Librarian at the library of congress. All day here at the library of Congress National book festival, we are recognizing and celebrating the importance of reading and authors and books. The library of Congress Makes it easy to do this every year, but the truth is the National Book festival is a huge undertaking. Its a huge financial undertaking. And it has been made possible by generous support from our sponsors. You can see who they are in your program and on the video monitors around the convention center. But we cant take for granted that this event will continue to exist, so i would ask you to consider making a contribution right now using your cell phone. You can send a text to make a onetime gift that will be added to your mobile phone bill. The details are on the screen and on the back of your program, and as soon as you finish making that contribution, please silence your cell phone. And now on to the main event. Id like to introduce cochair of the National Book festival, david rubenstein. [applause] were very honored today to have one of the best selling authors in the country with us today, person who wrote his first book and already on the New York Times bestsell iser list. How many people here have read the book . Wow. Okay. How many people are going to read the book . [laughter] okay. How many people are going to go buy the book today . [laughter] our special guest is j. D. Vance. Im going to ask him to come up now. J. D. . [applause] so thank you very much for coming. Let me give people who may not know your background a little introduction. J. D. Is a native of middletown, ohio [applause] okay. [laughter] and a graduate of the middletown high school. He then went into the marines for four years, served in iraq [applause] and came back, went to ohio state and finished it in two years [applause] then went to Yale Law School, graduated there as a member of the yale law journal, clerked for a federal judge for a year. He is now in the investment world and based in part in bah d. C. In washington d. C. He is married to a former classmate from Yale Law School who is here somewhere, maybe on her way with bringing his twomonthold son. [laughter] [applause] so if you see a twomonthold son somewhere, thats his son. [laughter] so lets start. Surely when you started to write book, in your wildest imagination you could not have thought that you were going to write a New York Times bestseller many your first book. Or did you . No, i certainly didnt think that i would. So was it whered the idea for the book come from . Well, it actually started in law school, and really the genesis was that i was very interested in some of the concepts and the ideas that i wrote about in the book, most specifically this question of upward mobility in the United States. And at yale we had to write this, basically, this thesis by the end of our third year in order to graduate, and i really wanted to write it about sort of the legal and the policy implications of social mobility in the United States or the lack thereof. And the more that i started to talk through the idea and the people that were advising me, the more that especially my primary adviser, a woman named amy chua who herself is a pretty successful author shes the author of tiger author of battle hymn of the tiger mother. And she encouraged me more and more to bring my personal experiences to bear, because she thought that i could write something that was both hopefully intellectually interesting, but also personally and emotionally powerful. Well, i was always working on it parttime. I think it took me two years. I started writing it towards the middle of 2013 and finished towards the end of 2015. The right long and or on computer . My computer, my handwriting is absolutely terrible. Did you have any publisher lined up . This is interesting. It exemplifies something i write about in the book, social capital and social connections can have these important than if its. Because of amy, when i started to think of making this into a book project, if she said let me introduce you to these people i know in the publishing world, one of the people she introduced me to is this woman who became my agent and as i quickly learned, when you have an idea, someone like tina advocating for it, the publisher is relatively easy and that happened with me. The hard part was getting into the publishing world and once i was there wasnt hard to find a publisher. First time of his age shouldnt be hard to write a book and halfway through, how can i get out of this project. Where you in that category . Do you want to abandon it . I definitely did. If my wife is here she would tell you how miserable i was 50 way through the writing process. For me what was so tough is once i got halfway through the book it was too late to give up. I couldnt just stop writing it but writing an additional 40 or 50 words seemed so imposing and i realized what i didnt realize going into this project, i probably had a 10 1 ratio of words typed 2 words that made it into the final manuscript. I didnt realize what a long slog it would be until i was halfway through it and i definitely thought to myself would it be possible to get out of this . Your publisher had some confidence. The initial print run was 10,000. 10,000 and 500,000 about 10,000 is good for a first author. At what point when the book come out did people say there arent enough copies and we have to print more . This happens quickly after the book came out. And two or three weeks there was an interview i did with the american conservative that went viral. A lot of people sharing it on twitter and facebook and i went to check my amazon ranking, your amazon ranking is checking real time how your book is selling, i was checking obsessively every 7 or 8 seconds. I go to check my amazon ranking and it says book is out of stock, we will ship about a week, i realize we dont have enough books out there and that is when they started to turn on the crisis. How many have been printed . I dont know how many are in print. Hard copies we sold just under 1 million and it is a little over 1 million if you count digital copies and all that stuff. [applause] the title, very often authors dont come