Kruse: Given the results in Ohio this week, how do you think people should be rereading and reconsidering Hillbilly Elegy?

House: I guess it depends on their political persuasion. I think a lot of conservative people read that book and they really responded to the rags-to-riches aspect of it. I think a lot of liberal people read it and had a lot of their suspicions confirmed. Lots of times a book is what readers bring to it themselves.

Let’s say somebody’s on the fence about voting for Vance. I would hope they would read that book and see the dog whistles and see the lack of complexity, see the generalizations, see the outright falsehoods that are throughout the book. I mean, lots of times in the book when he’s talking about Appalachia, it’s almost like he’s never been to Appalachia. For instance, early on in the book, he says that in Appalachia when there’s a funeral everybody stops their car gets out of their car and stands on the side of the road. Well, I’ve lived in Appalachia my whole life until the past three years, and I’ve never seen that happen. What does happen is people pull over sort of to the side of the road, the same way you would if an ambulance was coming, and they stop as a moment of respect. Nobody gets out of their car.

And I think it’s so telling that this book was pushed as an Appalachian narrative when this man is two generations removed from Appalachia. This is a Rust Belt story, but Appalachian stories, Appalachian literature, is its own genre. In early cinema, one of the most popular movie genres was “hillbilly movies.” We still have a genre of horror that’s very popular called “hillbilly horror.” So there’s a market there, in a different way, for the idea of the hillbilly, more than there is for the idea of the Rust Belt. So that alone is manipulative in that it’s sold as an Appalachian story or a hillbilly story, and if you read the book, you realize that hardly any of it is set in Appalachia.