i'm happy to throw my reference

librarian at the library of

congress all day all day here at the library of congress national book festival wein celebrate the importance of reading, authors, andak books. they make it seem easy to do this every year but the truth is the national book festival is a huge undertaking and huge financialyo undertaking. they participate in the programs and video monitoring. we can't take for granted this event will continue to exist and ask you to consider making a contrick ambigous right now using your cell phone. youu can end send a text to make a one time gift that will be added your mobility phone bill. the details are on the back of your program. when you make that contribution silence your cell phone. now onto iton main event i'd lie

totr introduce the cochair of te national book festival david reubenstein. and. hey, we're we're very >> we are very honored to have theth best selling authors in te country with us today. how many people what he had the read th? how many willhe read the book? how many t will by it book toda? our special guest is j.d. vance. i'llll ask him to come up now. j. so, thank you very much for coming. lit me give people who may not know your background a little introduction. j.d. is a native of middle town

ohio.we graduate of the middle town high school. he went intose the marines for four years and severed in iraq. came back, he went to ohio state and finished in two years. he went to yale law school and graduated their as a, member ofa yale law journal. he clerked for a year and now in the investment world based in washington d.c. he's married to a former classmate from yale law school who is here, somewhere, maybe on thent way. bringing his 2-month-old son. so, if you see a 2-month-old son somewhere, that's his son. let's start. when you started to write this book in your wildest imagination, youio couldn't have thought you would write a new york timesll best-seller or did

you?di >> no, i didn't think i would. >> where did the idea for the book come from. >> it started in law school and really the genesis i was interested in the concepts andas ideas i wrote about in the book and the question of upper mobility in the united states. at yale we had to write this thesis to graduate and i really wanted tore write it about the legal and policy implications of soluble mobility in the united states or lack there of. the more i started to talk through the idea and the people that were advicing me the more, especially my primary advisor, a woman named amy who is a successful arthur. >> the author of battle himy the tiger mother. she thought, i could write something thats was

intellectually interesting and emotionally powerful. as i continued to write the book. i was a bit resistant to that as first. i didn't like the idea of opening upe my personal life ad telling personal stories. the more i wrote and had a unique contribution i understood these things from the inside as opposed to an academic. >> you had the idea of writing a book. how long did it take you to write the book? >> i was always working on it part-time. i always had another job. it took me two and half years. yeah, towards the middle of 2013 and i finished towards the end of 2015. >> you write-in longhand or computer? >> i did itt on my computer. my handwriting is terrible. >> did you have a publisher lined up orr i'll write it and then i eat get a publisher.

>> this is something i wrote about in the book about social capitol and social connections can have important benefits. because of amy, when i started to think about making this into a book project. she said, okay, let me introduce you to the i people i know in te publishing world. she introduced me to a woman that became my agent named tina bennett.ve when you have an idea and tina advocating for it, finding a publisher is relatively easy that's what happened with me. the hard part was getting into the agent publishing world. once i was there it wasn't so hard to find a publisher. >> first time authors say it shouldn't be that hard but then they say how can i get out of that. did you want to abandon it.

>> yes, i did. my would could tell you about it if she's here. onceok i was halfway through the book it was too late to give up. ig couldn't just stop writing . writing an additional 40, 50,000 words seemed imposing. i realized then what i didn't realize going into the project. i had a 10-1 ratio of words types to words made it in the final manuscript. ize didn't realize what a long process it would be. i thoughtle would it be possible to get outis of this. >> your publisher had some confidence. the initial print run was 10,000.. 10,000 is not 500,000. it's good fort a first arthur. at what point did people say, there aren't enough copies and we need to print more?