up with a title right away. Is that your idea for the title where did it come from . Your conversation with my agent, i really wanted the word hillbilly to be in the book title and the reason is i it captured the particular cultural subsegment i was trying to write about, but i also thought it captured the interesting insider outsider dynamic that existed in my family where my grandma would say we are hillbillies, we can college of hillbillies but if anybody called you a hillbilly you have to punch them in the nose. A sort of interesting word that always had a really textured meaning as i grew up so i wanted that word to be in the title but og, had to take a while before i was comfortable with making it hillbilly elegy. To pair elegy with hillbilly there were a couple reasons with that. You are reasonably well known. Can you go to a restaurant with people asking for autographs or selfys . Depends where i am. I get noticed, in columbus i get noticed a fair amount, i get noticed in dc. I get noticed in Eastern Kentucky or southwestern ohio. I was in nashville a week and a half ago and i didnt get noticed once. You have to make a record there. What has been the reaction of your family. Many family secrets people dont want revealed about themselves, everybody has family secrets. What was the reaction of your family to this . I didnt reveal every family secret. I saved that for my second book. It is interesting. In talking to my family about revealing the secrets i think i have noticed a slight tone shift from when i started to write the book from where it is now. People are much more open about spilling the Family History on the pages of a book they dont expect anybody to read. Now we are at the number of copies we sold, there is more sensitivity but some people definitely say it is in the family, we shouldnt tear the familys dirty laundry, some people appreciate that it was an important and worthwhile story to tell, some people come down in the middle. Any of them say how come i dont get royalties from this . I havent gotten that yet but maybe i will now since this is on cspan. Host lets talk about the book itself. I have read it and enjoyed it a great deal. I think its success is three things. One is the writing style is crisp, clear, to the point, second, personal story is extraordinary which is the kind of thing it is almost like a novel. Hard to believe it was true. And the relationship between what is going on in the country, the Opioid Crisis, unemployment, lets go through each of these. First, the writing style, were you a gifted writer in college, law school, where did you get this crisp and clear writing style . Law school helped in that regard. One thing they teach is dont write with a lot of excess verbiage, be clear and concise but engaging and so thinking about how to write as a lawyer, cut out the excess words, definitely helpful but when you ask if i was a talented writer, i dont think i am a talented writer, but it is funny because there is this eighth grade biography i had to write and my family still has it and it is interesting because it is very similar to hillbilly elegy and they pass it around, he was a great writer even when he was 14 years old and when my wife picked it up she will go your family is not being honest. You were not that good a writer when you were 14 years old. I do think law school helped. There is the story i tell in the book where first writing assignment i had in law school i handed in, was pretty proud of it and this Law School Professor headed back and circled masquerading as a paragraph. If you ask if i was a talented writer he would say no. Having had a first book that was very successful normally publishers will go to the author and say you are ernest hemingway, lets have another book, the sooner you get it out the better so surely after you write another book are you speaking of writing one right now . Thinking of writing another book, i eventually will. My view on this is not something i am trying to undertake tomorrow. If i write another book it will be a couple years from now as opposed to immediately. There will be a paperback addiction. Will you edit it or change it or go at it the same way . I will do it the same way. I would like to add a chapter to contextualize the political ideas some have attributed to the book. I had no idea it would be attached, frankly to me a pretty bizarre way, i would like to write a little bit about that, i havent talked a ton about that but it will stay the same. Before the paperback comes out or after the paperback comes out there is supposed to be a movie. Ron howard is producing a movie or directing as well, who is going to play you . I dont know. I want it to be someone goodlooking but not so goodlooking that people are disappointed when they actually meet me. The question i have trouble meeting, who gets into that not too warm not too called category . Host lets move to the second part of white is so successful, your life story. Those who have not read the book i dont want to give away everything but where were you born . Middletown, ohio. Biological mother and father were married at the time. They were. Host did they get divorced afterwards . Guest i was a year old when they got divorced. Host your biological mother was raising you in the early years. And you had a close relationship with your maternal grandmother and grandfather and what was their names . Mama and papa. Their names were bonnie and jim. Host is that hillbilly type word or unique see your family . Guest it is pretty common in a broader culture, not exclusive to billy culture but definitely something people from that region disproportionately call their grandparents. Host people in the east coast say what is hillbilly about ohio, that is the center of the United States, describe your family roots in kentucky, you came to ohio, your family came to ohio. Guest they were part of this migration from Eastern Kentucky, east tennessee, West Virginia to the industrial midwest and when they moved they brought a lot of cultural attributes with them. Even though my family lived in southwestern ohio we traveled to Eastern Kentucky a lot because i spent so much time with my grandparents i spent my