provided her with enough information.
Dear Mr Brinly… Thank you… Landis University… we have reviewed your application… unfortunately… unable to accept…
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she murmured, sighing as she heaved the toolbox out and closed the trunk, attempting to push all thoughts about that letter to the back of her mind. She’d bring it up eventually—but not now. There were more important matters at hand.
“Thanks hun,” Max smiled as he took the toolbox.
“D’you need a hand?”
“Yeah, actually, if you could just shine a light right here… Yeah. Perfect, thank you.”
The stillness of the wilderness was interrupted by the sounds of Max working on the car; soft metallic clangs and scrapes shattered the quiet, but Laura couldn’t find it in herself to care any more.
“The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Just picture yourself curling up in front of a big ol’ fire pit singing campfire singalongs.”
Laura let out a small, tired chuckle. “I don’t think people curl up right in front of big ol’ fire pits.”
“Why not?”
“Uhh, they don’t wanna catch on fire?”
“Then… picture yourself curling up in front of a big ol’ space heater.”
“Well, anywhere’s better than here…” she replied, letting her gaze drift away from the damaged car and towards the trees surrounding them.
Her phone flashlight was strong, but not strong enough to cut through the darkness past the first row of trees. It was like looking into a black hole, and it was nothing short of unnerving.
Curious, she took a step towards it. And another. She tuned into the sounds of nature—the crickets were still going strong, some birds continued chirping, and once again the soft crunch of the floor under her feet was louder than anything else. So loud, in fact, that she almost missed the strange whisper that came from behind the trees.
Almost.
“Silas…”
Laura frowned and shook her head. Surely she had just imagined that, right?
She took another step forward. And another.
“Where are you going?” Max called out from behind her.
“Just, over here…”
“Just… stay there for a second, okay? I’m almost done.”
She continued to shine her phone’s light into the darkness, and still, nothing was visible. Her heard pounded in her chest, though she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d only imagined that whisper, after all. Though it wouldn’t do any harm to check it out.
“My God, Max. Hurry up!” she called over her shoulder. Her nerves were making her agitated and snappy, and it pissed her off. Max seemed to catch on to this and, after another quick examination of the car, made his way over to where she stood, staring into the trees.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m worried that there’s somebody down there.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah— they could be hurt. I don’t know.”
“I didn’t think we actually hit anyone—”
“Well, I don’t know— I just, I heard something, okay. Like, a— a woman.”
“…Do you think we hit her?”
Laura paused for a short moment and looked him in the eyes. There was nothing but concern and care in the way he looked back at her, and it eased her nerves. Max had her back. She had his. They were together, and that made everything better.
“I just want to check it out,” she replied, calmer.
“Okay, alright. Just don’t go too far, okay? Be careful.”
“Yeah, I will.”
He helped her down the small ledge that lead into the trees, his calloused hands gentle as he stopped her from slipping.
“Okay, thank you…” she hopped onto the ground below and looked up at him, where he crouched on top of the ledge. “Good luck with the car.”
Her phone’s flashlight continued to try its best as she slowly walked around, and despite her nerves and completely exhausted state, Laura took deep breaths and decided to walk with long, confident strides. Fake it ’til you make it, after all.
From where she stood, there was only one visible path, and so she strode along it in search of something—or nothing. She still wasn’t quite sure whether she truly heard someone speak. She would simply walk a short distance, look around, reassure herself there was nothing out there, and return to Max and get the hell out of the woods.
As she made her way down the path, stepping over overgrown, twisting tree roots, her phone’s light fell upon an old, worn poster nailed to one of the trees. Upon closer inspection, its edges looked burnt, and the poster was so discoloured it was almost too hard to read it.
“Harum Scarum…” she read aloud quietly. A poster for a travelling circus of some kind. Why it was seemingly in the middle of nowhere, she had no clue, but there was little point in dwelling on it. Onwards she went, though she noted in the back of her mind that she shouldn’t go much further. The thought of being too separate from Max in a place like this wasn’t good.
A minute or so further ahead, the trees appeared to become more twisted, branches stooping low and creating an almost tunnel-like effect. At the end of the strange, deformed flora sat what looked to be the remnants of a cage, metal bars warped and rusted over. The trees beside it had begun to grow around it, roots firmly planting the remains of the enclosure to the ground.
“What the hell?” Laura murmured as she crouched beside it. On the floor to her side sat a wooden sign, broken and rotten, but the painted letters on it were still legible.
Silas the Dog Boy, it read. She stared at it for a considerable amount of time, until it clicked that it must have been related to the poster she found not too far back. Silas must have been an act for that peculiar travelling show, though it once again posed the question of why here? Why stop to perform in the middle of nowhere?
An owl cooing in the distance snapped her out of her train of thought. She shook her head, her shoulders, scrunched her eyes and rubbed them until phosphenes danced in the darkness, and hauled herself back to her feet.
She should head back. It was clear she wouldn’t find anything out here; her active imagination had simply freaked her out. Everything was okay—nothing was out here except some old remains of a long-gone travelling show.
Luckily, it was easy enough to follow the same path back to the car, and when the sounds of Max tinkering with the bonnet became faintly audible, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Silas…”
Laura stopped in her tracks. She turned around, whipping her phone to shine its light in the direction of the sound. Nothing.
Picking up the pace, Laura continued.
“Silas…”
Her heart pounded.
“Silas…”
She stopped again, frustration and fear getting the better of her. “Who are you? Where are you?” she called out, frantic. Her breath became shallow and rapid as she turned on the spot, desperately trying to spot the source of the voice between the trees around her. She couldn’t hear Max any more. Just the crickets. The birds.
The very quiet sound of someone moving close to her shoulder.
“Silas,” it whispered, inches away from her ear.
Laura screamed.
She burst into a sprint, leaping over the overgrown tree roots and ducking beneath low-hanging branches, legs pumping and arms swinging as she ran for what felt like miles. The end of her ponytail smacked against the droplets of sweat on the nape of her neck.
The relief that flooded her when Max and the car came into view was unlike anything she’d felt before in her entire life; it was so intense she almost began to cry.
“Max!” she called out, scrambling up and over the ledge he’d helped her down earlier.
Max closed the bonnet of the car and looked up with a smile that immediately disappeared upon seeing her panicked state. “Hey! Hey, hey hey. What’s wrong? What’s wrong, Laura, is everything alright?”
“Max!” was all she could manage again as she fell into him, wrapping her arms around him and taking in his comforting, familiar scent with each heaving breath. He held her tightly, and gently kissed the top of her head.
“Talk to me, what’s going on?”
“Holy shit,” she breathed, “there was something out there, there was— there was noises all around me, and—”
“Honey. Honey, honey, take a breath… it’s okay— it’s the woods, there’s a lot of stuff out there. There’s animals… it’s easy to freak yourself out.”
“No,” Laura insisted with a shake of her head. She knew there was something out there. That was not a figment of her imagination, not a result of her tired mind. There was something out there, and it knew they were here. “Can we just leave— please?”
“Yeah! Yeah, let’s go,” Max nodded, guiding her to the passenger side before hopping into the driver’s seat. The doors slammed shut, and neither bothered with their seatbelts in their desperation to leave quickly.
“You alright?” Max looked over at her as he started the engine, which successfully switched on and began softly rumbling. “Yes! There we go. Purring like a kitten.”
“Max, come on!”
“Here we go, here we go. We’re getting out of here.”
He put the car into reverse and pressed down on the gas. The tires span. And span. And span. They didn’t move an inch.
Mud splattered onto the tree in front of them. They’d gotten themselves stuck in a ditch, and the car refused to reverse out of it.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Laura said. “Max!”
“I just… Ok, give me a minute. Give me a minute.”
“We’ve got to go, Max! Please!”
“Laura, you’re not helping—”
“Come on, can you just— I am trying to get us out of here! Which is—”
“Alright, enough!” Max cried out, gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white. The visible regret on his face was instant. “Shit, I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Laura breathed, rubbing her eyes. “I’m sorry too. We’re both stressed, and tired, it’s not helping. Try the gas again.”
Max eased his foot onto the gas once more, and the tires continued to spin in one place, sinking deeper into the mud. He sighed.
“We’re okay. We’re safe in the car, really. We’re gonna be okay.”
Laura nodded, looking over at him and his comforting, familiar face. His cheeks, his chin, his nose were covered in splatterings of freckles, and his soft brown hair flopped slightly over one of his sea blue eyes. Things weren’t great, but she was with Max. And, just as he said, they’d be safe in the car—right?
