Angela's Ashes

A fact-checking hobbyist has identified discrepancies and omissions in “Hillbilly Elegy” that complicate the family narrative upon which J. D. Vance has based so much of his conservative politics and ideology. https://t.co/BIwlWPJQB2

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) August 16, 2024

Frank McCourt told the story on himself.  At a book signing for the first volume of his memoir, a man in line identified himself as a childhood friend who Frank had identified as having died in childhood.

He laughed about it and said they went out for a drink and had a fine time reminiscing.

Memoir is not biography, not even autobiography, and the New Yorker article acknowledges that.   It's also a fine example of missing the forest for the trees, because the fact checking has far less to do with the life of people in Appalachia, and far more to do with minutiae, like whether Vance's grandmother was really estranged from her mother-in-law (no; the couple lived with her in-laws over long periods of time in their early marriage), and how his grandfather got his job in a factory in Ohio, and so moved out of the mountains.

Interesting facts, but so granular as to make you wonder why anyone but a Caro-like biographer would care.

Sometimes fact-checking is revealing; sometimes it's an end in itself.  There's a reason Snopes is not the last word on every controversy.  Sometimes the problem is not the facts, it's the thesis built from, or in spite of, those facts.