Hillbilly Elegy

beautiful. I joked with a buddy that if she
had possessed a terrible personality, she
would have made an excellent heroine in
an Ayn Rand novel, but she had a great
sense of humor and an extraordinarily
direct way of speaking. Where others
might have asked meekly, “Yeah, maybe
you could rephrase this?” or “Have you
thought about this other idea?” Usha
would say simply: “I think this sentence
needs work” or “This is a pretty terrible
argument.” At a bar, she looked up at a
mutual friend of ours and said, without a
hint of irony, “You have a very small
head.” I had never met anyone like her.
I had dated other girls before, some
serious, some not. But Usha occupied an