A review by esquetee
Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell

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.