Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.68 AVERAGE
3.68 AVERAGE
First off, Paul Fussell’s book probably makes a lot of people angry and he admits that much in the very beginning. Twenty years later and Americans still don’t like to think that there are castes here. Some of his observations are still sadly true, other observations are just plain stereotyping. Something I wanted to read more about, but that Fussell only touched on, was the different perceptions of class. What distinguishes one class from another? He summed up the criteria according to what each class judged important -
Class their defining element for determining one’s status
lower money
middle occupation
upper taste, style
I think that’s still too general. I think class is judged individually, each person having a very personal idea of status… much like our very personal, highly charged ideas of ethics or morals. For example, when Fussell describes the upper class as never reading, and “never saying anything intelligent or original” (p. 32), I would immediately consider that the lowest of low class no matter how much money was involved.
But then Fussell ends with chapter 9, “The X Way Out.” He describes the X class as the people who are outside the whole heirarchy schemata, unconcerned with status and all that nonsense. Freethinking, traveling, quasi-hippie wonders. This chapter was so unlike the rest of the book, stood out so much, that I had to wonder where it came from. Was this upon an editor’s/publisher’s insistence… add some saving grace? Was this a crumb of optimism thrown out for his U Penn students? An offering of an escape?
Or did Fussell perhaps write this chaper first? Was all the preceeding stuff only there to bring us to the X class? Is this what he had been wanting to say all along? It really makes me suspect that this last chapter was actually the seed for the whole book.
Class their defining element for determining one’s status
lower money
middle occupation
upper taste, style
I think that’s still too general. I think class is judged individually, each person having a very personal idea of status… much like our very personal, highly charged ideas of ethics or morals. For example, when Fussell describes the upper class as never reading, and “never saying anything intelligent or original” (p. 32), I would immediately consider that the lowest of low class no matter how much money was involved.
But then Fussell ends with chapter 9, “The X Way Out.” He describes the X class as the people who are outside the whole heirarchy schemata, unconcerned with status and all that nonsense. Freethinking, traveling, quasi-hippie wonders. This chapter was so unlike the rest of the book, stood out so much, that I had to wonder where it came from. Was this upon an editor’s/publisher’s insistence… add some saving grace? Was this a crumb of optimism thrown out for his U Penn students? An offering of an escape?
Or did Fussell perhaps write this chaper first? Was all the preceeding stuff only there to bring us to the X class? Is this what he had been wanting to say all along? It really makes me suspect that this last chapter was actually the seed for the whole book.
Incredibly dated, incredibly fascinating, incredibly hilarious, particularly if you've spent time living in or among very different classes. Class X basically grew up to be insufferable, ubiquitous, poorly named "bobos," if I remember correctly.
I read this about 15 years ago I think and it still stays with me
funny
informative
medium-paced
An interesting and quick read. At its best, it’s snarky, irreverent, and insightful in specific ways. But it’s also snobby, mean-spirited, and assigns universality where it does not belong. It basically ignores race and gender, which in all fairness, it said it would do from the very beginning. It was also written about 40 years ago, and while a lot still resonates, other stuff feels really dated. Again, to be fair, that’s the book’s fault either. But I feel less generous considering how dehumanizing the language is towards the people the book refers to as “proles.” It’s true for how the author speaks of the middle class as well, but to a lesser degree. The book doesn’t bother to attack the upper classes or examine their inner turmoil beyond the idea that “they really don’t have much to worry about.” In addition, the chapter about category X might have been interesting if it wasn’t so specific it bordered on parody.
Perhaps I’m taking this book too seriously in places where I shouldn’t. Perhaps I’m secretly bitter for my class status. In any case, it’s worth giving a read.
Perhaps I’m taking this book too seriously in places where I shouldn’t. Perhaps I’m secretly bitter for my class status. In any case, it’s worth giving a read.
challenging
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Fatphobia
I usually don't review books but I found this book genuinely thought provoking. While it is a bit tongue and cheek it does make you consider why we buy,read or entertain ourselves in different ways. This book really points out the absurdity of class. I also liked how it touched on the rigidity of the class system The author did try to stray away from race but it would be interesting to find a book that includes it as well.
I'd like to read this updated for the 21st century because many of the observations didn't resonate with me, and I think the specificity of his descriptions have historically contributed a lot to his cogency.
In my estimation, Paul Fussell has written a fairly humorous but now somewhat dated take on America's class system. This title was published in 1983 when I was still a high school student. I am now in my early fifties and the world has changed as dramatically as one would expect after 35 years. American society, especially recently, is, for me, like wandering into a surprisingly upsetting and charmless Twilight Zone episode. I keep imploring Rod Serling to emerge from the shadows, take a big toke on his Lucky Strike, and at least inform me that I have taken that detour into an unsettling world that may look somewhat like the reality I thought I knew...but is somehow completely and alarmingly different.