formative years in Eastern Kentucky, always felt that with our real homeland and interesting that is a pretty common attitude. There are Country Music songs about this and stories similar to mine where people who grew up in the midwest grew up in michigan or indiana or ohio felt like their home was in West Virginia because they spent so much of their lives in those places and that is where their family was from. Guest host you are growing up and have a stepsister . Different dad, same mom. Host you are raised by your single mother. How did she support herself . Guest mom, i remember, became a nurse sometime after maybe i was 8 or 9 or so, as i write in the book these were good times economically, we were not struggling economically during that period. Before then i dont know. I think she worked odd jobs. My grandparents helped a little bit, certainly one of the stories in the book is after mom was no longer working in nursing things were pretty tough for our family economically. More importantly they were tough socially, a lot of issues. Host your mother was married or had male relationships to People Living with her, four six different times, wasnt that disconcerting . A different man in the house all the time . Host it was an unstable childhood from the perspective of people coming in and out of our lives. I didnt realize what effect that was having on me. I didnt like it when i was a kid, i didnt like that i would befriend this guy or feel of this guy was becoming a father figure and all of a sudden he was out of our lives. I knew that was common. A lot of friends were going through the same thing and none of them like that either. I didnt appreciate the effect it was having on me until i was older and looked back on these things. Host at some point you redeveloped relationship with your biological father and lived with him for a while but that was not a pleasant experience you thought it would be. Guest he had his life together living with my stepmom and they had a happy home life and in some ways i was searching for that family stability in the eighth grade or so when that happened but i also realize i had become incredibly attached to my grandma. Even when i was living with mom as a kid, we would spend a ton of time with our grandparents and his mom struggled with problems we spend more time with our grandparents so there was this weird moment where i was living with my dad and recognized he had a normal home as people understood it but i felt so desperate to get back to my grandmas house and live with her and that is what i did. I dont think i realized until that moment that in my own mind and my own heart she had become chief caretaker. Lived with your biological father, not as happy and experiences you hoped, you moved in with your maternal grandmother and grandfather and he was very close to you so the shock of his passing away, how did that affect you . It affected me in all the ways the death parents affects a young kid. Because of this situation growing up, the revolving door, he was the closest thing i had to adapt during formative years, he took care of, made sure i had all the things kids need and emotional support for me, a sense that if he was around things would be taken care of, and family drama was happening, he never lost his temper or flew off the handle. Mama had a temper, poppa didnt. I think it affected me in a number of different and negative ways but the way it affected me most of all, what came after it, i understood instinctively that poppa was the glue that held the family together and i realized it in a very obvious way when he wasnt there, just what would happen. Host you lived with your mother for a wild but at one point, she is violent with you and difficult to deal with and had a drug problem. Was it like an experience where the police saved you from your mother. Is that fair . I thought about this a lot. I wonder, i was 12. I always wonder if maybe it wasnt quite as dangerous as i remember. I think in part that is because im a lot closer to mom now and in some ways people try to remember things in a way that reflect fondly, i love my mom and we are doing well in a relationship now. I was terrified. I thought we were going to die and that mom was going to try to kill us and the car was traveling very fast and she didnt seem especially stable. I got out of the car and ran and found this woman who called the police and the police came and arrested mom and she was charged with domestic violence. That was a pretty traumatic moment, there is no other way to say it. Host do you go live with your grandmother or go back and live with your mother . For a time i lived with my grandmother. I was always living with her for weeks or months at a time even when things were going well. It wasnt that different, wasnt much of a departure i with the with mama for a while, but that is the way things went with us. When you were growing up, when i was growing up i didnt have the experiences you did but what happens when i was 12 or 1009, how did you recall . Did you have documents . How did you know these incidents so well . Being able to rely on your family really helps. A lot of the stuff i tried to cross reference as much as possible with my hands or my sister or mom, my dad. What happens here, this is sort of here is the draft, the manuscript of this story, what am i leaving out, what am i missing, and i do think going back to how the family reacted to the book is one of the reasons they reacted well, i tried to make part of the writing process, not just sorting from my memory onto the page, i tried to make it a family memoir but as i said in the introduction, i am sure things arent perfect, how i remember them and they are pretty well documented with what is primarily a memoir. Host your grandmother died, it must have been traumatic. Were you living with her at the time . Guest a few months before i left for iraq in 2005. Host you were living with her when you graduated from high school . I lived with her for almost all of high school and left for the marines from her house. Host you were filling out applications for college. And either you thought you couldnt afford college or werent ready, why didnt you go to colle