Customer Reviews

Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

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I read this book some ten years ago, and it struck me as most humourous and overall correct.

Although I was born in South America, I have lived and studied in the US, and I have studied and worked in France and the UK. My experience in all these geographies supports Fussell's conclusions. It is true that the higher the social class, the taller and slimmer people tend to be. It is true that the traditional lower (rather than the underclass) and the higher classes have many things in common, among them a deeply ingrained conservatism and a fierce pride in their way of being. In the UK, working class men's clubs are fighting the same fight which was lost a few years ago by the gentlemen's clubs: the right to keep women away from at least some parts of their premises. Many working class people all over the world deride attempts by others of a similar origin to "pass themselves out" as middle class, and regard middle class dress, speech patterns and social habits as feminine and unsound. There is probably no significant difference in the prejudiced, deeply uncurious mindset of Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh and that of a pensioner his age living in Yorkshire. It is true that strident religious opinions, big hair of unnatural colour and painted nails, or toupees and poorly-fitting jackets are usually the predictor of lower-to lower middle class background, or that high professional qualifications, gym memberships, affiliation with environmental organizations and career ambitions normaly denote urban middle class.

It might be seen as cruel, even evil, to remark on it, but don't the following terms clearly conjure a mental image of a particular order of things? (a) barcalounger, (b) trailer park, (c) WWJD, (d) community college, (e) Tom Jones, (f) spam, (g) gin and tonic, (h) dinner jacket, (i) pesto, (j) 100% polyester, (k) white supremacy, (l) homemaker, (m) National Enquirer, (n) The New Yorker, (o) Nantucket, (p) Detroit, (q) credit card debt, (r) bodice-ripper, (s) short-sleeved dress shirt, (t) pocket protector, (u) hunting dog, (v) Armani, (w) Ivy League, (x) inner city, (y) Dairy Queen, (z) educator. Think of words like individual (pronounced "individjal") or expressions like people of colour. Those who disbelieve Fussell's arguments to identify social classes just haven't been paying attention, for there are signs everywhere that they are still alive and well.

Fussell is very perceptive on many points. He notices that English spelling and mock-old-English words (parlour, kippers, jolly good) are short-hand for the higher social orders, and that this is used by real estate developers to get homebuyers to pay more just to live in a posher sounding address. He sees that many people seem to believe that college education irrespective of the actual college places them on a par with Ivy League graduates, and he sees it as a cruel ruse on the gullible and insecure (this is true everywhere: in the UK, many years after the polytechnics and teachers colleges were turned into universities Cambridge and Oxford still top the lists and "a group of fewer than 20 universities attract 90 per cent of the resources available for research and take the lion's share of money for teaching", according to The Times; in France virtually the entire business, political and intellectual elite comes from a handful of institutes, notably ENA, HEC, Insead and the X), in spite of the fact that truly desirable employers, such as consulting firms only hire people out of a handful of institutions (for example, Accenture, with 70,000 employees, only recruits MBA graduates at 5 schools in the US and 3 in Europe).

He notices that most people confuse the more visible upper middle class (called in the US the Preppies, in the UK the Sloane Rangers, in France les BCBG, in Latin America la gente bien, o la gente fresa) with the much more reclusive upper class, which one rarely sees, perhaps luckily, for they tend to be troublesome and violent (cfr., "The House of Hervey", by Michael de-la-noy: party girl Lady Victoria Hervey has had a high profile dalliance with gangster rapper P. Diddy). He sees the clear difference between the upper middle class "Patrician" mindset, and the upper class "Aristocratic" one (in order to tell them apart, when you think of the upper middle class, think XIX century, Victorian, prudish, earnest, hard-working, dark, and when you think of the upper classes, think XVIII century, Augustan, idle, colourful, cynical: it's Dickens, Balzac and Jane Austen versus Lord Chesterfield, Boswell and Saint-Simon, or the Novel versus the Diary). This is indeed a key difference between the American North and South. The North's upper class (Saltonstalls, Cabots, Lodges, Ameses, Eliots, Adamses, Biddles) is distinctly Patrician, due to its deep Calvinist influence, whereas the South's (traditional California Land-owners or Alabama cotton-growers) is clearly Aristocratic (which is why only the South could produce William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom", and only the North could give forth "The Education of Henry Adams"). The US Civil War, seen in this fashion, is a re-play of the English Civil War between roundheads (Patricians)and cavaliers (Aristocrats).

