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Class By Paul Fussell

It's rare to pick up a piece of non-fiction that is fun.  Sure, learning is pleasurable.  Reading is fun.  Maybe, then, the right word is ornery. But Class, while written in 1983 and thus outdated in some ways, is precisely that.  It's hard not to enjoy reading this book.  Fussell is Dennis the Menace whose sling shot is his typewriter. Class's subtitle sums up the book, which is a "guide through the American status symbol."  Fussell notes the ways in which people in any of his nine classes walk, talk, think, and decorate the same. He ridicules all social classes, skewering especially the middle class.  Quoting Lord Melbourne, he notes: "The higher and lower classes, there's some good in them, but the middle classes are all affectation and conceit and pretense and concealment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime & Federalism on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).