There was a blur of motion through the window beside Max, and in a split second, a man was peering through to them. The car’s interior lights illuminated his face in an unsavory way, making him appear sinister and, quite frankly, terrifying.
“Jesus, fuck!” Laura cried out, jolting in her chair. Max turned to look out of his window and jumped back towards her.
“Oh, fuck! Oh my God, my heart just exploded.”
The cop nodded to the window. His face was thin, eyes tired and lines sunken low into his skin. His lips were set in a straight, stern line. If it weren’t for the obvious cop uniform, she would have been tempted to wind down the window and punch him. “Roll it down.”
Max complied. “Hi, Officer. How are you doing this evening?”
“Are either of you injured?” he asked, looking between them.
“Really, we’re fine. We’re just a little shaken up.”
“Mhm,” the cop nodded once, slowly, squinting at them with suspicion. He moved around to inspect the bonnet, crouching low to get a good look at the damage before pulling himself back up. Staring at them through the windshield, he asked, “Well, you folks wanna tell me what happened here?”
Max looked at Laura, the corners of his mouth downturned.
“Yeah, uhm,” Laura began, deciding it was best to be honest and avoid more suspicion. “We, um… Something jumped out right in front of the car, and— and we didn’t want to hit it, so we swerved, and… Now here we are.”
The cop was silent for a moment. “‘Something’ jumped out?”
“Ah— I’m sorry, it was just— it was so dark, and it happened so fast and they were gone, I don’t…”
“‘They’. Ma’am, did you hit someone?”
“No! No, God no, of course not. But— you know. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Sir,” he said, turning to Max. “Keep the car running.” He moved to the back of the car, and once he was out of sight, Max turned to face her, eyes wide and features riddled with confusion.
“Is this guy like, the all-time scariest cop?”
“I dunno,” she whispered back, “this is my first cop.”
“What, like, ever?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m not a criminal!”
Hooking their car to his own, the cop slowly but surely managed to pull them out of the muddy ditch, away from the trees, the crickets, the birds, and whoever—or whatever—had been determined to shake Laura, and back to the safety of the road. Once they were stable and safe, their car was unhooked, and it was only a matter of time before the cop returned to the driver’s side window.
“Now you folks wanna tell me, just what in the hell you are doing, all the way out here, this late at night?”
“We’re heading up to Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp,” Laura replied. “We’re new counselors.”
“You’re one night early.”
“No, no, we know… um, but we figured we’d get in early and scope it out, y’know? They know we’re coming, we called ahead.”
“And, to be honest, sir, one of us kind of oversold their navigation skills and got us completely lost,” Max added, raising one hand.
The cop sighed and looked at his feet, shaking his head dejectedly. His head was still looking down when his eyes snapped up to meet hers, half concealed by his eyelids. “You’re not going to make it to Hackett’s Quarry. Not tonight.” He looked over his shoulder at the surrounding wilderness for a moment before slowly turning back to them. “Harbinger Motel. It’s the nearest place, you can bunk up there for the night. Okay?”
“Uh… I think we’re just gonna stick to the plan, sir, I mean… Mr. Hackett knows we’re coming early and we called ahead—”
“No, Ma’am. You’re going to head to the Harbinger Motel. Do you understand?”
The tone of his voice demanded compliance. Laura, however, was determined to find a way around this.
“Okay, fine,” she said, feigning docility, “Yeah. We’ll head to the motel. Understood. There’s just one small problem, uh…”
Max grimaced. “I forgot to spring for the ‘middle of nowhere’ coverage plan on my phone.”
“What he means is, we’re lost. Completely,” Laura added.
“Alright, ma’am. Step out of the vehicle.”
Max’s slow “Uhh…” was drowned out by Laura’s exclaim of, “Wait, what?”
“I just wanna show you how to get to the motel on your map there, ‘kay?” the cop explained, motioning to the map which had landed on the far end of the dashboard in their struggle-slash-tumble down into the trees earlier.
“Uh, for sure,” Max said, moving to step out.
“Son, remain in the vehicle.”
Max reluctantly, slowly, sat back in his seat, casting Laura yet another look of concern.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I got it,” she reassured him. She climbed out, map in hand, and placed it on the bonnet in front of the cop. He swiftly smoothed it out and produced a pencil from one of his many pockets.
“Okay, so we…” he paused to lick his pencil, and Laura wondered if such a motion was even necessary, before moving it towards the map and making a neat dot along one of the many roads. “Are right about here. Harbinger Motel… is here.” Another dot was made, luckily not too much of a distance away.
“Right, okay, and where was Hackett’s Quarry again?” Laura pried. The cop’s hand moved to the left, pencil tip pointing in the direction of her true destination, but his hand pulled away in realisation before he could leave a third dot on the map. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. She knew which way to head.
“Well, I’m sure the fine folks at the Harbinger Motel can guide you there,” the cop said, folding up the map and handing it back to her. “First thing in the morning.”
Laura simply smiled. “Right.”
Soon enough she was back in the safety of the car, and Max looked more than ready to step on the gas.
“Harbinger Motel. Stay on the road,” came the cop’s voice once again through the window.
“Wait, but— but what if there’s someone out there?” Laura asked.
“Yeah, I’ll have a look,” the cop replied unconvincingly. He tapped twice on the car roof. “Good night.”
Once again, they were alone, though a quick glance in the rearview mirror showed that the cop was sat in his car not too far behind them, unmoving. Watching. Max stared at him.
“Why is this guy just sitting there?” he asked, frowning at the mirror and looking over his shoulder to squint at the police car.
“He was giving me major weirdo vibes.”
“The dude needed like, at least a dozen showers.”
“Oh my God, I know.”
“What was up with that thing, did you see that?” Max asked, gesturing to his jaw. Laura had noticed the dark stain there on the cop’s face, too, though she had been too preoccupied with trying to get rid of him she hadn’t dwelled on it too much.
“I think it was— was it blood?”
Max pulled a face and looked over his shoulder once more. Eventually he turned back to the wheel and braced himself to start driving. “Ah, man.”
“Alright, let’s get back on the road.”
“Yes,” Max nodded, relieved, as Laura showed him the map with the marked locations.
“I think I’ve had enough woodland encounters for one night, thank you very much.”
“Agreed… so, where’s this motel?”
“Okay, so we’re here,” she pointed at the first dot, then moved to the second, “and the motel is here.”
“Okay.”
“But we’re going here.” She pointed to an area off to the left.
“What’s there?”
“Hackett’s Quarry.”
Max paused for a moment in awe. “How’d you do that?”
“I dunno, kinda… tricked him into showing me.”
“Very slick,” he grinned, laughing. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just get to the motel? Just listen to this guy’s advice?”
“Honey, you really wanna listen to the advice of some creep ass cop, who told us in the middle of the creep ass woods to go to some creep ass motel?”
“…No, that sounds terrible.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s hit the road, shall we, ma’am?” The engine’s rumbling was comforting as the car started back up and continued down the road.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, leaning back in her seat for a second before sitting back up straight. “Ma’am? Oh my God, if he called me ‘ma’am’ one more time I was gonna shove that badge up his dickhole… Seriously, do I look like a ‘ma’am’ to you? I’ve got like twenty years before I’m a ‘ma’am’!”
“Mh-hm,” Max nodded, keeping his eyes dead on the road. He was just as unconvincing as the cop had been.
“What?”
“I… Twenty’s… debatable.”
“Easy.”
“I mean, I’m kinda into ma’ams.”
“Okay, we’re done here.”
Their laughter faded into comfortable silence as the car continued down the road, away from the cop, away from the motel, and towards their true destination.
Seeing the Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp sign come into view half an hour later, along with the main cabin, was nothing short of relieving. It had taken them a damn while to get there, and now it was well past midnight, but knowing they succeeded eventually was enough.
Seeing the lack of lights, people, and general signs of life, however, was unnerving.
“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Max said as they pulled up and got out of the car. “There’s nobody here. We drive all the way the fuck out here!”
“Max, can we just look around before we jump to conclusions?”
“Did you actually even talk to Mr. Hackett or did you just leave a message?”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“This!” he said, exasperated, as he threw up his hands. “This is the difference!”
Refusing to admit defeat, Laura made her way to the main entrance and knocked on the door. “Hello?”
“I guess he doesn’t check his voicemail,” she heard Max murmur from off to the side.
