Class : a guide through the American status system

by Paul Fussell

Other authorsMartim de Avillez (Illustrator)

Paperback, 1992

Status

Available

Call number

305.50973

Genres

Publication

New York : Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Description

The bestselling, comprehensive, and carefully researched guide to the ins-and-outs of the American class system with a detailed look at the defining factors of each group, from customs to fashion to housing. Based on careful research and told with grace and wit, Paul Fessell shows how everything people within American society do, say, and own reflects their social status. Detailing the lifestyles of each class, from the way they dress and where they live to their education and hobbies, Class is sure to entertain, enlighten, and occasionally enrage readers as they identify their own place in society and see how the other half lives.

Media reviews

The Atlantic

For readers who somehow missed this snide, martini-dry American classic, do have your assistant Tessa run out and get it immediately (Upper), or at least be sure to worriedly skim this magazine summary over a low-fat bagel (Middle), because Fussell’s bibelot-rich tropes still resonate... The

experience of reading (and re-reading) Class is akin to wiping goggles one didn’t know were fogged. Fussell’s methodology settles into the brain like a virus; one soon cannot stop nanocategorizing one’s world. A quarter century later, most of Fussell’s categories live on—if with some fiscal damage. Fussell’s topmost denizens were “out of sight” in hilltop manses at the end of long, curving driveways. The billionaires in Michael Tolkin’s hilariously mordant The Return of the Player are even farther out, prow-jousting at sea in their satellite-technology-equipped yachts.

Show Less

User reviews

LibraryThing member Kplatypus

Class: a guide through the America Status System was a complete change in direction from my last few books, which made for a refreshing change of pace. Fussell is just as delightfully cranky as he was in BAD: the Dumbing of America, which I reviewed a few entries back. He is also, unfortunately,

just as dated. In Class, he delineates, and then skewers, the various methods that Americans have of broadcasting social class, sparing no group his scorn. Many of his observations are as true today as when he wrote the book (1982), but others are sadly out of touch. His comments on home ownership (though by using that term I have no doubt lowered my own class in his venerable eyes), for example, seem strangely antiquated, given the current market. Other comments, such as those on the quality of food found in restaurants, also seem out of touch, given the changes seen in dining out in the last twenty-odd years. However, it was still fun to read, and I've been enjoying trying to identify my own class, as well as the classes of my friends and family, at least according to his scheme. One warning: don't read this if you are easily offended by pretense/pomposity. Fussell's full of both, and my boyfriend would become enraged whenever I read something out of here to him. Oops.

Show Less

14 more

LibraryThing member AlexTheHunn

This is well written, well organized and well-argued. Fussell claims that class exists in America and exposes it in its workings. To anyone who doubted or needed convincing, this book may go a long way toward illuminating the existing class structure.

LibraryThing member nmele

This is kind of dated now but Fussell has written the best book I have ever found on the taboo topic of class in the Unites States of America. Well worth searching in used bookstores and library stacks to find if you haven't read it.

LibraryThing member kristenn

Inspired to read this by a recent review in the Atlantic. Coincidentally, it turned out that I had just read an excerpt from his ex-wife's memoir (in a foodie anthology) and thus had insight on his own lifestyle relative to what he was describing and mocking. Overall, it was actually a fun book.

And I really don't think it was intended to be at all serious. He made regular reference to The Preppie Handbook, which had recently made a killing (I feel so old for remembering it, too) and he seemed to mainly be trying to ride its economic coattails. He mocked his own lifestyle (without admitting it was his own) just as much as the rest. And it was interesting to see exactly what got mocked. It wasn't basic cruel snobbery. The very rich were treated much more cruelly than the very poor. Very much in the Paris Hilton model, the lot of them. He was remarkably sympathetic to the poor (proles), pointing out their understandable frustrations (like demeaning jobs) as an explanation of some of their tackier tendencies. And his biggest criticism of the middle class was that they are too hung up on what other people think of them, and that is really not an insult. Or, at the very least, it's very constructive criticism. (Although I'm still smarting at the repeated digs about New Yorker readers of course.) A lot of what he was describing was aspirational marketing, which consumers are more conscious of today than they were back then. Also, he made some perfectly valid (even today) observations about the major shortcomings of U.S. higher education. Overall, I don't feel compelled to try to move from middle class to 'X,' although that was his actual goal with the book. (Being that generation is enough. Confusing!) Really, they're their own kind of shallow. And grimy! Finally, his praise at the end for the bohemian lifestyle, with such attention paid to their free love practices when he hadn't addressed relationships at any point prior, makes a lot more sense when you know why his marriage crashed and burned.

Show Less

LibraryThing member dlgoldie

This is dated but very well written and funny.

LibraryThing member Oreillynsf

You laugh, you recoil in shock. You find yourself and it hurts big time. While a bit dated, Fussell's laser-sharp observations and biting wit make this as entertaining as it is educational.

LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

Paul Fussell has made a career as a social critic, or as a man with the definitions that really seem to be correct. His book seems to me accurate, and should be read by non-Americans before venturing into the Great Republic. It will help with social success, and be a good guide as to which

Americans you may feel comfortable with. I wonder how PF has fared in the age of the tea-party?

Show Less

LibraryThing member callmemiss

Paul Fussell's "Class" is a definitive take on the contemporary battle lines that divide America's socio-economic groups. If you read "Class," you can skip David Brooks's pallid derivatives "Bobos in Paradise" and "On Paradise Drive."

LibraryThing member robertmorrow

I learned so much about America from this book. A very helpful and funny guide to understanding how we cling to our class memberships.

LibraryThing member esquetee

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 statuslower moneymiddle occupationupper taste, styleI 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.

Show Less

LibraryThing member AfroFogey

For certain the most wickedly funny book on class in America and also among the best, only out shined buy Baltzell's work in my estimation.

LibraryThing member willshetterly

"The word 'class' is fraught with unpleasing associations, so that to linger upon it is apt to be interpreted as the symptom of a perverted mind and a jaundiced spirit." —R. H. Tawney

"You reveal a great deal about your social class by the amount of annoyance or fury you feel when the subject is

brought up. A tendency to get very anxious suggests that you are middle-class and nervous about slipping down a rung or two. On the other hand, upper-class people love the topic to come up: the more attention paid to the matter the better off they sem to be. Proletarians generally don't mind discussions of the subject because they know they can do little to alter their class identity. Thus the whole class matter is likely to seem like a joke to them—the upper classes fatuous in their empty aristocratic pretentiousness, the middles loathsome in their anxious gentility. It is the middle class that is highly class-sensitive, and sometimes class-scared to death." —Paul Fussell

I loved the opening pages of Class, but I soon got bored. Fussell isn't interested in the underlying workings of class. He's concerned with the markers, the manifestations of class. Since the book is old, the markers are dated. But the book is a grand snapshot of its time, and I'd recommend it to anyone writing about the '70s and early '80s.

Update: I read the 1983 edition. Apparently, the book was updated, so it might also be a useful snapshot of later class markers too.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ehines

Quite dated now, but definitely has some insight into the culture of American class circa 1980, many of which have direct analogues today.

LibraryThing member emf1123

This covers observational class markers from the 1970's and early 1980's, having been published in 1983. It is woefully out of date for the 21st century, as class markers have shifted around.

LibraryThing member wickenden

Fussell argues that, despite our ideas that we are somehow above "class" in America, there are rigid class boundaries here. They aren't, as they are in Great Britain, determined by speech or dialect and aren't even really determined by economics. But language is a factor, and we betray our status

by phrases we use and behaviors we have.

One that sticks out in my mind was the use of the term "home" to describe your house. This identifies someone as a person in a middle class who is trying to feign membership in a higher class. Another is fiance.

I was quite interested in the x class he identifies, where the ultra-rich and the bohemian poor eschew such class symbols -- the wealthy guy who drives a chevrolet, wears the most common clothing.

It was an interesting and quite convincing read.

Show Less

Fewer