Fussell also sees that economic development will not swell the ranks of the upper classes, but just create richer proles and lower-middle class people. While some people may think that because they are rich they are upper class, virtually no one else is fooled. Raul Gardini, formerly one of the richest men in Italy (who killed himself a few years ago), once said that he and Silvio Berlusconi were just very rich stiffs, whereas Gianni Agnelli was a prince. If we look at the people who benefitted the most from the bubble economy of the 90s (such as software experts, web designers, internet enterpreneurs, telemarketers, singers and dancers and sport idols), we will see that most of them don't even try to appear upper class by wearing Armani or Ralph Lauren clothes, driving Bentleys, taking up polo or hunting or buying a yacht. They are just happy to live it up, and don't much care to be seen as upwardly mobile.

Fussell was right when he wrote that Class was a very contentious subject in the US, that many more people thought of themselves as middle-class than was actually the case, and that simply discussing this matter was thought of as offensive. Reading some of the ratings for this book I have no doubt that this is the case. Some of the commentators appear personally offended by Fussell's opinions and think that "he's just a guy setting himself up as the standard for class, so we'll bring him down a peg or two". He does nothing of the sort. The only class with which he seeks to align itself is Class X, which is a bit like David Brooks' BoBos (Bourgeouis Bohemians), and he argues that only by stepping away from the class structure can we be totally free.

Some people may think that the social class structure is so undermined as to be nonexistent. That's not the case. Social classes are very robust, and, in way or another, manage to survive all economic or political upheavals (remember Milovan Djilas' book "The New Class", on the dominant bureaucrat/military class in Tito's officially Socialist Yugoslavia). In the US many people seem to think that money grants class. That is largely self-deception. As Fussell says, it takes at least three generations to produce a middle class person, and many more to produce an upper class one. Readers, do not berate the messanger for the message. To paraphrase Goldwater, "in your hearts you know he's right".

Bitingly witty and embarassingly well focused look at the main classes within American society.

Yes, there is an American aristocracy, but they aren't driving around in Ferraris or living in Beverly Hills. There is even a sort of aristocracy amongst the working class people whom Fussell generally refers to as proles. Fussell's sharp eye has found and catalogued an amazing array of signs that indicate class in America. Try to spot these signs at your next social gathering, or even subject your own living room to the survey at the end of the book (frighteningly accurate way to determine one's class)!

This is a book based on pigeon-holing people, and that is probably what most annoyed readers can't stand about Fussell. But class distinctions do exist, like 'em or not. The middle class hope to rise in class by sending their kids to Harvard or Yale, the Proles hope to do the same by getting more money. Lucky "X Class" people don't give a hoot about such climbing, and fortunately more of us are just veering sideways into that final category which Fussell charts as a kind of class alternative.

Actually, the book could also be a helpful guide to those with a need to temporarily masquerade as a member of a given class... Unfortunate but true that you will get better service at a jeweler's or other tony shop if you dress not so much "up" but into the highest class you can accurately manage. And if you want to blend in at the truck stop, there are plenty of hot tips to be gleaned from this book.

Yes, yes, we should best judge each other only by virtues like honesty and willingness to help, but the book is about class, that dazzling (and now not so mysterious) thing.

Not without the odd mistake (I argue that books piled around the living room are not so much a sign of the upper class as an intellect), it is an excellent, juicy little book that will make you either laugh or curse at Fussell and his incisive wit.