“How was I supposed to know that?” she snapped, before pointing at the other car parked not too far from theirs. “I mean, clearly there’s somebody here.”
“Yeah, or it’s just an abandoned car and this is a complete waste of time.”
“Why would there be an abandoned— Look, Max—”
“I’ll be at the car,” Max said, exhausted in every sense of the word.
“Max, come on,” she pleaded as he opened the driver’s side door. “Max, don’t be a dick.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, throwing his hands up one last time. “I’m sorry.”
Laura knocked on the door again, yet still there was no answer. It was locked tightly shut. She had to rely on her phone’s flashlight again as she looked around. It was quiet and still. Crickets. Birds. Thankfully, no disembodied voice.
She wistfully looked at the large map standing outside of the cabin. She had been so excited for camp to start, to spend her summer before college being a counselor with Max, but the events of the night had dampened her enthusiasm. The camp’s slogan, ‘What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger’ written in cursive at the bottom taunted her. She pulled herself away from the map and kept looking, praying she’d encounter someone, but ended up finding the entrance to a cellar of some kind around the corner.
The doors were chained shut, which was suspicious enough. When she leant down to peer through the gap, however, she could have sworn she saw motion from inside. It wasn’t unlike the strange hunched figure they’d almost hit on the road—it was curled in on itself, facing away from her, but the darkness of the cellar made it impossible to make out any details. She wasn’t even sure if it was a person, or just an animal of some kind.
It shifted to the side, and in the sliver of light that shone through the gap through which Laura looked, she caught a better glimpse of it. She still couldn’t see clearly, but it looked too much like a person for her to not be alarmed.
“Hey! Hey, are you okay?” she called down, wondering why on Earth they’d been locked in the cellar. A camp employee who’d been forgotten about when they were locking up in the evening, perhaps? “I’ll be right back, I’m gonna get some help!”
She jogged back to the car. “Max! Max, get over here!”
“What’s going on?” he asked, sticking his head out of the window.
“There’s somebody in the bunker. I think they might be stuck!”
“Stuck?” Max got out of the car. “Is it Mr. Hackett?”
“I— I don’t know. Just bring some tools so we can break the lock!” she called, before quickly making her way back to the cellar doors. “We’re gonna get you out of here, okay?”
Max was by her side in no time, tools in hand. “Hey.”
“Wait, what— what are these?” Laura looked down at the tools in question, which were a hammer and a pair of wrenches—not the tools she would have gone for, herself.
“I don’t know, you just said ‘tools’.”
“Why didn’t you just bring the— Doesn’t matter. Look, there’s someone in there.”
Max peered through the gap in the doors. After a moment, he said, “Uhm… I’m not seeing anyone, Laura.”
“No, look, I swear—”
“I’m looking, I am.”
“Let me see.” Max moved and she took his place, looking through the gap once more.
Nothing. No one. She frowned.
“There was definitely someone there.”
“…Okay. Okay, so…” Max lifted the tools in his hand, and after a moment of thought, Laura took the wrenches. She was pleased with how swiftly and smoothly she broke the lock that held the chains together, using the wrenches to pull and break it off.
“Damn,” Max exclaimed, impressed. She grinned at him.
Together, they heaved open the heavy doors and carefully descended the steps inside, both turning on their phone’s flashlights to illuminate the steps.
Max broke the tense silence first. “You’ve seen the Evil Dead, right?”
“Shh! Hello?”
The cellar was dim and dusty, and the last place Laura had expected to find herself in tonight.
“Are you hurt?” she called out to the dark.
“Do you exist?” Max added. Laura playfully kicked him in the foot. As she took a step forward, Max held back, choosing to sit on the bottom steps as she explored the cellar.
“Be careful, alright?” he said, dusting off a step and making himself comfortable. Laura nodded and continued on, though stopped in her tracks at the sound of some commotion from the far end of the room. There came the sound of shuffling, scratching, and then the sudden sound of something small falling to the floor. She shone her light in its direction and found a collar—a peculiar collar; too big for a dog—labelled with the name Ian. She slowly walked over to it, apprehensive but curious.
The collar only had her attention for so long, however. Her light followed small trail of a dark liquid—she hoped it wasn’t blood, but she wasn’t sure what else it could have been—coming from it, which lead to the corpse of some kind of animal, most of its meat stripped clean from the bones. It was unidentifiable, covered in blood, and the sight and smell of it made her retch.
“Max…” she gasped, turning away from the horrific sight. “What the fuck…”
“Everything okay?”
“I— Oh my God…”
“Hon, maybe it was just a possum you saw earlier or something?”
“No, there was someone here, I swear, and… and, oh God, I just saw…”
“Hey, it’s been kind of a night, you know?” he said as she came back towards him. He stood up and brushed off his legs. “Let’s just get to the motel, we can come back here first thing in the morning, we can check everything out, but… I mean you must be exhausted, I know I am. I think our imagination—”
Max couldn’t finish his sentence. To Laura’s horror and shock, something leapt out from the darkness and grabbed him, pulling him to the ground with a cry. It happened so fast, it was all a blur, and it was gone as soon as it appeared, leaving Max on the ground, cut up and bloodied.
“Max?! Max!” she called out, running towards him. “Max! Oh, God!”
He reached up to touch his shoulder, hand slow and shaky, and pulled it back to see it coated in dark, thick redness. “It’s blood…” he said, weakly. His whole left side was coated in it, gashes and wounds barely visible beneath it all. “I think… I’m bleeding a lot.”
Desperate, Laura hooked her arms beneath his shoulders and began to drag him back up the steps, though he was weak, and considerably heavier than her, so each step felt like a Herculean task. Step by step, bit by bit, fuelled by adrenaline and pure terror, she hauled her boyfriend back up to the entrance, to safety, away from whatever the hell was down there.
“There… we… go…” she heaved, bringing him up the last step. He murmured an unintelligible response.
And then was dragged back down.
“No!” Laura screamed, watching as Max’s bloodied body plunged into the darkness, mercilessly pulled away by some unseen thing. He began to scream, crying out in pain and fear as Laura held back tears. She was about to make a split-second decision, decide if she should leap in after him or if that would be pointless, but suddenly she felt a sharp pinch in the side of her neck. A needle? The world around her went fuzzy as Max continued screaming down below.
Everything tilted to the side.
As Laura lay on the floor, feeling her consciousness slip through her fingers, two gunshots rang out, followed by a familiar, threatening voice that cried, “Does this look like the god-damned Harbinger Motel to you?!”
The world went black.
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What My Hero Academia Gets About Superheroes that Western Comics Don't
In Western comics, superheroes are the exception instead of the rule. Special individuals work outside the law, going after villains the regular police force couldn’t possibly handle. Many times, they keep to the shadows, or at least keep a low profile, and often act without much regard for the damage they might do in the pursuit of their world-threatening foes. But in My Hero Academia, there’s no secrecy. Hero is just another job description. Everyone can be one—and if you are one, you most likely went to school for it.
My Hero Academia was inspired by this world of caped crusaders, but the universe of All Might and UA is different from anything seen in the Marvel or DC universes. And yes, I’m including X-Men: Academy X. Just because there is a school for gifted students doesn’t mean society has adapted to include superheroes on the day-to-day level. There’s a reason Xavier’s School for Gifted Students is a secret, private institution. But in My Hero Academia, instead of having superheroes be exceptional, it makes them the norm. Society as a whole is shaped around the assumption that people have superpowers, rather than only a few exceptional aliens, clumsy scientists, lifelong acrobats, and rich men with impressive R&D departments.
Every part of being a superhero is normalized in My Hero Academia. Classes assume superpowers and teach how to hone them into super moves. Being a top hero is a perfectly reasonable dream job. Firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders are people with superpowers suited to rescue and damage reduction, while “normal” superheroes need licenses to operate as a hero in the first place.
Basically, this society has police with superpowers and a super-powered force authorized to act like the police. There’s no vigilante justice because the would-be vigilantes have the legal authority to act, and if they don’t have the legal authority to act they’re shut down by the super-powered police. We see this with Stain, one arc’s main enemy. Of all the characters, Stain hews the closest to a traditional western superhero. He is a vigilante because he takes righting wrongs (or what he sees as wrongs) into his own hands.