>> this happened relatively quickly afterve the book came o. i'd like to say, two or three weeks, maybe. there was ante interview i did witham a magazine. the american conservative that went viral as they say online. people were a sharing it on facebook and twitter. i went to check my amazon ranking. those who have writtenve a book will know the amazon ranking is a way to check to see how your book was selling. iry was checking it every 7 or 8 seconds.ch i go to check my amazon ranking and says book is out of stock and will ship in a week. i realized, we don't have enough books out there. that's when they started to turn on the presence. >> how many have been printed? >> i don't know how many total are in print. i know in hard copies we sold under a million. it's' a little over if you count digital and audio copies and all

of that stuff. [ applause ] >> theer title, very often arths don't come upco with the title right away. was that your idea from my agent. i really wanted the word hillbilly ine the title. i thought it captured the particular subsegment i was trying to write about and also captured the interesting insider outsideram dynamic that existedn my family. my grandmother would say we are hillbillies but if anyone else calls us a hillbilly punch them in the nose. it was an interesting word that had a textured meaning. ith wanted that word to be in te title.

elegy was something i had to takell a while before i was comfortable making it hillbilly elegy. there weree multiple reasons for that. >> you are reasonably well known. a restaurant without peoplee asking for autographs and selfies or not a problemt yet? >> it depends on where i'm at. back in columbus, i'm noticed a fair amount. sometimes in d.c. a lot back in eastern kentucky or southwestern ohio. i was in nashville a week, week ando, half ago. i didn't get noticed once there. >> you have to make a record there. >> that's right. >> what has been the reaction of yourle family. many family secrets they don't wantre revealed about themselve. you revealed every family

secret. what was the reaction from your family? >> i didn't reveal every family secret.mi it's interesting, in talking with my family about revealing the secrets. there was a slight tone shift from when i started to write the book to where i am now. people areor open about spilling the family history on the pages no one expected to read. i think, now that we are at the number of copies we sold and people talke about the book thee is more sensitivity. yeah, some people say, look, it's in the family. we shouldn't air the family's dirty laundry. someme appreciate it was an important and worth wild story. >> do any of them say how come i don'the get royalties from this. >> i haven't yet. maybeal i will now especially

since this is on c-span. i read the book and i enjoyed it a great deal. i'd say, i think the success is due to three things. one is the writing style is crisp and clear and to the point. not a lot v of excess verbiage. your p personal story is extraordinary which is like a novel. hard to believe it was true. third,e the impact and relationship betweenhe what's going on in the country. opioid crisis and unemployment. let's go through each of these first. first the writing style, were youed a gifted writer in college or lawca school. where did you get this crisp clearah style? >> yeah, i think law school helped a lot in that regard. one thing they teach you is don't writete with a lot of excs verbiage. be clear and direct.

thinking about how to write as a lawyer cutting out the excess words was helpful. people ask if i was a talented writer. it'st funny there was an eighth grade biography. i had to write. it's interesting because it's similar to what's in hillbilly elegy. a great writers whenen he was 14 years old. and my wife said no, your family isis not being honest. i think law school helped. there is a story i told in the book. the first big writing assignment i handed it in and proud of it. the lawof school professor handd it back and circled a session. this is a vomit of sentences

masked as a paragraph. if you ask him he'd say no. >> your first book was very successful. normally publishers will go to the author and say you are earnest hemingway, you are great, let's have another book. the sooner the better. surly, they are asking you to write anotherso book. >> definitely thinking about writing anotherer book. i think i will. my view, it's not something i'm trying to undertake tomorrow. if i write another book, it's a few years around as opposed to immediately. >> there will bea a paper back edition to this. will you edit it or go at it the same t way. >> i'd go at it the same way and addd a chapter to texturize a lt ofri political things people contributed to the book. when i started writing this in

2013 i had no idea it would be attached to the 2016 election in aik bizarre way. i'd like to write about that. i havet not talked a ton about that. otherwise, the rest would stay the same. >> before the paper back comes out. there is supposed to be a movie. ron howard is producing or directing a movie, who will play you? >> um, i don't know. the thing about this is that, i want it to be somebody that's good looking but not so good looking that they are not disappointed when they meet me. yeah, this is the question i have a really trouble meeting. whoo fits into that. not too. warm, not too cold category. >> i'm sure you will find someone. the second point. your life story.