Class pervades American life. Each day people judge and rank others by appearance, manners, language, and "taste" in a great societal pecking order. Some of this happens by reflex. For certain people a man in a tank top carries a high "ewww" factor. Others wince at anything monogrammed (a sure sign that the wearer seeks attention). Some may even take offense at compliments while others find the lack of a compliment an affront. It's a complicated game, and not everyone chooses to participate. But for many the game goes unnoticed.

This small book provides a good overview of the rules of the American class game. Paul Fussell delineates the choices people make that cause others to judge and categorize them (since people don't choose their race that subject doesn't appear). Everything from clothes, cars, diction, consumption (conspicuous or inconspicuous), education, housing styles, and physique to pets, reading material, jewelry, food, words, sports, interior decorating, grammar, and entertainment receive brutally honest coverage. These characteristics get evaluated through an objective eye and not through the filter of a specific class. For Fussell has nasty things to say about all of the classes, even the uppers. Though the middle class receives the majority of his invective, being the class of snobbery (due to class insecurity). Regardless, none of the classes come out ahead, and none are ranked as "better" or "superior". The book doesn't aim to judge in the way the classes furtively judge each other. It more delineates while it attempts to expose the rules. And in this it excels.

While the tabulating of pros and cons continues through the first seven chapters, it slowly becomes clear that Fussell isn't condoning class climbing. "Class" won't help anyone "go up". It also doesn't belong in the "self help" or the "self improvement" section. In fact, it argues that class climbing and dropping remain rare and difficult feats. We're pretty much doomed to stay in the class, regardless of money, that we're weaned into. But that only applies to those that play the game.

Readers who wonder just where Fussell stands on the issue of class will find some answers in the final two chapters. In the end, he seems disgusted by the entire game. The cumulative effect of his sardonic comments pointed at all classes suggests this. The final two chapters almost confirm this suspicion. Chapter eight deals with climbing and sinking. He argues that even those that appear "to rise" still retain much of the behaviors of their birth class. But he emphasizes that sinking requires just as much effort as climbing. Nonetheless, we all seem to be sinking. A cultural progression towards the lowest common denominator has occured over the last century. As capitalism inevitably aims for the largest market share, pleasing proles - arguably the largest market sector - has become a national obsession. This results in, Fussell argues, "mass culture" and the homogenization of culture. Though he complains about this phenomenon with some vehemence, he offers up no solutions.

The final chapter really spells out Fussell's attitude towards the game. "The X Way Out" outlines a class that lives "outside of the class system" (it apparently inspired Douglas Coupland's novel "Generation X"). They avoid myopic class embarrassments by simply not playing the game. Many are self-employed or intentionally under-employed. And they manage to "avoid some of the envy and ambition that pervert so many." Fussell then ominously concludes: "It's only as an X, detached from the constraints and anxieties of the whole class racket, that an American can enjoy something like the LIBERTY promised on the coinage." Here lies the book's key sentence. After reading this the book takes on an entirely different life. Everything that comes before it should get redefined and reframed. Now it seems clear that Fussell is offering us a scathing critique as well as a cure for (some) class woes. In short, we don't have to play. But before we choose not to, we have to know that the game exists. "Class" forces us to face our lifestyles, values, and choices head on and thus reveals the class game that we find ourselves living within. It also presents us with a fundamental challenge: should we drop out? For those largely dismissive or ignorant of the complicated class system, this book can evolve into a life-changing experience. It even has the potential to forever change one's perspective. A rare book.

One final thing to keep in mind is the book's publication date: 1983. Of course the world has changed irreversibly in the past 20 years. Younger readers may miss some of the references, and some of the observations may now come off as quaint. This also begs the question: what would Fussell write now? What would he say about cell phones, the internet, day spas, portable computers, IPods, hybrid cars, and countless other now omnipresent things? Hard to say on some, easy to say on others.