Continuing the theme of vigilantism, this arc also features members of Class 1-A getting officially reprimanded by the police for intervening without a license. In spite of saving lives, the law comes down hard on their actions. This is because any legitimacy the superheroes get is from their license. The license isn’t just the go-ahead to use powers in a lifesaving manner, it’s a banner of recognition which says “I can be trusted to intervene here safely.”
The system only works when superheroes get the same implicit trust as other lifesaving professionals, and like those professionals they must be licensed and trained to respond calmly and effectively in crisis situations. High school students are neither, no matter how well intentioned. So the anime makes an important point—a point that many Western superhero comics often fumble badly—that vigilantism is almost always a terrible idea. The romantic idea of a special person righting wrongs that the system ignored or perpetrates almost always falls apart upon exposure to the complexity of real-life society and the fallibility of the people who decide that they are the arbiter of justice, as is the case with Stain.
Importantly, My Hero Academia doesn't shy away from acknowledging this in its treatment of All Might. As the Symbol of Peace, All Might ties with Stain as the most "Western" of the heroes in the series. All Might is an icon, a source of inspiration, and makes himself special in a sea of superheroes. Like Deku, he has an origin story in receiving One For All. But All Might takes a drastically different path than one Superman might fly: He passes on his power and then is forced to retire due to his own injuries. He might be an icon, but the Number One Hero isn't infallible and had to hang up his cape.
Meanwhile, back in the western comics that My Hero Academia draws from, superheroes almost always operate either as unsanctioned vigilantes or as unofficial, deniable allies of the government. Getting caught by regular law enforcement is a quick trip to a long, long jail sentence, as even if they’re doing good they are breaking a staggering number of laws. Because of this, and because the caped crusaders of the comic shop are explicitly exceptional, the comics often focus on why our hero is different from you, the reader. This establishes why the hero exists in their world—how they got their superpowers—and also justifies adding another superhero to the comics world in the real one.
As a result, superhero origin stories are the bread and butter of western comics, as any trip to the movie theater in the last decade or so could show you. Every hero has some pivotal moment in their life when they awaken to their responsibility: the death of their parents, the bite of a radioactive spider, a rocket crash as they flee a dying world.
In My Hero Academia, a superhero’s origin story is in many ways passing an entrance exam. Of course, the motivations behind each student at the school vary and their reasons for wanting to be a superhero are fascinating looks into their personalities, but they don’t have a singular origin moment when they knew they were going to be a superhero. They just grew up in a world where superheroes existed and being one is a valid career path, and they knew what schools to try to get into to become one. Their origin story is genetics, at least when it comes to their powers (Deku excluded, obviously).
This is honestly a brilliant approach to the world of superheroes. Instead of putting all the weight of a character into their origin—the whys and whats that pushed them to don the cap—characters are forced to ask themselves over and over again why they should be a hero. It isn’t a matter of responsibility, as there’s an entire planet of people with powers out there. Different quirks are more suited to heroics, of course, but possessing a powerful quirk doesn’t make a powerful hero by default. Heroes in My Hero Academia have to choose, over and over again, to be a hero. They have to weigh the pros and cons, and are allowed to have utterly banal reasons for wanting to become a hero.
Because of all of this, My Hero Academia is not only a love letter to Western comics, but also an implicit critique of their negative and cynical depictions of society. It keeps the ideas of self-sacrifice, upholding justice, and protecting the weak and downtrodden. But with the general availability of powers and the licensing system, it posits that you don’t need to be exceptional or better than everyone else to become a hero. You can make a difference in society if you do it the right way. So long as you work hard and do it for the right reasons, My Hero Academia says that you can be the hero you always dreamed of becoming—no dramatic origin story required.
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Jeni Hackett is a features writer for Crunchyroll, very rarely blogs at Allons-y Jeni, and is always posting nonsense about anime, science, and more on Twitter @allonsyjeni.
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IS POLITICS DETERMINISTIC?
[Note: If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings. The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html). Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]
For those who might not be familiar with the term, determinism, it is the idea that humans do not really have control over their actions; that people are deceived into believing they do because they are conscious of going through some mental “decision-making” process before they act. Of course, the exception to this process occurs when people react to an unexpected change in their immediate environment.
This would be the case, for example, if one suddenly looked up and saw a ball headed for his/her noggin and the person automatically ducks.[1] Perhaps the reader has noticed that while watching a baseball game and, from time to time, a foul lined ball will shoot directly backwards. The people sitting behind the plate duck when that happens even though they know a fence is there to protect them.
Obviously, there is no decision-making; there is just reaction in those types of cases. But such occasions are rare; the rest of the time people, according to determinism, do more calculating than choosing.[2] Commentators have related behaviorism to determinism. The deterministic argument holds that due to the experiences a person has had, the physiological make-up of his/her body (a product of natural selection), and the conditions that a person faces at a given time, the way that person “decides” to act is, well, determined by those other forces.
That is, the person will always react to any situation by “choosing” the option that the person perceives is best for him/her given the conditions. Since the person has little control over the above listed factors, his/her choice is determined by them. Even in an action which is judged to be a sacrifice, the best action for the person is determined by the emotional cost he/she will bear by doing otherwise.
Now, due to space constraints, the description here is simplifying things a bit, but what is pointed out is that whether it seems to be the best choice – in terms of the person’s self-defined interests – or not, it is. People don’t choose against themselves as that is defined in its broadest terms. And one has very little control over the experiences or situations that “teach” a person what those interests are. In the extreme, this denies the existence of free will.
Applying these ideas leads to the practice, by those who want to solicit specific behaviors, of manipulating the factors of a situation so that the uses of rewards and punishments lead to desired outcomes. Many behaviorist studies are about finding which stimuli, rewards and punishments, lead to which behaviors.
For example, the motivations John R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven[3] identify (coercion, reward, legitimacy, expert, and reference) are different forms of punishments and rewards. For example, expert power indicates that one follows the advice of an expert, not because it is something the person necessarily wants to do, but because not to do so, it is believed, will elicit a punishment of a greater degree. That would be the case if not immediately, then eventually.
The mind computes the expected rewards and punishments and decides to advance as much reward as possible and diminish as much punishment as possible. And all is potentially calculated including the effort or costs involved with the calculations and the time sacrificed by following a course of action. Yes, even laziness is a factor, but whether one is lazy or not in a given situation is the result from prior calculations.
And while such venues where political decision-making takes place, supporting behavioral approaches to the study of politics – and any resulting political posturing – does not explicitly cite this understanding, but they proceed as if people do not have free will and can be manipulated. Their resulting plans seem to assume that this is the case. And another factor is, these studies do not claim to predict individual behavior, but the behavior of collectives.
And this line of assuming is not foreign to most people. Does the typical person ever promise a child extra dessert if he or she behaves in a certain way? Or perhaps stays on a job or in a career because the pay is so good or secure and the alternatives are known to be wanting or unknown? If yes, they have experienced behaviorism at work.
Even those who decide otherwise are so affected but have experienced other prior reward/punishment conditions. The recipient and dispenser of rewards and even punishments correctly predict behavior by providing the correct stimulus. How much of parenting, managing fellow workers, or governing consists of calculating such factors? Intuitively, one can say most of what various “supervisors” consider is what rewards and/or punishments work.
Those who ascribe to this position might sight the patterns that human behaviors follow. With enough knowledge, marketing strategies can do a good job of determining what products will sell; pollsters can often predict which candidates will win. Relatives can tell what a person will do when a life issue arises. Pure free will, it seems, would make these predictions impossible.
The only thing that prevents one hundred percent accuracy in these predictions is that just as in predicting the weather, there are too many factors interacting in highly complex ways that affect one’s decisions.[4] And as with the weather, rates of successful predictions, especially at the individual level, are significantly low. But most government decisions are not directed at an individual level, they aim at affecting populations – there the predicting level is much higher.
At least, that's what pure behaviorists would say. There are few pure behaviorists these days. Historically, the names of Ivan Pavlov, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner can be cited as pioneers in behavioral studies. Any introductory psychology textbook reviews the basic tenets associated with the works of these famous men.
While somewhat tamed from their original constructed view, behavioral studies are still in vogue and used in all sorts of social calculations from psychology to marketing to political and economic analyses.[5] But looking at that history is telling of current educational thinking. The heyday of behaviorism began in the twentieth century. Why did this shift toward behaviorism happen during the last century? At work were several historical trends.
