I graduated two years behind Mr. Douthat, and in the same concentration, so I greeted the news that this book was going to be published with a great deal of anticipation.
Some of it was justified. Some of it was hype. And some of it jarred so substantially with my experience of Harvard that I couldn't believe that we had, for at least a couple of overlapping years, occupied the same two or three square miles of Cambridge.
In praise of Douthat: his writing is clear, and the dialogue he records is pitch perfect. He chronicles experiences that older writers attempting to "get" the modern college experience miss, like the so-called "college marriage," which perhaps doesn't get the "Time" and "Newsweek" headlines that the casual hook-up seems to grab with such alacrity, but which nonetheless deserves notice and comment. He's absolutely right, if a bit ponderous, about Harvard's lack of academic rigor, and the extent to which this is a national phenomenon that appears to be catching.
On the other hand, however, there's that ponderous. First-hand accounts of his life at Harvard are followed by long parades of statistical data that resemble a social science paper more than a memoir, and the curious hybrid produced tends to feel awkward and over-generalized, as if Douthat is trying to provide justification for his experiences with numbers. Too many times, his positions seemed to be culled directly from David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise", which is an obvious and very direct influence, and, in the end, a book that says much of what "Privilege" is saying, but with less of the deadly earnestness which casts a pallor over Douthat's otherwise reasonably good prose. Brooks is funny, offbeat, and less than rigorous in just the right places; Douthat, despite his repeated assurances to the contrary, cares too much about the very privilege he derides to really give Harvard's brand of privilege the horsewhipping it deserves. The book is highly self-conscious because of it.
I would happily put all of these issues down to a first time writer's mistakes if the book wasn't so terribly wrong in its entire mission. In calling his book "Privilege", in claiming to write about Harvard as an entity, and in his long pages of statistics, Douthat is making far greater a claim to accuracy than he can reasonably uphold. For example, he devotes an entire chapter to finals clubs, Harvard's bizarre mix of fraternities and secret societies, and his endeavor to successfully "punch" one of them. In doing so, he seems to say that this is an essential part of the Harvard experience.
I, nor anyone I ever knew at Harvard, punched a final club, or was even more than passingly aware of their existence. If I were to read Douthat's book without my own experiences to tell me otherwise, I would assume that they were an integral part of Harvard, like the Johnston Gate or the godawfulness of Annenberg's faux Gothic spires. I suppose this means that I wasn't among the elite or "privileged", but if not, doesn't this rather refute Douthat's argument that such privilege _is_ the provenance of the Harvard student? Likewise for much of the rest of his commentary. Douthat would like very much to portray all of us as money-grubbing careerists who, coming from utterly uniform upper middle class backgrounds, are willing to put aside love and happiness now for the prospect of spectacular success later.
Well, while Douthat was playing touch football at Alistair Woolvington's estate, I was working two jobs to help my parents defray expenses. Douthat would have me marry at the age of 30 or so, after I've earned my Ph.D. from Berkeley and founded a charity in the Bronx, but I became engaged on the day of my last final exam, and, at 23, married my husband. I followed his job to San Diego, where I spend my time at one of the least lucrative professions of all: writing. I have no aspirations to graduate programs and do not in the least regret my decisions.
If that bit of personal history proves anything, it's that Douthat focuses on one type of student in this book, but not all students. If he didn't claim to do more, or at least imply it, I would have rated "Privilege" considerably higher, in both quality and honesty. As it is, however, only the quality of the writing and isolated moments of insight save it from mediocrity.
Some people in this thread have posed the question, "Why should anyone care?" A good point, but I'll add to it. One should care even less, because this book doesn't even represent Harvard as it is. It represents Mr. Douthat as he is, and alas, he's a little young for an autobiography.
Also: I don't know if anyone has put this together yet, but Sarah Mahurin (according to the "fifteen minutes" article about Suzanne Pomey) was Pomey's roommate whose ATM card Pomey stole, which makes her the "Sally Maddox" character in "Privilege" and a friend of Douthat. Tsk, tsk.