Regardless of its age, much of the concepts in "Class" remain relevant today. The basic structure outlined still exists, though many people, on closer inspection, exist between classes or exhibit characteristics of more than one class. But despite its age and some of its simplifications, "Class" provides an invaluable framework to reevaluate the choices one makes every day.

This is a pretty funny exercise in stereotyping, and Fussell's observations seem, for the most part, accurately drawn, but the last chapter on the Category X weakens the book by exposing the author's sympathies and, consequently, his shortsightedness. The type described in this chapter have not escaped the status system - in fact, they do care if you notice the odd sentiment expressed on their T-shirt or their idiosyncratic way of decorating the living room, and they do hope you find it novel that they like to watch corny old sitcoms, although they will act nonplussed if you actually comment on these things. (You are to assume they would never engage in so middle-class an endeavor as seeking approval from others. Of course they do seek approval from others, just not the same 'others' their middle-class counterparts seek approval from.) This type is especially common in academia - in fact it is probably the predominant 'class' group in that field, and it seems that Fussell is confusing the kind of status seeking peculiar to grad students, professors, and their ilk with a rejection of status seeking altogether. This leads the reader to infer that Fussell can turn his sharp wit on every group except the one to which he feels most closely aligned, and that's a shame, because the Category X group and their pretensions deserve to be mocked as vigorously as any other.

Can you tell if your fiancee is really upper-middle class or just faking it? Is the metric system vulgar? And once you sink in class, can you ever rise again? Don't worry, English professor Paul Fussell explains it all for you. Faster and funnier than any government report, more accurate than a busload of sociologists, "Class" will give you the lowdown on where your allegedly "classless" fellow Americans really stand. From the "top out of sight" ultra-rich through the middle classes and the "proles" down to the destitute "bottom out of sights," Fussell has everyone pegged. Clothes, consumption, speech and leisure give us away much more thoroughly than politics or money.

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.

Here's a cruel little reversal of the core premise of the revolutionary 'Fight Club': you *are* your khakis. You *are* the car you drive. You *are* your house, the imprint on your credit card plastic, the wallet they're encased in, the fit and make and texture and fabric of your suit jacket.

This is your Life, and it's ending one day at a time: every single thing you do and say and buy, what brand is embossed on your plastic you wave at the culmination of the tasty dinner---and whether said dinner is done at Spago or the Olive Garden---marks you with the cauterized brand of Class.

Paul Fussell's deliciously wicked little study "Class: A Guide through the American Status System" still remains the darkly funniest, if not the most authoritative, primer on class relations in the officially 'classless' American society. It is required reading: not so much if you believe it, or take the little class quiz at the back---for in the grand scheme of things, on this dying little planet heated by a flickering gas giant in our universe's back-of-beyond---let us agree none of it really matters.

Let's back up a second: America, we are told, is a 'classless society'. True to our Pilgrim and Virginia tobacco farmer antecedents, true to the articles of faith of a nation built by scrapers and confidence men and the hopeless poor and deranged and criminal and visionary, we are a society where class---your origins, your breeding, your ancestry---doesn't matter. It's what you achieve in America that counts, right, and class be damned. Right?

Wrong.

For Fussell, the cultural bestiary of American society is rich, brutal, and distinctly defined, and he creates his own taxonomy of class relations and rule in this acid, wicked, acerbic, and nastily funny little tome. Like Caesar's Gaul, the American Caste System is divided into three ports: Upper, Middle, Lower. And each of these classes are further bifurcated: Upper into Top Out-of-Sight, Upper, and Upper Middle; the Middle into Middle, High Prole, Middle Prole, and Low Prole; and the abased Lower into Destitute and Bottom Out-of-Sight.

And for all of this, then, the bulk of this slight tome is a treatise as to what Class looks like. It is certainly where you're from, to start with: geography is a determinant of destiny. You're from Newport, Rhode Island? Right this way, young man. You're from Truth & Consequences, New Mexico? A polite cough, a roll of the eyes.