Since the Enlightenment era, in the eighteenth century, science has been on an ascendancy in western countries. Due to the successes it garnered in practical areas such as agriculture and medicine and then industry, people began to rely more and more on the sciences. This process arose and reached its apogee with the technological advancements of World War II and the postwar years.
Until the beginning of the twentieth century though, its influences were pretty much limited to the study of natural phenomena. But starting with the twentieth century, scientific protocols were beginning to be applied to social concerns. Practitioners soon were aware that science's reliance on observable reality limited social sciences to the study of behavior since it was impossible to observe what goes on in the brain – of course, that observation was made at a time long before magnetic resonance imaging was developed.
Behavior was what one could see and what one could measure. Anything else was subject to speculation; at least, that was the case behaviorists made.[6] Practically, scholars who followed the systems approach to social reality began to rely on scientific protocols in their studies. Political science became highly statistical as the methods followed the hypothesis testing format which had been (and still is) the mainstay of the natural sciences.
How this progression of viewing governance and politics from a natural rights view to how that view has affected the study of politics via behavioral studies was reviewed in past postings by reporting on the work of David Easton and the development of the political systems model. The question that remains is how those developments in political science have affected how civics is taught in the nation’s secondary schools. To do that a review of a major textbook of American government will be shared.
[1] For an insightful and somewhat detailed account of what happens physically in brain under such a condition, see Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2017).
[2] Along with this calculating or computing notion, see Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997). Pinker graphically describes this process of computation and demonstrates how complex it is. He adds to this explanatory approach to human behavior the effects of natural selection, another non self-determinate process.
[3] John R. P. French, Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Power,” in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, ed. Edwin P. Hollander and Raymond G. Hunt (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1967), 504-512.
[4] Interested, read B. F. Skinner’s book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Seattle, WA: Hackett Publishing, 2002).
[5] A more current source and directed at training future government bureaucrats is Mark R. Leary, Introduction to Behavioral Research Methods, Seventh Edition (New York, NY: Pearson, 2017). Here again, the sense that people act as a result of the effects of stimuli, does not explicitly claim people do not have free will, but it just about assumes it.
[6] Of course, not all psychologists agreed with this assessment. For example, those who now or then ascribe to the ideas of Sigmund Freud would disagree since the focus of their study is the subconscious.
#free will#determinism#Robert M. Sapolsky#Steven Pinker#behavioralism#John R. P. French Jr.#Bertram Raven#B. F. Skinner#civics education#social studies
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From the ever perceptive and intelligent Jane Friedman:
Amazon
For a very clear and no-nonsense explanation of the Amazon sales rank number: the ALLi blog explains what factors change your sales rank, revealing that steady sales win the game.
An author has recommended using only “clean” Amazon links to your book, especially for marketing and promotion purposes. While you might argue with some of the points made, it never hurts to practice good link hygiene. Learn how to clean up your Amazon links.
Here’s a solid overview for writing and updating your Amazon book description. Veteran publicist Penny Sansevieri offers clear and organized advice. Read it at the Huffington Post.
Facebook
Struggling with your reach on Facebook? By decreasing the organic (non-paid) reach of business pages, Facebook continues to put a lot of pressure on everyone to advertise. This means you have to be smart and strategic about posting content to reach your fans; thankfully, it is possible to improve your reach quickly if you understand how Facebook’s algorithm works. Check out Hootsuite’s guide to Facebook organic reach.
Want to increase your effectiveness on Facebook? One of the leading digital media marketing companies has studied more than 1 billion posts made by Facebook pages and released a report on how to increase engagement on Facebook.
Use Facebook groups to build book buzz. If you’re frustrated with the performance of your Facebook business page, some authors are having better engagement by creating and nurturing Facebook groups. BookBub offers tips.
A very insightful case study on how Facebook ads can spur book sales by author David Penny, featured at The Creative Penn. Suitable for beginners.
More on Facebook advertising: one of the experts in this area is Mark Dawson, who was interviewed at The Creative Penn in 2016. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript.
For authors who advertise (or want to) on Facebook: Learn how to make a Facebook funnel that converts. Visit the Moz blog.
Social media
How to find trending topics on social media. With social media, timing can be everything—and being able to tap into trending topics can help you get your messages in front of the right audience at the right time. Here are 11 ways to find out what’s trending across a range of social media sites.
Want to get better at Instagram? More than 400 million people use Instagram, and in terms of social media engagement, it’s second only to Facebook. But how should authors use it? BookBub has put together an inspiring round up of authors successfully using Instagram for book marketing.
A comprehensive guide to Instagram hashtags. As you may know, one of the keys to growing an Instagram following is using the right hashtags, but knowing which ones to use, and how, may feel like a bit of a mystery. The sharp people at Hootsuite have put together an extensive guide to using hashtags on Instagram.
Why to reconsider using Google Plus for marketing. No, it’s not dead yet! There are still some benefits to spending a few minutes here and there on Google Plus. Read more at Buffer.
Trying to gain momentum on YouTube? The folks at Hootsuite have written a straightforward post with five ways to get more views on YouTube.
Copywriting
The smart people at Moz have presented a detailed list of instructions for how to write and build a product page that has a better chance of resulting in a sale. The strategy is helpful whether you’re selling books, digital products, online courses, or services. Take a look.
A definitive guide to copywriting: Try Quick Sprout’s free guide. It’s not focused specifically on books, but it does offer many best practices for writing marketing copy.
Blogging
This is for serious bloggers only: Many authors want to increase traffic to their website, but don’t know how. Blogging is one of the key ways, but a content strategy is required if you want to see that blogging pay off. This free guide on how to increase your website traffic steps you through the detailed process for identifying what kind of content to write and how to generate traffic to that content. You can read the whole guide online, or it’s available as a free 28-page PDF. Make no mistake: this is hard work. But the payoff is real.
Learn how to write better, customized headlines. If you’re a blogger or frequently producing online writing, then having distinct headlines—customized by social media channel—dramatically affects the number of clicks on and shares of your work. Buffer has put together an excellent guide on what principles to follow based on where you’re sharing the article.
Giveaways, reviews & discounts
Want to easily run an ebook giveaway? instaFreebie is a service for self-published authors that helps streamline the ebook giveaway process. It offers several tiers of service, including a free tier. Features include an email list opt-in, the ability to set an expiration date, and the ability to set a specific number of giveaway copies.
An indie author offers a very detailed history of her Goodreads book giveaways and concludes that it’s best to only give away one or two books at a time, since it’s cheaper that way but offers the same visibility. Read J.M. Ney-Grimm’s post.
Want to create advance review copies of your book? It’s possible through IngramSpark. David Wogahn tells you how. He’s also written an installment on creating ARCs via CreateSpace.
How do you get nearly 100 reader reviews on your book within a few days of release? Author Anna Hackett shares her process at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast.
Is NetGalley worthwhile for independent authors? Here’s a case study that says “it depends.” If you’re doing an aggressive pre-publication push (marketing more than six months prior to launch), the expense may be justified. Read more at the Book Designer.
You probably know about BookBub, but how do other ebook discount services rank in comparison? ALLi offers an in-depth analysis and overview.
Online education
This is one of the most helpful guides I’ve seen on planning, launching, and running your first webinar. You’ll find lots of useful tool recommendations; no guessing required.
SEO
How to learn SEO: The folks at HubSpot have rounded up the best free and paid educational resources for learning about search engine optimization. If you have a website or blog, this is a list worth saving. Read it here. (My favorite resource is Moz, which is at the top of the list!)
How much does SEO affect novelists? Over at The Hot Sheet, we offered in-depth expertise from Pete McCarthy.
Also, take a look at expert digital marketer Pete McCarthy’s presentations on marketing. He’s shared one of his slide packs, which will teach you about many different tools for researching your audience online.
Learn from successful authors
An author who consistently makes a six-figure income from book sales shares his marketing strategies. Note that he has more than 100 books, mostly nonfiction, on the market. Find out more at Written Word Media.
Bestselling author Colleen Gleason discusses how to relaunch and remarket a book after getting the rights back from the publisher. Read the full interview at BookBub.
Romance author J.A. Huss discusses in depth what’s working (or not) for book marketing. She’s stepped away from Facebook ads, but invests heavily—although very carefully—in giveaways. Read the interview transcript at the Creative Penn.
Marketing ideas and roundups
Here’s a 98-item list for planning a book launch or even re-marketing your book. It’s by the marketing team at BookBub. They’ve divided it into useful categories, such as “Create Box Sets and Bundles,” “Run Price Promotions,” and “Participate in Live Events.” It’s nearly guaranteed you’ll come away with at least one new action step.