for those who haven't read the book where were you born? >> middle town ohio, southwesternrn ohio. >> yourr biological mother and father were married at the time? >> they were. >> they got divorced thereafter? >> i believe i was a year-old. >> your biological mother raised you for. your early years? >> correct. >> you had a close relationship with your maternal grandfather and mother, right? >> sure. >> what was your name. >> mamaw and papaw. >> is that unique to your family or aerialed name? >> in the hillbilly culture it's not exclusive but something in the region they call their grandparents those names. >> people in the east coast, what ice hillbilly about ohio.

that'sd the center of the united states. you mightyo describe your roots are from kentucky. describe how your family came to ohio.s >> they were part of a massive migration from eastern kentucky. they brought a lot of their culture with them. my family lived in southwestern ohio. we traveled back to kentucky a lot.ye i spentas so much time with my grandparents andt i felt like thatat was our real homeland. that'sha a common attitude. folks there aresi country music songs about this and stories similar to mine when people growing up in the industrial midwest or michigan, indiana, or ohio felt like their home was in west virginia. they spent so much of their lives inre those places. >> okay, you are growing up with

a stepsister or full sister. >> sister. >> different dad, same mom. >> both of you were raised by your single mother. >> yep, how did she support herself? >> so, you know, mom, i remember became a nurse sometime after, you know, i was 8 or nine or so. asas i wrote about in the book those were good times economically during that period of our lives. before then, i don't know. i think she worked odd jobs. my o grandparents helped out a bit. to story in the book is that after mom was no longer working in nursing things were tough for our family economically and tough socially. >> so, your mother, as you wrote in the book was married or had maleat relationships with people

living with her at four or five or six different times. wasn't that disconcerting to you to see a different man in the house all of the time. >> it was an unstable childhood forr the people coming in and ot of our lives. i didn't realize what effect that was t having on me. iki didn't like it as a kid. of i didn't like i'd be friend this guy or he would become a figure and then he was out of our lives. i knew that was common. i knew my friends were going through the same thing and they didn't like it either. i i didn't like the effect it ws having on meon until i got olde. >> at some point, you redeveloped a relationship with your biological father and lived with him for a while and that wasn't a pleasant experience? >> it was pleasant in the sense he had his life together. he was living with my stepmom and had a happy home life.

in someways, i was looking and searching for the family stability. i was in the eighth grade when it happened. i realized i had become attached to my grandma. when i was living with mom as a kid. when my sister and i lived with mom as a kid we spent time with our grandparents. as mom struggled with problems we spent more and more time with our grandparents. there was l a weird moment i lid withrm my dad and recognized i d a normal home as people understood it. i felt so deaspirate to get back to myt grandmothers house. i didn't realize until that moment inam my mind and heart mamaw was my chief caretaker. >> you lived with your father and moved in with your maternal

grandmother and grandfather. >> papaw passed away by then. >> he was close to you. the shock of his passing, how did that effect you? >> in all of the ways that a death ofts a parent effects a young kid. papaw,in because of the situatin and revolving door, papaw was the only person that was close to a dad. he took care of things and made sure we had all of the things kids need. he was an emotional support for me, my sister, and grandmother. if papaw was around things would be taken care of. he was the calmest when family drama happened. mamaw had a tim per. it effected me in a number of different and negative ways.

the way it effected me most of all is what came afterwards. i understood as a kid that papaw was the glue that held the family together. i realized in a nondistinctive way what would happen. >> you lived with your mom for a while and one point she was violent andnd difficult to deal with and had a drug problem as you wrote in the book. what was it like, you wrote an experience when the police saved you from your mother. >> i wonder, i was 12 or 13 when it happened. i think in part i'm closer to mom now andth in someways people

try to remember things in a a way that reflects fondly on people that they love. i love my mom and we are doing well in my relationship right now. i was i terrified. i t thought we were going to die and mom would try to kill us. the car was traveling fast and she was certainly, she didn't seem stable until i got out of the car and ran and found this woman thatt called the police ad the police came and arrested mom and she was charged with domestic violence. youyo know, that was, obviouslya pretty traumatic moment. there was no other way to cut it. >> after that happened did you live with your grandmother or mother after that incident? >> for a time i lived with my grandmother. again, i was always living with mamaw for' weeks at a time.

