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DVD Product Details * Paperback: 208 pages * Publisher: Touchstone; Reissue edition (October 1, 1992) * ISBN: 0671792253 * Product Dimensions: 85 x 55 x 06 inches * Shipping Weight: 77 ounces.
All Editions Inside This Book First Sentence: Although most Americans sense that they live within an ex tremely complicated system of social classes and suspect that much of wh at is thought and done...
learn more) First Sentence: Although most Americans sense that they live within an extremely complica ted system of social classes and suspect that much of what is thought an d done here is prompted by considerations of status, the subject has rem ained murky.
See all 21 books this book cites Editorial Reviews Review Alison Lurie The New York Times Book Review A shrewd and entertaining com mentary on American mores today. Product Description: In Class Paul Fussell explodes the sacred American myth of social equalit y with eagle-eyed irreverence and iconoclastic wit. This bestselling, su perbly 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 be tween. 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 victi m of prole drift.
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 pr oles. Fussell's sharp eye has found and catalogued an amazing array of s igns that indicate class in America. Try to spot these signs at your nex t social gathering, or even subject your own living room to the survey a t the end of the book (frighteningly accurate way to determine one's cla ss)! This is a book based on pigeon-holing people, and that is probably what m ost annoyed readers can't stand about Fussell. The middle class hope to rise in class by sendi ng their kids to Harvard or Yale, the Proles hope to do the same by gett ing more money. Lucky "X Class" people don't give a hoot about such clim bing, and fortunately more of us are just veering sideways into that fin al 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 t rue that you will get better service at a jeweler's or other tony shop i f you dress not so much "up" but into the highest class you can accurate ly manage. And if you want to blend in at the truck stop, there are plen ty of hot tips to be gleaned from this book. Yes, yes, we should best judge each other only by virtues like honesty an d willingness to help, but the book is about class, that dazzling (and n ow not so mysterious) thing. Not without the odd mistake (I argue that books piled around the living r oom 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 a t Fussell and his incisive wit.
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 al l 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 hi gher classes have many things in common, among them a deeply ingrained c onservatism 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 year 's ago by the gentlemen's clubs: the right to keep women away from at le ast 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 an d social habits as feminine and unsound. There is probably no significan t difference in the prejudiced, deeply uncurious mindset of Prince Phili p Duke of Edinburgh and that of a pensioner his age living in Yorkshire. It is true that stri dent religious opinions, big hair of unnatural colour and painted nails, or toupees and poorly-fitting jackets are usually the predictor of lowe r-to lower middle class background, or that high professional qualificat ions, 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 foll owing terms clearly conjure a mental image of a particular order of thin gs? barcalounger, trailer park, WWJD, community college, Tom Jones, spam, gin and tonic, dinner jacket, pest o, 100% polyester, white supremacy, homemaker, National Enquirer, The New Yorker, Nantucket, Detroit, credit car d debt, bodice-ripper, short-sleeved dress shirt, pocket pro tector, hunting dog, dinner jacket, Armani, Ivy League, inner city, Dairy Queen. Think of words like individual (pronoun ced "individjal") or expressions like people of colour. Those who disbel ieve Fussell's arguments to identify social classes just haven't been pa ying attention, for there are signs everywhere that they are still alive and well. He notices that English spelli ng and mock-old-English words (parlour, kippers, jolly good) are short-h and for the higher social orders, and that this is used by real estate d evelopers to get homebuyers to pay more just to live in a posher soundin g address. He sees that many people seem to believe that college educati on irrespective of the actual college places them on a par with Ivy Leag ue graduates, and he sees it as a cruel ruse on the gullible and insecur e (this is true everywhere: in the UK, many years after the polytechnics and teachers colleges were turned into universities Cambridge and Oxfor d 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 virtual ly the entire business, political and intellectual elite comes from a ha ndful of institutes, notably ENA, HEC, Insead and the X), in spite of th e fact that truly desirable employers, such as consulting firms only hir e 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 sees the clear differen ce between the upper middle class "Patrician" mindset, and the upper cla ss "Aristocratic" one (in order to tell them apart, when you think of th e upper middle class, think XIX century, Victorian, prudish, earnest, ha rd-working, dark, and when you think of the upper classes, think XVIII c entury, Augustan, idle, colourful, cynical: it's Dickens, Balzac and Jan e 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 d eep Calvinist influence, whereas the South's (traditional California Lan d-owners or Alabama cotton-growers) is clearly Aristocratic (which is wh y only the South could produce William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom", an d only the North could give forth "The Education of Henry Adams"). The U S 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 t he upper classes, but just create richer proles and lower-middle class p eople. While some people may think that because they are rich they are u pper class, virtually no one ...
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