Interactive and free how-to guides to launch your book, product, or business: It’s called “Startup Toolkit,” but writers of all kinds will find these free tutorials useful for book and product launches. Each tutorial includes an article, a step-by-step workflow, and a ready-to-use project template. Topics covered: get press coverage, launch a Kickstarter, earn traffic from online communities, and much more. Check them out.
Marketing tools and resources
Customizable and comprehensive book marketing checklist. If you’re not familiar with Tim Grahl’s work, you should be! He produces some of the best informational resources for authors I’ve seen, often focused on book marketing. His latest resource is a definitive checklist for book marketing that is customizable and easily printed.
Trying to guess someone’s email address? Use this tool very wisely—that is, not in a way that will encourage you getting blacklisted: Email Hunter. (It even works for my website!)
How authors can market books online to children under the age of 13: Author Karen Inglis discusses the tools and communities that can help. Read at ALLi.
Tools and templates for authorship and book marketing: Author Jenny Blake has shared all the tips and materials she used to help her write and market her book Pivot. It’s an impressive collection of resources that is sure to inspire your next project. Take a look. (Also, in this excellent case study, learn about Jenny Blake’s podcast-focused launch plan for her second book, Pivot.)
The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) offers formal service ratings of author services. Over time, ALLi has been offering more and more watchdog-type content at their website, and they now offer a formal area devoted to ratings of specific publishing companies. Take a look.
Here at my site in 2016 (in case you missed)
Should You Pay for a Publicist?
How to Find and Work with a Book Publicist Successfully
Getting Ready to Launch a Book? Start with These 5 Questions
How to Find and Reach Influencers to Promote Your Book
How to Be Active on Social Media Without Losing Your Mind
The Pros and Cons of Using a Facebook Profile But Not an Official Page
How to Grow Your Email List
How to Start Blogging: A Definitive Guide for Authors
Are Paid Book Reviews Worth It?
#social media marketing#book marketing#book publishing#publishing#self publishing#self-publishing#self publish#authors#indie author#hybrid author
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NPR News: Ford Gives New CEO Jim Hackett A Big To-Do List
Ford Gives New CEO Jim Hackett A Big To-Do List
Hackett's job description: Prepare Ford for a future of self-driving cars and keep thing profitable by selling trucks. While Hackett has a unique set of skills, that's still an extremely tall order.
Read more on NPR
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Volkswagen investment vaults Argo into top ranks of self-driving firms
Volkswagen investment vaults Argo into top ranks of self-driving firms
DETROIT (Reuters) – Volkswagen AG’s $2.6-billion investment in Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) Argo AI self-driving unit, announced on Friday, immediately vaults the two-year-old Pittsburgh-based startup into the top ranks in the sector.
Ford President and CEO Jim Hackett, Argo AI co-founder Bryan Salesky and VW CEO Herbert Diess appear with a prototype vehicle after announcing a joint investment in…
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Volkswagen, Ford team up to build vans and pickups
DETROIT — Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co on Tuesday set an alliance that combines forces on commercial vans and pickups and said they were exploring expanding into joint development of electric and self-driving technology, actions meant to save the automakers billions of dollars.
Ford and VW announced their partnership against the backdrop of the Detroit auto show. The partnership, which starts with sales of vans and medium-sized pickups in 2022, will not involve a merger or equity stakes, the companies said.
Volkswagen and Ford said they also are exploring potential collaboration on electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and mobility services.
Unifor finds ‘new allies’ in Ontario, Ottawa in fight to keep GM’s Oshawa plant open
Canada ‘very important’ to Fiat Chrysler, CEO says, promising to add production — somewhere
Sorry Detroit, the next North American car recession has already started
The two automakers explored closer cooperation as trade frictions force carmakers to rethink where they build vehicles for Europe, the United States and China.
The expanding alliance highlights the growing pressure on all global automakers to manage the costs of developing electric and self-driving vehicles, as well as technology required to meet tougher emissions standards for millions of internal combustion vehicles they will sell in the years to come.
Ford Motor Co. President and CEO, Jim Hackett, left, meets with Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen AG, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019, at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Slowdowns in the world’s largest auto markets — China and the United States — have ratcheted up the pressure to cut costs.
In June 2018, Ford and VW revealed talks about an alliance in commercial vehicles and added they were looking at other joint projects.
Executives with both companies have talked about the potential savings of a deeper alliance, and VW officials have talked openly about building their vehicles in Ford plants, and Ford using the German automaker’s electric vehicle platform.
The tie-up with Volkswagen serves as a big bet for Ford Chief Executive Jim Hackett since he took over in May 2017 from the ousted Mark Fields with the mandate to speed up decision-making and cut costs. Some analysts and investors have been frustrated by Ford’s laggard stock price and a perceived lack of details from Hackett about the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker’s US$11-billion restructuring.
Last week, Ford said it would cut thousands of jobs, discontinue building money-losing vehicles and look at closing plants as part of a turnaround effort for its unprofitable European business.
On Monday, Volkswagen said it would invest US$800 million to build an electric vehicle plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to congratulate the city and state in a post on Twitter the following day.
But the White House has been pushing to end subsidies on electric vehicles that would help the plant and the alliance.
© Thomson Reuters 2019
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"You are the Ref" and Roy of the Rovers comic artist Paul Trevillion's latest exhibition opens tonight
“You are the Ref” and Roy of the Rovers comic artist Paul Trevillion’s latest exhibition opens tonight
Paul Trevillion – Self Portrait You Are the Ref and Roy of the Rovers comic artist and illustrator Paul Trevillion‘s latest exhibition opens tonight at the recently-opened Black Gallery in Tring, Hertfordshire. Paul himself will be at tonight’s private view of the new exhibition and free tickets are still available. Paul Trevillion – described as the “Leonardo of line” – is a globally acclaimed…
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Hyperallergic: Perfection of Form, Color, Space, and Light
Installation view of “Excavations & Certainties: Theresa Hackett and Shari Mendelson” at John Molloy Gallery (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)
Sometimes an exhibition comes along in which the work of two or three artists unexpectedly fuses into a construct of uncanny, unitary perfection; where the forms, colors, space, placement, and light interact with a transcendence that turns the installation into its own immersive entity.
This doesn’t happen very often. The only instance from my own experience that springs readily to mind is a 2014 exhibition at Valentine, the sorely missed artist-run space in Ridgewood, Queens, which featured the paintings of Patricia Satterlee and the sculptures of David Henderson and Jude Tallichet.
But as I walked into Excavations & Certainties at John Molloy Gallery on the Upper East Side, a two-artist exhibition pairing Theresa Hackett’s paintings with Shari Mendelson’s sculptures, a similar sense of perfection imperceptibly set in, a seed of tranquility growing into an enveloping presence.
Shari Mendelson, “Blue Hippo 1” (2012), repurposed plastic, hot glue, resin, acrylic polymer, tea bags, paint, 7.5 x 5 x 12 inches; “Animal with Vessel in Net” (2017), repurposed plastic, hot glue, resin, acrylic polymer, paint, mica, 28 x 15 x 15 inches
Several factors contributed to this sensation, but the overriding one was light. The gallery, which is a single, snug room with a foyer on one side and an office on the other, is graced with a corner casement window, through which an abundance of daylight softly bathes the space. The artworks by turns reflect and absorb it; Hackett makes materials-based paintings in which thickly worked surfaces blossom into three-dimensional disks and lozenges, while Mendelson makes vessels out of recycled plastic that hover between the primeval and the surreal.
The first thing to grab your attention is the window, where two Mendelson sculptures are perched on pedestals (“Blue Hippo 1,” 2012, and “Animal with Vessel in Net,” 2017); the next thing you notice is the adjacent white mantelpiece, over which Hackett’s painting “Before the Rain” (2017) hangs off center. Beneath it sit five more sculptures, the self-descriptive “Blue Vessel with Long Neck” (2017), “Brown Animal” (2011), “Winged Animal with Vessels” (2015), “Three Vessels with Exoskeleton (Ochre)” (2017), and “Round Gold Vessel with Decorative Long Neck” (2016).
Hackett’s “Before the Rain” is executed, like virtually all the other works of hers on display, in acrylic, gesso, Flashe, marker, clay, and diatomaceous earth on a wood panel. A symmetrically composed, funkily rendered abstract landscape, the composition is bisected by a striped path or stairway, which is flanked on either side by looping lines that appear to be vestigial tracings of a scrubbed-off image, the contours of an absence.