it wasn't that much of a departure from normal routine. i lived with mamaw for a time and then back with mom. that washi the way things went. >> when growing up, you know, whenwi i was growing up i didn't have thehe experiences you did t couldn'tal totally recall what happened when i was 12, 10, 9. how do you recall that or how do you knowl. the incidents so wel? >> i think this is whereabouting able to rely on your family helps. i tried to cross reference stuff with my sister, mom, dad. this is the draft. what am i leaving out, what am i missing. what didn't i recall correctly. i think how the family reacted to the book. that's one reason because i made

them part of the writing process. it's not just from my memory to the page. i made it a family memoir. i know things might not be perfect but this is how i remember them and they are pretty well documented as much asas you can with what's primary in their. >> your grandmother died as well. that must haveeau been traumatis well. were you living with her at that time? >> i was in the marine corp at the time. this was before i left for iraq in 2005. >> when you graduated from high school you were living with her? >> i lived with her almost all of high school. i left for the marines from her house. w >> so, you were filling out applications for college, either you thought you couldn't afford it or weren't sure you were ready for it.

what w was the reason you didn't go to college out of high school. >> both. didn't have recognize this was my one real opportunity to have anything in the way of a goodee job orca rear. if i screwed this up. that wasce my blowing my one chance. i, didn't want to take it for granted. if i went to college i knelt like i would have taken advantageit of it. this was a significant issue. ity, wasn't just the cost. i knew i'd need loans and knew there were pell grants and things i could take advantage of. withoue that, i knew it would a significant amount of debt to incur. it was the logistical side. filling out the aid paperwork, what did your dad's annual

income and dad's address. at that h time, i hadn't spokeno my legal father in 6 or 7 years. that wouldn have required a certain amount of detective work. there were pages to sign-off on the mass i loans. my grandmother and me, it just seemed people possing and terrifying to go to the entire administrative process. no one had gone through this process andnd i didn't feel comfortable doing it myself. >> you saidhe i'll go to the marine recruiter. >> that's a simple version of what happened. at that point, there are 6 kids in my, generation of grandchildren. my two m older cousins, sister, and younger discuss sins. two of us enlisted in the marine corp. i was encouraged, strongly, by my cousin rachel in the marine

corp. she said, if you are worried about how to pay for school and whether you are ready forr college join the marine corp. thatou would be great for you. you will get out of town and gain financial independence. you should think about doing that. >> you signed up for ta marine your family tell you that was a good idea, your mother?kn >> you know, it's a patriotic community andnd family. people were proud of me but not happy i had chosen. i signed up in 2003. we were just involved in afghanistan. there was apprehension about what joining the marine corp meant and what i was getting myself into. mamaw o framed flies decision aa betrayal. you ar' going off and leaving

me.ys leaving me to take care of myself. you could get hurt. very hard but ultimately she understood why i needed to do it. >> you went to basic training. did youro have any feelings you couldn't get through basic training? >> maybe in high schoolgh i was afraid of the physical demands and so forth. a drill instructor told me, actually. if youns think they will be mean theydm will be newing like they grandma of yours. ize reallyso thought, as long ai couldsi physically cut it, the psychological part would be fine and i'd be able to make it and that wasas true. the marine boot camp is challenging but inou a weird way it's the fun and stockholm syndrome. many enjoyed the boot camp experience. >> your grandmother has a colorfulat language. did that rub off on you?

was she never embarrassed to use the words around you? my son is too young to show how foul my language is. i tried to cutback on the language relative to my grandma. a dramatic and well placed f-word. you know, you go from mamaws housee and the phrase cuss likea sailor doesn't come from nowhere. i had to change my language. >> youou get through basic training and go to iraq. >> yes. >> were you afraid you'd come back in once piece. >> i i think when anybody is abt

tor deploy they are worried if they wouldth come back in one piece. i had mos, military operation speciality. we lost some people to combat and combat injuries. ii wasn't thinking quite as much about the danger as i would have been if i worked in the infull try. i was worried about it but also tried to talk myself up and recognize, it's dangerous than driving down the street. i'd probably end upcoming back okay. >> after four years, you leave the military, right,. >> yeah,. >> decide to go to college and felt you were ready for it. you werean four years older than your college come temporariry. >> why did you decide to go to ohio state. did you consider another place? >> any g osu fans out there.