It's how fat you are. As late as the 19th century, corpulence was a mark of high class, as those with no money starved. Nowadays, things have been ratcheted upside down and inside out: Kate Moss is the gossamer Marquise, thin folks traipse across the 18 holes of exclusive country clubs, and the fatties herd along the commercial lanes of Wal-Mart and Ross Dress for Less.

It's what you drive, but not necessarily so: to Fussell, the truly wealthy don't want you to see their estate---parked behind gates and trees and, preferably, crenellations and moats---and could not care less how beat up or dented or falling apart their 1975 Volvo is. The vast American middle class cares about looks, appearance, class climbing. If you care, if you worry, if you fret about appearance, about mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges on Saturday: well then, Gentle Knight, you're a hopeless Middle.

Fussell devotes some time to one of the more hellish features of American class life: University inflation. Because having an education---however useless---has always been esteemed as a mark of the Uppers, not only have grades inflated, but community colleges have swelled beyond their modest, mediocre credentials: every city college a university! Every mail-order diploma a Mark of Recommendation to the Local Duke, Marquis, or Count!

For all the taxonomy, *why* Class is remains more elusive than *what* it is: Class in America remains a moving target. JFK famously quipped of his sweating, blinkered opponent Nixon "that guy has no class"---but what is it, exactly? You can't buy it: Donald Trump has (at this writing, anyway) plenty of one C-word (cash!) but not the other (Class!). Old Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt made himself a fortune and sailed on his yacht to England, entourage in tow, yet he was ridiculed as a classless nabob and shunned at Court: 150 years later his descendants rule the Class roost---or at least one rung of it, anyway.

Fussell's little magnum opus is not, Praise God, a formal work of sociology. Far from it: this is a nasty, gimlet-eyed little treatise on the way people dress, shop, buy, drive, eat, fatten up or trim down, and do so in a way that brands them forever as creatures of Class. It is done so wittily, acerbically, and in an illustrated fashion: you can laugh nastily at the little pictures indicating the tiny brow and advanced hairline of the low Prole, or cough at the bedroom of a high prole teen, festooned with the signet of the age: unicorns (or nowadays, gargoyles).

You'll find useful stuff here on basic fashion: my hat is doffed to Monsieur Fussell for pointing out the hideous Prole Gape, where a man's jacket collar doesn't fit neatly with his neck, and juts out and inch from the collar line. Read "Class" and see Prole Gape everywhere.

Finally, as with any Philosopher King, Fussell creates an escape hatch: the mysterious X-Class, an atavistic forerunner to David Brooks's over-achieving and blase Bobos in Paradise.

In the end, of course, "Class" is not a Bible---unless you're a hopeless, and harried middle classer---but instead a wicked, deliciously saucy little ride through our twisted, tormented world of Great Expectations and Few Answers. You'll get a devilish little laugh out of it.

JSG

I read the first edition of "Class" and it seems to be a good guide to American class signals, though it is probably biased toward Northeastern white non-Jewish urban culture and a bit out of date. But I keep coming across examples of the paterns of behavior and status signals that Fussel describes.

Fussell occasionally seems to genuinely look down on the groups he is describing, as well as their class aspirations. By comparison, Jilly Cooper's "Class" seems to admit both her fascination with the English class system and her realization of its fundamental absurdity.

The most serious lack of the book is Fussell's definition of an "X group" that is supposedly outside of the class system. But having grown up in academia, it's quite clear to me that the X group is simply a parallel class system for the people who consider themselves "intellectuals", with class signs to show that one is an intellectual and class signs to differentiate sub-classes of the intellectual class. And it is not that Fussell does not understand these signs, because he describes them directly! See Tom Wolfe for more on this phenomenon.

It would be interesting if Fussell could give an account for the formation of the classes themselves and how the class signs arise, but that is probably not known. But since the class boundaries are more porous and less obvious in the US than elsewhere, it is very convenient to have a guide to making one's self over from one class to another.