Theresa Hackett, “Before the Rain” (2017), acrylic, gesso, Flashe, marker, clay, diatomaceous earth on wood panel, 18 x 24 inches
A flat, misshapen clay lozenge, covered in abraded red pigment, is affixed to the left of the stairway/path’s base, while three drops of white paint in the middle of the lower right quadrant balance out the clay object’s weight. Above the horizon line, Hackett has laid down a cloud of thick gesso, its glistening white surface overlaid with a wireframe enclosure, loosely outlined in pink brushstrokes.
The exposure of the gesso on the panel’s surface turns conventional painting technique on its head, pulling the cellar floor to the roof, so to speak, while the seemingly deliberate refusal to distinguish between painting and drawing in the rendering of the shapes, coupled with the clay lozenge’s insertion into the two-dimensional imagery, kick the piece further into its own speculative realm.
Each of Hackett’s panels play with their components of paint, gesso, marker, and clay in decidedly different ways, some taking on the appearance of straight abstract painting while others veer off into a rackety, outsider-ish groove. The gesso, which is clearly used in a way it wasn’t intended, blisters and cracks in places, but that only serves to further assert a surface whose hard reflectiveness is the perfect foil for the translucent plastic sculptures, bouncing the window’s velvety daylight around the room, where Mendelson’s objects capture and contain it.
There is a visceral element to Hackett’s use of red, which sits uneasily on the spectrum between violet and pink, hinting at the color of flayed muscle — not to the point of grisliness, but toward a feeling that her otherwise whimsical shapes are linked to living reality.
Shari Mendelson, “Blue Vessel with Decorative Long Neck” (2016), repurposed plastic, hot glue, resin, acrylic polymer, paint, metal, monofilament, 12.5 x 5.5 x 5.5 inches
Internal crosscurrents also enliven Mendelson’s sculptures, which are combinations of linear classicism, absurd over-decoration, and the aesthetics of the landfill. Her medium is the environmental scourge of plastic bottles, which she cuts, melts, and glues together, enhancing their surfaces with mica and paint.
This makes for the kind of awkward fluidity found in a Sumerian jug or an Egyptian amulet. But these vessels, as the artist frequently titles them, are often so elaborately ornamented with riffs off their original models that they seem to be sitting on the opposite end of the Platonic ideal — transformed into art by the sheer inutility of their forms.
Embedded within their layered surfaces, which are far more lustrous and sensual than plastic has any right to be, you sometimes find identifying signs of the bottle that went into the making of the piece, such as the brand name Pom that pops off the side of “Animal with Vessel in Net.” While similar manifestations of consumerism are more subtle elsewhere, its patent display here — an amphora footed by an unnamable beast that could be a cat or a bull — isn’t as jarring as might be expected: the sculpture is less a replica of an ancient form than a knowing ghost of it, so that the appearance of the brand has the feeling of a sports car parked beside the base of a partially excavated column in Rome. The vessel’s unsettled surface speaks not of historicism but historical simultaneity.
Installation view of “Excavations & Certainties: Theresa Hackett and Shari Mendelson” at John Molloy Gallery
If they are not on the mantelpiece or in front of the casement window, Mendelson’s sculptures are mounted on white pedestals at precisely spaced intervals around the room: on either side of the entrance leading to the foyer, or flanking Hackett’s largest painting, “Folding In” (2017), which features a central kite-like shape in red, gray, and taupe surrounded by gleaming swells of gesso.
These three artworks, with their balance of improvisation and paradigmatic structure, combine to create an iconic, modernist/classicist ensemble, a meshing of unlikely objects emblematic of the interplay between painting and sculpture throughout the room. The individuality of each body of work is energized by the other; the knobs, loops, and lattices of Mendelson’s objects underscore the sculptural presence of Hackett’s clay protrusions, while the tortoise-shell solidity of Hackett’s surfaces seem to turn Mendelson’s plastic animals and non-functioning vessels into clouds and columns of smoke.
The harmony between the art and its surroundings is a source of elation and melancholy; the beauty of the installation, unlike that of the individual pieces, can never be revisited. That the gallery happens to be in a space that was once a private home (and can easily be converted back into one) holds a special poignancy; there is a sense of the serenity that comes from living with art, which is absent from larger, more intentional and streamlined venues. And within that serenity there’s a glimpse of an art world that is less frenetic, less star-struck, less bombastic and money-driven. It’s a nice place to linger.
Excavations & Certainties continues at John Molloy Gallery (49 East 78th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through October 21.
The post Perfection of Form, Color, Space, and Light appeared first on Hyperallergic.
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Bob Hutton, Hillbilly Elitism, Jacobin (October 2016)
The American hillbilly isn’t suffering from a deficient culture. He’s just poor.
J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis comes highly recommended: National Review executive editor Reihan Salam, Silicon Valley scion Peter Thiel, and “tiger mother” Amy Chua all wrote glowing jacket blurbs. Positive reviews have since appeared across the conservative press, in Salam’s National Review — where Vance regularly contributes — the American Conservative, and the Weekly Standard. David Brooks hailed Hillbilly Elegy in a New York Times op-ed that calls for a “better form of nationalism.”
The outpouring of right-wing support shouldn’t be surprising. Vance, after all, is one of them, and Hillbilly Elegy staunchly defends the up-by-your-own-bootstraps fairy tale that capitalism has always used to win support from the underclasses.
But of course, the book is not aimed at that underclass (few books are), but rather a middle- and upper-class readership more than happy to learn that white American poverty has nothing to do with them or with any structural problems in American economy and society and everything to do with poor folks’ inherent vices.
The timing of Vance’s book is interesting, considering that it appeared on the heels of the National Review’s recent attacks on the rural white underclass. Kevin Williamson’s 2014 exploration of poverty in Owsley County, Kentucky — which sits next to Breathitt County, Vance’s birthplace and is one of Hillbilly Elegy’s primary settings — was a kind of coming out of the closet for the magazine’s disdain for this class and its supposed self-imposed degradation.
The magazine’s sudden viciousness toward a population once cheered as the “Reagan Democrats” comes after the white working class flocked to Donald Trump’s revanchist sado-nationalism. Observers like Jeet Heer have clearly linked the National Review’s disdain to the white poor to their fear that Trump is taking over American conservatism, a development they are none too pleased about.
Subsequently, Vance has been pressed into service, doing the rounds of radio and television trying to explain Trump’s appeal to “hillbilly” Americans like himself. With or without Trump, National Review conservatives have decided to display their previously hidden disgust for retrograde whites.
On its face, Elegy’s portrait starkly contrasts with Williamson’s overtly vicious attack. But Vance shares the view that poor whites are bound by their regressive culture. Read Hillbilly Elegy and you will find that “American Dream” is one of Vance’s favorite phrases, although it is rarely explained and readers are left to decide for themselves what the phrase entails. Vance’s publisher calls the book a “multi-generational journey from Appalachia to Yale Law School — two worlds that couldn’t be farther apart.”
By highlighting the distance between the two, Vance can better advance the book’s thesis: that his accomplishments came from hard work and the traditional values instilled in him by a relatively normative family situation provided by his “hillbilly” grandparents (in contrast to his dissolute, substance-abusing parents). Vance’s personal story permits him to claim the term hillbilly, then scold his fellow hillbillies for their cultural and moral failings.
Blaming Everyone But Themselves
“Hillbilly” is a word most Americans are familiar with, with a history going back at least as far as the Gilded Age. In Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, historian Anthony Harkins explains, hillbilly is just one of “dozens of similar labels . . . and ideological and graphic constructs of poor and working-class southern whites coined by middle- and upper-class commentators, northern and southern.”
Epithets like this allowed a “non-rural, middle-class, white, American audience” to “imagine a romanticized past, while simultaneously enabling the same audience to . . . caricatur[e] the negative aspects of premodern, uncivilized society.” Meanwhile, white rural people “reappropriated” the term and others like it (e.g., redneck, brush ape, poor white trash, cracker) “as badges of class and racial identity and pride.”
The term’s popularity survived the era of multiculturalism, Harkins explains, because “[t]he hillbilly’s whiteness . . . allowed the image to serve as a seemingly apolitical site” where “[white] producers could portray images of poverty, ignorance, and backwardness without raising cries of bigotry and racism from civil rights advocates and the black and minority communities.”
