Hillbilly Elegy

working more than they actually work.
Of course, the reasons poor people
aren’t working as much as others are
complicated, and it’s too easy to blame
the problem on laziness. For many, part-
time work is all they have access to,
because the Armcos of the world are
going out of business and their skill sets
don’t fit well in the modern economy.
But whatever the reasons, the rhetoric of
hard work conflicts with the reality on
the ground. The kids in Middletown
absorb that conflict and struggle with it.
In this, as in so much else, the Scots-
Irish migrants resemble their kin back in
the holler. In an HBO documentary about
eastern Kentucky hill people, the