good luck. well, you know, it's possible to sort m of make them more ration. iew went to ohio state because i grew up lovened and rooting ohio state. i wasn't nearly as thoughtful about my college decision as i should have been. it was basically luck i found myself atki ohio state. i wasn't thinking as smartly as i should have been. >> normally people go to college for four years. youu got through ohio state in twoin years. how did you do that? >> well,ss you take classes ando through the summer and transfer credits gained during the marine corp. lo they were enough to enable me to cut things off. >> how would you support

yourself. your marine corp salary was enoughth to accommodate you. >> i was no longer in the marine corp. aa bit of savings, a bit of debt i incurred. i borrowed and got some loans. i had the gi bill that i was trying to save for law school. i used some during college. i worked jobs during college. thosepl multiple sources of income. >> okay, you graduated in two years and decided to go to law school. there are notot as many people going to yale or law absolutely. howu did you decide to go to ye as opposed to ohio state or another school in the midwest.

>> i wasn't thinking strategically about it. i applied to a few lawsuits and going to one of those schools. my best friend said if you have good grades and think you can get into a good place. this is in 200 9. i have friends struggling toho find work. you should get into the best school you can because that's the best insurance policy. i took off a bit of time and reapplying and that's when i applied towe yale. >> you were an average high schoolt student but in college did much better. how did it change from average? >> average is putting it charitably in high school. you know, a few things, right. so, one, i was just a more

mature person. this goes back to me being ready for college and the psychological way. i appreciated the opportunity verses a responsibility i tried harder. paying for itso and seeing the bill go up and up and up. i was lucky to go there. you know, i also thought about my grandma while in college. this is a woman that left school while 14 years old to come north to ohio. she didn't have many educational opportunities. she was super smart. if she could sacrifice this things to get me to a place like this, i should take advantage and try harder. >> so, you go to yale law school. that's g one of the hardest schools inch the united states o gethe into. many go therefrom harvard, yale, did you feel out of place when you

got the yale law school. there weren't many. >> in my year i was the only high stake graduate. you know, it was weird because i realized thereat were high schos prep torrey schools where there were more students from the high school at yale law school than my university that struck me weird. yeah, it was a culture shock. it was mores of a culture shock than anyplace i had been. more thann the marine corp, ohio state. and it was sort of astonishing how different the expectations and background were and classmates relative to where i came from. >> another person thatil went to yale law school bill clinton went to yale and he was from arkansas. did you say i'm a hillbilly from kentucky or ohio.t >> i don't know if i introduced

myself i'm a hillbilly from ohio. that came through in the way i conducted myself. iti was a strong ohio partisan. everyone knew where i was from. yeah, ii don't know if i used thatit phrasing. >> how did you do it? were you at the top, middle, bottom? >> i wasn't at the top by any means. my wifed was at the top which s why she was clerk of the chief justice. for those who know the law schools, theyat don't give traditional grads. grads -- grades. it's hard to know where you ranked. my sense is' i was fine. i wasn't at the bottom or top. i waswi comfortable with that. you wrote your way on the law journal. if you decide you wanted to

practice law or be a clerk. what did you decide to do? >> my wife and i went to the eastern district of kentucky. >> was your wife in the same class.re is she here now? >> isew your wife here, somewhe. >> where isin she? >> there she is. >> okay. >> sorry. you met herou and you were in te sameu class? >> yes, we were in the same class and clerked at the eastern district onr kentucky. both of our judges were in covington over the river from cincinnati. y perfect opportunity to go and clerk forcl a federal judge and be close to home and work on things that were interesting to us. >> you spent your life to clerk in kenosha and you escaped from