For over a century, hillbilly has been used liberally but has likely never been applied to a nonwhite person. It not only denotes whiteness, but also implicitly acknowledges an intra-racial hierarchy (in which, it goes without saying, hillbillies are on the bottom, thanks to their rejection of bourgeois modes of behavior) within it.
Vance spells out his thesis in the introduction: conditions beyond their control brought economic hard times to white Americans, but their preexistent “hillbilly culture” dictates that they react to “bad circumstances in the worst way possible.”
“There is a lack of agency here,” Vance writes, “a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.” Whites, especially young adult males, react to economic crisis with violence or substance abuse rather than escaping their “socially isolated” environment to, say, Yale Law School as Vance did through the support of his always hardworking, always colorful, grandparents.
The story follows the Horatio Alger template, extolling the virtues of “hillbilly culture” while simultaneously scolding it for its flaws. Vance exploits what Christopher Lasch once called the “confessional style” of writing, but for the opposite effect. Lasch lambasted the confessionalist for seeking “not to provide an objective account of a representative piece of reality but to seduce others into giving him their attention, acclaim, or sympathy.”
In contrast, Vance asserts not only that he objectively recounts his own biography, but also that it epitomizes the white working-class experience. If faced with empirical evidence that suggests his experience is more exception than rule, he can always fall back on the position that Hillbilly Elegy is simply his own personal “journey” — a brilliant, infuriating paradox for anyone looking to criticize him for what they might be interpret as his arguments about “hillbillies” as a group.
Vance and his family call themselves hillbillies by virtue of their residency in “Greater Appalachia” — a term he borrows, without attribution, from Colin Woodard’s “Eleven Nations” theory (though he does support his point with a quote from Hank Williams, Jr). Vance uses “hillbilly ” uncritically to describe the people in Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio, and — following Woodward — takes the whiteness of his subjects as a given. He dismisses the usefulness of a discussion about race early on: “I do hope that readers of this book will be able to take from it an appreciation of how class and family affect the poor without filtering their views through a racial prism.”
This is five pages after establishing that “hillbilly culture” is a product of its residents’ “Scots-Irish” ethnicity, a strain for whom “poverty is the family tradition” and the “intense sense of loyalty” and “a fierce dedication to family and country” are leavened with xenophobia and a proclivity toward fighting. Vance sets aside the region’s economic trials and tribulations — to say nothing of the Indian wars or slavery — arguing that this ethnicity fundamentally shaped the area.
He cites a 2012 Discover article for his grossly ahistorical description of Scots-Irish tendencies, but his general assessment echoes Jim Webb’s Born Fighting as well as the work of historians David Hackett Fischer, Forrest McDonald, and Grady McWhiney. The latter two each served as directors of the white nationalist League of the South, an organization that continues to embrace the “Celtic thesis” of white southern society.
This piece of Vance’s analysis smacks of racial determinism, even if “culture” replaces biology in his account. Moreover, his argument falls prey to the same circular logic as the theory’s other proponents. In their contribution to Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction, Euan Hague and Edward Sebesta describe Celtic (or Scots-Irish) culture as a packet of elements “available for reinterpretation and appropriation based on whatever meaning is useful.”
Elements that do not meet the required vision of a Celtic culture can be omitted, whereas others — such as the propensity for violence — can be heralded. That a certain behavior (e.g., violence) is taken as evidence of an individual acting on their Celtic culture thus becomes self-fulfilling: a person exhibiting Celtic behavior is Celtic because the behavior they are exhibiting is Celtic. Not only does this assume a homogenous Celtic culture, but it also suggests that individuals are beholden to their culture when acting in the world.
But Vance now works in Silicon Valley, where neo-Confederate sympathies are considered gauche, so it’s unlikely that this explanation accounts for his use of Webb, McDonald, and McWhiney. Rather, Scots-Irish, hillbilly, and even the term “culture” serve as shorthand that make for a much simpler story than one that explores the contingencies of Appalachian poverty.
After all, the children and grandchildren of Scottish and Irish immigrants live all over the United States; they have married descendants of other nationalities; they are as likely to be rich as they are to be poor. In eastern Kentucky, however, locals of all ethnicities are subject to a continuity of poverty that goes back to the nineteenth century.
And the problems experienced by Greater Appalachia’s residents extend nationwide. To be sure, places with unusually low wages and nonexistent or failing infrastructure — places like Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio — experience them more intensely.
Thomas Frank has called this the “gradual Appalachification of much of the United States”: a leveling of wages and expectations in places distant from Vance’s current home in San Francisco — the most gentrified city in the United States — but certainly not confined to white Americans in the Ohio River Valley. Vance’s view of poverty has profound racial and geographic limits that curtail his ability to understand it.
Even if he truly believes that Appalachian poverty is somehow exceptional, he did not delve into the wealth of scholarship on the subject. Sociologists Dwight Billings and Kathleen Blee’s meticulously researched study of Clay County, Kentucky, The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia, demonstrates that elite families dominated local industry and politics, laying the groundwork for a permanent low-wage economy before the Civil War.
Likewise, historian John R. Burch’s Owsley County, Kentucky, and the Perpetuation of Poverty comes to similar conclusions about the very county Williamson lampooned. (No great defender of the welfare state himself, Burch also shows how local elites used New Deal and Great Society programs to their own venal purposes.)
Unlike in Hillbilly Elegy, in these two books, concrete human action — particularly wealthy whites’ mastery over local politics — explains the grinding poverty that is universally associated with eastern Kentucky. In turn, the “hillbillies” suffer under hegemonic and market conditions beyond their control, not the diktats of ancestral origin.
Of course neither Williamson nor Vance consider these authors, perhaps because they argue that eastern Kentucky residents’ greatest mistake isn’t wallowing in poverty — as Vance suggests — but following the lead of economic elites.
Instead, Hillbilly Elegy invites us to return to the “culture of poverty” theory popularized by Michael Harrington, Oscar Lewis, and Daniel Patrick Moynihanin the 1950s and 1960s. Moynihan, especially, was accused of crafting his proposals around innately racist preconceptions about black families involving single mothers, child abandonment, drug use, and other forms of wantonness that Vance also details in his personal narrative.
By virtue of their whiteness, the images of hydrocodone-addicted “rednecks” become, in the words of Harkins, set apart from politics. Like all other Americans, Vance’s subjects are categorized by their productivity as workers. The author is worried that they aren’t as productive workers as they could be.
Vance’s is an argument that conservatives like Kevin Williamson can get behind because capitalism requires its mudsill. Liberals might also be interested too, since they don’t consider “hillbillies” their political allies and, in cities like Knoxville, Tennessee, they do not properly clean up their yards when academics move to their neighborhood (or so I have been told by more than one liberal colleague).
Vance’s solutions reflect his somewhat milquetoast right-center political commitments. He suggests school vouchers “administered in a way that doesn’t segregate the poor into little enclaves,” so that poor kids can learn to imitate their wealthier classmates. Citing the “outsize role” the extended hillbilly family plays, he also proposes that social services loosen regulations on foster parentage so that grandparents, aunts, and uncles can help endangered children. “Our country’s social services weren’t made for hillbilly families,” he writes.
It’s a somewhat eccentric but fairly harmless idea. But at no point does Vance suggest that Kentucky and Ohio residents might benefit from higher wages, better health care, or a renewed labor movement.
Such suggestions would interfere with Vance’s aims in writing Hillbilly Elegy. The book is primarily a work of self-congratulation, a literary victory lap, and a vindication of a minimalist safety net. Little surprise that David Brooks is such a fan.
Condescension overpowers the love Vance expresses for his family and the “crazy hillbillies” back home. His book ultimately illustrates the oxymoron capitalism and its defenders require: any hard-working individual can rise to the top, but, at any given time, far more individuals must remain on the bottom.
Hillbilly Elegy is misnamed. Elegies are poems dedicated to the dead. The American hillbilly isn’t dead; he’s just poor. The book should have been titled Hillbilly Reprimand, because Vance doesn’t want to mourn the hillbilly — he wants to make him a good worker.
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NPR News: Ford Gives New CEO Jim Hackett A Big To-Do List
Ford Gives New CEO Jim Hackett A Big To-Do List
Hackett's job description: Prepare Ford for a future of self-driving cars and keep thing profitable by selling trucks. While Hackett has a unique set of skills, that's still an extremely tall order.
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