Class: A Guide Through the American Status System [Taschenbuch]

I introduced this book to two different book-discussion groups and noticed the same phenomena at each: (1) most people loved it and no one disliked it; (2) the funniest parts were the people we recognized at one remove ("suburbanites," "yuppies," "old money," etc.); and (3) the book will draw blood at least once when Fussell deals with YOUR case! You can count on it, so you'd better be a good sport!

Many of the reviewers found "Class" dated; I didn't. Although "Class" was first published in the Reagan Eighties, the Clinton Nineties seem to me just a more genteel version of the same old social jockeying. As Fussell says, there is very limited "room at the top" but all too much "room at the bottom." About the biggest criticism I have of the book is that his descriptions of bohemian "X" types are so individualistic that they seem to have been drawn from his circle of friends.

"Prole drift," by the way, is the tendency for "mass" to drive out "class." When the checker at your local discount house makes a mistake on your order and you have to stand in line to get it fixed at an overcrowded "Customer Service" center--that's prole drift. Likewise when your town loses the last grocery store that delivers. Fussell tried to expand on mass vs. class later on in "Bad: The Dumbing Down of America" which isn't a bad book, but it isn't a gem like "Class." Yes, "Class" has an acid tone, but it's also very right-on and laugh-aloud funny. And it does my heart good to see an academic who is interested in communicating with non-academics--rare in these deconstructed times.

Beware: whatever you do - or don't, whatever you wear - or won't, you cannot not send out a class signal. Reminded me of the passage in one of Konrad Lorenz's books where he goes out to a lecture dressed in suit and tie - all his students wear jeans and shirttails, the males have beards - until he realizes it's just his own "uniform", a predictable and laughable way of asserting his status.

Fussell points out that proles can't write the "'s" correctly, more and more writing Dennys instead of Denny's. Here in Germany, it's the other way around: our proles write Wilhelm's instead of the correct German Wilhelms. They go to Pizza Hoot (Hut - pronounced "hoot" is German for hat) - the new logo even suggesting they were right in the first place.

To me, your class is not what you were born into but what you unthinkingly kept from that. Fussell is right - it's not money but culture. However, like all cultural topics, "high" and "low" change from place to place. The principles he points out are valid for everybody, the details just work in ivy-league-educated, WASP-dominated New England.

The X-concept works - if approached on the basis that you make your own decisions. If you just emulate Fussell's examples, your non-legible clothes become legible as well.

All in all, a fine argument for class before mass - not that it'll stop the relentless onslaught of the low-brow, but for a few more years there might be niches for civilized living (as opposed to hum-drum existence or mere survival) if enough people read it and act accordingly. The market offers what consumers want - the choice is up to you and me.