kentucky.ys >> i wasn't trying to escape kentucky. it was a really exciting and good year. we both worked for good people. sometimes people g get stuck wih bad judges. we worked for great people and had a great year. >> okay, as i said at the beginning. there are three reasons the book is successful. it's well written and precise. the story is like a novel. third theas reason the book is o popular the world has changed a fair bit since you wrote the book w and know what you wrote about isch seen as a problem in the country. we have a lot of drug abuse, opioid abuse, unemployment, particularly in the midwest. a many people where you come from have these problems. let's talk about the opioid

problem. you growing up, you pointed out drug abuse was a problem in your area and has gotten worst. why so bad? >> well, yeah, it was definitely something ip. saw growing up. i remember when addiction hit our family and i found out mom was addicted to prescription pain pills as we called them back then. i didn't understand them. i didn't understand why someone would bet addicted to pain pil. this was common in the mid 90s. the problem wasn't mainstream. we talk about the opioid epidemic which is a nationwides. crisis. so,an i did feel in someways i t an early insight into what would be a crisis. why has it gotten worst? there are a ton of reasons and ton of different explanations. one is i think, to be honest, a lot of the drugs were marketed asiv nonaddictive and they were

addictive. people got hooked and caused a lot of problemless. you have a significant overprescription problem in some areas where i was in southeastern ohioe of folks dealing with this. they tell me, when high school kids used to hang out and get into their parents liquor cabinet or beer. now they get into the medicine cabinet and pass drugs. that's a different kind of problem. i think, it's in someways a consequence of really negative social problems. if you have instability. people find a way to deal with it. maybe 50 years ago they dealt with it with alcohol. youoi avoided the opioid problem

and marijuana. how did you avoid that?ab >> mamaw was really strict about this stuff.g if she found out we were smoking a cigarette or had anything to drink she would fly off the handle. she appreciated how bad addiction could be and clearly have this role in our family. this is t the thing that ruined her life for the first 30 years of her marriage was alcoholism. i was very much on guard. almost obsessively so. a person that doesn't like to take medication for a headache. i have seen addiction trap a lot of people. i got really sick when i was at ohio state. i got mono. they gave me a synthetic opioid because i had to take some

medicine. any way, i had the medication and i was at the hospital in ohio state. i remember calling basically everyone in the family saying. i know why mamaw didn't like us to take this stuff because it was fantastic. i think being on guard about that stuff. >> i didn't. i didn't believe i was addicted to alcohol. they ask you at the doctor i'm a once or twice per week type of person. i never felt addicted to anything bute chocolate chip cookies or icece cream. >> let's talk unemployment. many left kentucky and places like that. they have been hollowed out. this was in the background. canit you describe if it's bettr about what can be done about it.

>> it's getting better over the last few years. what i mean, the number of people the cole or steel mill the 1950s and 60s thatt returned in the past few years. you arese seeing a long-term significant economic shift everyone thought they would scaleup. you have seen them get decimated. that's an undercurrent of the book. what is there to do about it? there are a lotot of different things we can do about it. you know, the first we have a

problem when given a choice when going and working in a fast food job or getting a four year education. we shouldpr provide more pathwa. it's not surprising when those are the only two pathways i also think, we have to think more constructively about regional economic development. the way this has gone is i'm a local municipality and offer a tax credit in my hometown. that's great but not the sort of long-term redevelopment that has to k happen. all levels of policymakers have to think differently. >> someone wrote a book as successful as yours at some pointt someone from the democraticic national committeer

republican national committee will say, you are a great candidate to be a member of congress, governor, senator, or somethingev higher. have you thought about running for something? >> we are out of time, right, thank you. >> so, you would say you wouldn't proclude anything from happening? >> certainly not,ow certainly, when that progression is exactly right. you have a book that's successful from various political parties to ask you from these things. >> no many have these jobs and likeke them? >> i don't think i have. you know,w, i have talked to a w members of congress. not about me running but in this environment doly you enjoy what you do. they say, yeah, i like working on policy but we don't do any of

that. so, no. >> leaving aside whether you would run for something. because the platform you have is so y great, you can be a spokesn about alcoholism, unemployment, opioid addiction. >> we will break away for live coverage of the u.s. senate. lawmakers will hold a brief session. no votes expected until september 9th. you are watching live cough age here on c-span 2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: