Started out as a funny field guide to the American class system. Written in 1983 it’s astonishingly up-to-date, although of course a few things have changed. But it’s really wild how much is still exactly the same. Anyway, it started out funny but as it went on it just started seeming nastier and repetitive. If you can find it, you may enjoy the first few chapters, but you may as well bail out halfway through.

ADDED: Well this is just plain weird, the day after I review this obscure 37 year old book, it gets mentioned in a NYTimes opinion piece (great essay BTW): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/10/opinion/television-culture.html?referringSour... ( )

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. ( )

This book is full of interesting insights about social class in the US. The beginning was very informative, then it turns into a long series of examples of social class, ending with the artificial X group (which was fun to read). Among the interesting tidbits of information is the social status granted by owning a Mercedes-Benz which, remarkably, the author says was very negative in Germany. According to this author (in 1983), Mercedes-Benz was a car

"'which the intelligent young in West Germany regard, quite correctly, as 'a sign of high vulgarity, a car of the kind owned by Beverly Hills dentists or African cabinet ministers.' The worst kind of upper-middle-class types own Mercedes, (…) Speeders are either young non-Anglo-Saxon high-school proles hoping to impress girls of a similar sort, or insecure, status-anxious middle-class men (…) The requirements of class dictate that you drive slowly, steadily, and silently, and as near the middle of the road as possible.'" (91–92)

I am reminded that Mercedes-Benz cars were popular in the 1980’s among rulers such as Ceauşescu, Mugabe, Idi Amin, and Ferdinand Marcos. It was also in a Mercedes-Benz that the president of Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, was killed by a bomb which resulted "in a mass of copper being projected toward the car at a speed of nearly two kilometers per second, effectively penetrating the armoured Mercedes.” (Wikipedia) Perhaps, back in 1983, all this made Fussell think Germans did not think highly of owning a Mercedes-Benz car. However, a quick glance through Google does not give me any hint that Fussell’s interpretation of the view that Germans had on Mercedes-Benz is valid today. ( )

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. ( )

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? ( )

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

"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. ( )

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. ( )

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.

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

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. ( )

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." ( )

This is dated but very well written and funny. ( )

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. ( )

(Alistair) Anyway, Class. I confess that my original reason for buying this book was an essentially morbid curiosity about the topic. Coming from such a marvellously class-ridden society as England, after all, leaves one reasonably certain that there must, surely, be some sort of class system, even if it's not the one one's used to. And while the traditional slur that American class is determined solely by money may be satisfying for sniffy Guardianistas and other European hesperophobes, it doesn't take much exposure to figure out that it just ain't so.

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.)

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/10/class_a_guide_through_the_a... ) ( )

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. ( )

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