Paul Fussell's Class is an enlightening, and mercilessly funny, if somewhat dated unmasking of the realities of class in America. Fussell is not a social scientist, but a professor of English with a sharp eye and a pen to match. He spares us the doubtful and boring apparatus of the social sciences, offering instead his own unfettered observations supported by a wide reading. He delineates nine classes: top out-of-sight, upper, upper middle, middle, high proletarian, mid-prole, low-prole, destitute, bottom out-of-sight, and a special category he calls "X people". Fussell then fleshes out this taxonomy in chapters dealing with appearance, housing, buying habits, recreation, drinking, reading, education, and language.

Fussell is so acute and dead-on (with some lapses) that I cannot imagine anyone with the slightest degree of self-knowledge reading this book and not experiencing the dawn of recognition, sometimes painfully. He is especially hard on the middle and prole classes. Here I fault him, not for inaccuracy but for a lack of sympathy that would have taken him to a deeper level of understanding and somewhat softened the blows. Fussell, it seems certain, includes himself in the X category, a group of people outside the normal class system. This explains the coldness with which he regards those still caught on the wheel. That being said, the degree of enlightenment Fussell offers is worth the price of his supercilious gaze. While he is not the final word, reading him will greatly help anyone to understand better the reality of class in America. And he is after all, correct: the middle class is the bastion of "psychic insecurity" and envy, and the prole class are fat, gullible and tastelessly dressed. For lack of vision the people perish.

Having read several of Fussell's other books, I wondered why this is the only one that is entertaining (the man is both a misanthrope and a bit of a whiner). Then I stumbled upon Class by Jilly Cooper, which provides a highly amusing view of the British class system, and realized that Fussell had modeled his book on hers.

That's not to say that it's a rip-off. In fact, Fussell's genius lies in his having recognized a great concept and modified it for the American market. Additionally, he specifically credits Cooper at several points in his book.

Having grown up in a middle-class family in Pomona, California, Fussell does not have an intuitive understanding of Northeastern snobbery, which may account for some of the weaknesses in this book. Far better in that regard are "Old Money" by Nelson Aldrich or several books on the subject by Lewis Lapham, both of whom grew up in wealthy families.

Perhaps the greatest weakness in the book is Fussell's description of Class X as the ideal class. The people he describes so favorably, including himself, appear to be little more than Aging Hippies, frozen in time.

But Seriously... While the social landscape will probably be much more familiar to a person who lives/has lived in the North East, Fussell's description of 'Class' in America is uncannily accurate. The title being 'shorthand,' really, for the 'cultural castes' in America that do not necessarily correlate to one's income and wealth, Fussell's book is genuinely far more than mere pop-sociology. Rather, in one short book, Fussell delineates with near-perfection every major convention and code of conformity in American life. It is no exaggeration to say: 'this book will set you free,' for if you have the courage to recognize yourself within its pages - and, believe me; rich, poor, middle-class, we're all in there - besides an extremely entertaining read, you will come away with both a genuine distaste for conformity - however it should manifest itself - as well as the instinct to think for yourself.

As for 'X-people'; well, that I believe is simply Fussell coining a new term for bohemians, and here lies the only criticism I would make of the book: in his description of 'X-people' Fussell may well be guilty of laying down a new code of conformity of his own.

We've all taken on an affectation of some sort in our lives, we've all felt insecure, we're all products of our background in many ways: admit it, be at ease with it, then get in the habit of 'living what you like.' To be free both of the 'tyranny' of one's own particular social paradigm, as well as the burdensome care of what unfortunate individuals - still constricted by their own ingrained ideas of what is 'proper' - may think of you, presents you with a world suddenly free of illusory, popularly prescribed limitations. Realize that conformity to any counter-culture is still conformity, avoid the pitfall of self-congratulation - shall we call this an 'ugly-duckling syndrome?' - and the world is at your feet!