I am not sure if this is middle age...Trump's America...or a combination of the two. But I am now wandering the labyrinth of a Serling plot line or a Talking Heads lyric and I am generally lost and confused.
The world Fussell describes in this expose is that of my childhood and young adulthood. For context, the Preppy Handbook is mentioned within the pages rather often. Thus we can assume that the reader is expected to be familiar with this cultural touchstone of my adolescence. (I wonder how many Millennials or Gen Z could identify that book?) If one decides to pick up this title to understand how America's class system works, know that you are reading about the United States of the late seventies and early eighties.
Fussell dings everyone equally with the dry wit of the past. The humor was engaging enough for me because I recall that sort of tone. Upper classes are lampooned right along with the lowest of the low. The snobbery is a put on and nobody should take offense, no matter from what strata they came. Here are the social classes defined by Fussell and existing in our 'class free' American society:
Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle
Middle
High-proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low-proletarian
Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight
Fussell's uppermost and lowest castes are both 'out of sight' (and not because they are also 'groovy') The highest of the high and the lowest of the low both fly under the radar of the rest of the nation. The wealthiest of the wealthy have several residences, all hidden well away from the view of the masses. Either their mansions/estates are set so far back from the little traveled (or private) road that they can literally not be viewed from public throughways, or they are located on private beaches or islands. Highest uppers have private jets, drivers, and otherwise purchase their way out of any interaction with the hoi polloi. They have private entrances, VIP passes, social events by almost impossible to get invitation-only, etc. Conversely, the bottom most out of sighters reside in prisons or institutions/group homes. (although there are far fewer of the latter in today's America.) Prisons have burgeoned and been turned into a profit making industry while 'mental institutions' have been shuttered, turning some bottom out of sighters into 'destitutes' who are homeless and, therefore, living on the streets 'in sight' of society.
The Middle Class is the class that every American from the Gates/Zuckerberg/Bezos/Buffet club down to the guy who is renting a room above a cash for gold joint claims as their own. Americans find it shameful to admit they are either wealthy or poor. I believe this is one area that has shifted a bit since the publication of this book. Today's wealthy are shockingly callous to the rest of us and simply cannot be shamed into offering the Poor Little Match Girl even the shred of hope for seeing a doctor, getting her prescription filled, or lifting the minimum wage much above the level it was back in 1983 when this book was written. (adjusted for inflation) The uppers and upper middles have discovered the world of McMansions, 'gated communities', 'privatization of public utilities', 'charter schools' (unregulated ponzi schemes for the lower classes), 'private schools' (to keep their little darlings away from the unwashed), six digit college tuition (helping to ensure that college becomes, once again, 'special/elite' like it was in the 1940s) and permanent tax revolt. They conspicuously consume and foment the above mentioned social trends in an attempt to separate themselves from the rest of society as much as possible. They cannot truly achieve it in the way of the Top Out of Sight. But they have thrown down the gauntlet in 21st Century America and told the masses, "We are better, we are winners, we are walling ourselves off from you cretins."
Only in America do I have to listen to upper middle mommies who do not work and who reside in six bedroom homes with a Lexus and a LandRover in the driveway vent their spleens about how they 'can't afford' to pay an extra hundred bucks for a school levy. Perhaps this is how they hold onto their 'middle class' identification...using their greed as cover. 'Don't look at my lifestyle. I am really just middle class and I honestly can't afford to pay for....fill in the public need." They are fooling exactly nobody except themselves.
Today's down and outers are also getting rather pissed off. (Herr Trump of the Orange spray tan, business casual fascism and tacky impersonation of a 'tycoon' is a symptom of their anger.) The displaced people in America are owning their poverty and the three decade downward cycle of their lives and calling it like they see it. A loud and volatile segment of America is broke. You can read it in a headline every day now. Now we hear more about how someone 'used to have a good middle class life' when they were a kid but have subsequently fallen with little hope of recovery. -- Fussell's book mentioned nothing about this, although many of the adults in the 1980s were destitute as kids during the Depression. That generation just did not want to talk about it once life improved.
I recently read in another source that the Middle Class IS truly vanishing in America...but not exactly in the way we think it is. Instead of imploding completely (meaning that everyone is sinking), it is diverging into two paths. Some of the Middle Class are moving up (into the Upper Middle) and others are definitely sinking. Either way, not much is left of the 'true middle'. Oddly enough, although I emerged from a High Prole background and married a fellow Prole, by 21st century American standards we are quite Middle Class. We are not well off enough to live in a tony suburb (and have zero desire to do so) and we drive old used cars . Our old house has one functional bathroom. We shy away from 'entertaining' and feel anxious around the comfortably Upper Middles (and even some of the Middles who did not emerge from Prole childhoods.) Yet we have decent educations, professional jobs, a comfortable life and summer vacation trips. I work part time. We are the last of our kind.
The Prole levels were truly fascinating for me because I always thought I was raised 'Middle Class' (SEE! I am no better than the people I pick on elsewhere!) Yet, I find that, unavoidably, I am High Prole. And there were signs! My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to college. My dad, especially, was never more than Mid Prole growing up and was born Low Prole. Our house resembled much of what was described in Fussell's book, down to the lawn chairs on the porch (but minus the religious iconography.) Looking back on the romantic entanglements of my youth, I now discern that, although college educated with a masters degree, I never once seriously dated a man who did not come, as I did, from a Prole background. (There were a lot of us back in the 1980s...heading off to State Schools where the tuition was paid by our blue collar or lower status white collar parents.) My political leanings are mainly centered around the 'thus for the grace of god go I' mentality of someone who is 'barely' middle class and fears financial calamity constantly. I would never buy a luxury car, join a country club, employ a housekeeper, or send my kid to private school just on principle alone. I will never learn to play golf. I dislike nautical motifs. I abhor 'preppie' clothing. I shop sales, look for coupon discounts at the grocery store, and am unable to curtail my language or ribald sense of humor.
My husband and I might go to the orchestra and we may be members of the Museum of Art. We may read a lot and watch foreign films and eat organic food. We know how to blend in and act the part at work. But just beneath the surface, there are a couple of Proles just fighting to get out!
More accurately, perhaps, my husband and I attempt, very much, to be what Fussell labels as X People. He leaves this 'alternative' group for the end of his book. These are the eccentrics and the 'bohemians' who emerge from all of the other social classes to eschew the constraints to which they were born and try to live life by a very different set of rules and expectations. The addition of this last group was a pleasant surprise. I believe this is the strata where I have always felt the most at home.
I strongly feel that this book needs to be updated. If it was, it would make some very interesting reading for today's seismically shifting social scene. As it is, it provides a funny and occasionally provocative look at 20th century American social class structure. Most older readers will find themselves, their families and friends somewhere within the pages and will be able to relive certain eras in their pasts.
I am not sure if this is middle age...Trump's America...or a combination of the two. But I am now wandering the labyrinth of a Serling plot line or a Talking Heads lyric and I am generally lost and confused.
The world Fussell describes in this expose is that of my childhood and young adulthood. For context, the Preppy Handbook is mentioned within the pages rather often. Thus we can assume that the reader is expected to be familiar with this cultural touchstone of my adolescence. (I wonder how many Millennials or Gen Z could identify that book?) If one decides to pick up this title to understand how America's class system works, know that you are reading about the United States of the late seventies and early eighties.
Fussell dings everyone equally with the dry wit of the past. The humor was engaging enough for me because I recall that sort of tone. Upper classes are lampooned right along with the lowest of the low. The snobbery is a put on and nobody should take offense, no matter from what strata they came. Here are the social classes defined by Fussell and existing in our 'class free' American society:
Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle
Middle
High-proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low-proletarian
Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight
Fussell's uppermost and lowest castes are both 'out of sight' (and not because they are also 'groovy') The highest of the high and the lowest of the low both fly under the radar of the rest of the nation. The wealthiest of the wealthy have several residences, all hidden well away from the view of the masses. Either their mansions/estates are set so far back from the little traveled (or private) road that they can literally not be viewed from public throughways, or they are located on private beaches or islands. Highest uppers have private jets, drivers, and otherwise purchase their way out of any interaction with the hoi polloi. They have private entrances, VIP passes, social events by almost impossible to get invitation-only, etc. Conversely, the bottom most out of sighters reside in prisons or institutions/group homes. (although there are far fewer of the latter in today's America.) Prisons have burgeoned and been turned into a profit making industry while 'mental institutions' have been shuttered, turning some bottom out of sighters into 'destitutes' who are homeless and, therefore, living on the streets 'in sight' of society.
