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Loading... Class: A Guide Through the American Status Systemby Paul Fussell
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 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. 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. 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. 0.020 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0671792253, Paperback)In Class Paul Fussell explodes the sacred American myth of social equality with eagle-eyed irreverence and iconoclastic wit. This bestselling, superbly researched, exquisitely observed guide to the signs, symbols, and customs of the American class system is always outrageously on the mark as Fussell shows us how our status is revealed by everything we do, say, and own. He describes the houses, objects, artifacts, speech, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from the top to the bottom and everybody -- you'll surely recognize yourself -- in between. Class is guaranteed to amuse and infuriate, whether your class is so high it's out of sight (literally) or you are, alas, a sinking victim of prole drift.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Fussell's book (which is also, I would add, agreeably curmudgeonly about the whole thing for readers such as I) lays bare the cispondian designators of class rather well, I think, or at least upon examination they correspond reasonably well to things I have noted, or could note. (Some reviewers claim that the book, published in 1983, has dated since publication; this may be the cause of those anomalies I observed.) As ever, the designators vary, but the underlying characteristics of the classes are really fairly similar.
A very good read for those interested in the topic, although as one might expect, the chapter concerning "prole drift", or the increasing drift of culture towards the proletarian, is somewhat depressing in the light of observable shift since 1983 and reasonable projection into the future. I might also add that he seems to lionize "Category X", a sort of sideways out-class:
"A useful exercise is to ask of Annis's poem, what class is the speaker in it? Not a prole, because his grammar is unexceptionable. Not middle-class either, because he notices that something's deeply wrong with the public architecture of Aberdarcy and has no fear of starting controversy by criticizing it. And he can't be upper class because he's speaking in verse, which requires talent, learning, and effort."
...a little bit much for my taste, for all I might, from this account, well be a member of it.
(The quick test in the back of the book to let you determine your perceived class by scoring your living room is kind of fun, too.)
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