The Middle Class is the class that every American from the Gates/Zuckerberg/Bezos/Buffet club down to the guy who is renting a room above a cash for gold joint claims as their own. Americans find it shameful to admit they are either wealthy or poor. I believe this is one area that has shifted a bit since the publication of this book. Today's wealthy are shockingly callous to the rest of us and simply cannot be shamed into offering the Poor Little Match Girl even the shred of hope for seeing a doctor, getting her prescription filled, or lifting the minimum wage much above the level it was back in 1983 when this book was written. (adjusted for inflation) The uppers and upper middles have discovered the world of McMansions, 'gated communities', 'privatization of public utilities', 'charter schools' (unregulated ponzi schemes for the lower classes), 'private schools' (to keep their little darlings away from the unwashed), six digit college tuition (helping to ensure that college becomes, once again, 'special/elite' like it was in the 1940s) and permanent tax revolt. They conspicuously consume and foment the above mentioned social trends in an attempt to separate themselves from the rest of society as much as possible. They cannot truly achieve it in the way of the Top Out of Sight. But they have thrown down the gauntlet in 21st Century America and told the masses, "We are better, we are winners, we are walling ourselves off from you cretins."
Only in America do I have to listen to upper middle mommies who do not work and who reside in six bedroom homes with a Lexus and a LandRover in the driveway vent their spleens about how they 'can't afford' to pay an extra hundred bucks for a school levy. Perhaps this is how they hold onto their 'middle class' identification...using their greed as cover. 'Don't look at my lifestyle. I am really just middle class and I honestly can't afford to pay for....fill in the public need." They are fooling exactly nobody except themselves.
Today's down and outers are also getting rather pissed off. (Herr Trump of the Orange spray tan, business casual fascism and tacky impersonation of a 'tycoon' is a symptom of their anger.) The displaced people in America are owning their poverty and the three decade downward cycle of their lives and calling it like they see it. A loud and volatile segment of America is broke. You can read it in a headline every day now. Now we hear more about how someone 'used to have a good middle class life' when they were a kid but have subsequently fallen with little hope of recovery. -- Fussell's book mentioned nothing about this, although many of the adults in the 1980s were destitute as kids during the Depression. That generation just did not want to talk about it once life improved.
I recently read in another source that the Middle Class IS truly vanishing in America...but not exactly in the way we think it is. Instead of imploding completely (meaning that everyone is sinking), it is diverging into two paths. Some of the Middle Class are moving up (into the Upper Middle) and others are definitely sinking. Either way, not much is left of the 'true middle'. Oddly enough, although I emerged from a High Prole background and married a fellow Prole, by 21st century American standards we are quite Middle Class. We are not well off enough to live in a tony suburb (and have zero desire to do so) and we drive old used cars . Our old house has one functional bathroom. We shy away from 'entertaining' and feel anxious around the comfortably Upper Middles (and even some of the Middles who did not emerge from Prole childhoods.) Yet we have decent educations, professional jobs, a comfortable life and summer vacation trips. I work part time. We are the last of our kind.
The Prole levels were truly fascinating for me because I always thought I was raised 'Middle Class' (SEE! I am no better than the people I pick on elsewhere!) Yet, I find that, unavoidably, I am High Prole. And there were signs! My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to college. My dad, especially, was never more than Mid Prole growing up and was born Low Prole. Our house resembled much of what was described in Fussell's book, down to the lawn chairs on the porch (but minus the religious iconography.) Looking back on the romantic entanglements of my youth, I now discern that, although college educated with a masters degree, I never once seriously dated a man who did not come, as I did, from a Prole background. (There were a lot of us back in the 1980s...heading off to State Schools where the tuition was paid by our blue collar or lower status white collar parents.) My political leanings are mainly centered around the 'thus for the grace of god go I' mentality of someone who is 'barely' middle class and fears financial calamity constantly. I would never buy a luxury car, join a country club, employ a housekeeper, or send my kid to private school just on principle alone. I will never learn to play golf. I dislike nautical motifs. I abhor 'preppie' clothing. I shop sales, look for coupon discounts at the grocery store, and am unable to curtail my language or ribald sense of humor.
My husband and I might go to the orchestra and we may be members of the Museum of Art. We may read a lot and watch foreign films and eat organic food. We know how to blend in and act the part at work. But just beneath the surface, there are a couple of Proles just fighting to get out!
More accurately, perhaps, my husband and I attempt, very much, to be what Fussell labels as X People. He leaves this 'alternative' group for the end of his book. These are the eccentrics and the 'bohemians' who emerge from all of the other social classes to eschew the constraints to which they were born and try to live life by a very different set of rules and expectations. The addition of this last group was a pleasant surprise. I believe this is the strata where I have always felt the most at home.
I strongly feel that this book needs to be updated. If it was, it would make some very interesting reading for today's seismically shifting social scene. As it is, it provides a funny and occasionally provocative look at 20th century American social class structure. Most older readers will find themselves, their families and friends somewhere within the pages and will be able to relive certain eras in their pasts.
A hilarious and fascinating romp through status. It is most certainly dated, but knowing that and reading it for the greater concepts still makes it a very worthwhile book.