A Touchy Subject (Social Class in America)

PBS.ORG ^ | 1983 | Paul Fussell

[shrinkermd]

Quite interestingly, there is no reference on FR for "Social Class."

Not in this section is the implicit assumption that having a great deal of money does not result in your automatic inclusion in any particular class.

[Gimlet]

Fussell's book on class in America was interesting reading. We like to pretend we are classless. His wry and shrewd observations on how we reveal our class by our bumper stickers, the booze we drink, the churches we belong to, what we call the evening meal, and all our habits of speech, dress, and manner makes for fun reading. I get the feeling he is a terrible snob. His earlier book "The Great War and Modern Memory" is extraordinary though. About the enduring impact of that war for civilization and how it changed us for ever. "Wartime" was good too - about the impact of World War II.

[Standing Wolf]

Laura Bush is classy. Her predecessor was trashy.

[Darheel]

Commie alert. Crap stinks. Next article, 'What's Wrong With the American Bourgoise?'

[realpatriot71]

People by nature of being human are all equal in inalienable rights, but to suggest that people are NOT born into different categories, I think, is not being intellectually dishonest. Obviously, some people are born poor or rich, and everywhere in between. The beautiful thing about this country is that your initail situation need not be static. At least we have a system that allows you to move up, to a point, taxes prevent many from ever getting "rich". However, this can be overcome with luck, skills, and being in the right place at the right time.

[realpatriot71]

Oooops

Should have read:

. . .I think, is not being intellectually honest . . .

[Darheel]

I was not 'born into' any category. How can you explain my existence? Am i a freak of nature? (probly lol)

[Fred25]

PBS RESOURCE MATERIAL

[realpatriot71]

I wouldn't call you a freak. I know people hate to talk of "class". People hate to be categoried, and I can understand this, neither do I, especially with the connotation that comes along with "upper," "middle," and "lower". However, do you not think people are born into certain monetary situations that they have no control over?

[Cogadh na Sith]

I was born and raised in New Mexico and returned after a stint in the Army. None of this makes any sense to me at all.

It's like the VietNamese dramas on the International Channel.

Anyone for drinking homebrew and shooting varmints on the Llano?

[fourdeuce82d]

I get the feeling he is a terrible snob. His earlier book "The Great War and Modern Memory" is extraordinary though. About the enduring impact of that war for civilization and how it changed us for ever. "Wartime" was good too - about the impact of World War II.

Hello Gimlet.

Fussel is a snob, but he seems to have some sense that he's full of crap. In a more recent book, "Doing Battle" he focuses on his own experiences during WWII. The book includes a biagrophy of his life before and after the war, and he is fairly unsapring of himself.

He is(or was) a professor of literature, (If I recall correctly) someone with artistic/literary refinement- he is not a "post-modernist/deconstructionist/anti-racist" type.

Fussel has torqued me pretty tight with what I see as arrogance/snobbery etc., but then he turns around and does things that surprise me. For example, he published a series of essays titled "Thank God For the Atomic Bomb" in which he took vigorous exception to the revisionist idea that the urban renewal program undertaken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unwarranted. He also wrote the forward to Eugene Sledge's memoir, "With the Old Breed" (something like that) about the marines at Pelileu (sp?)

I think he often misses the mark, but a lot of his observations are spot on.("spot-on"; perfect example of class climbing pseudo-british affectation, eh?)

[dighton]

I get the feeling he is a terrible snob.

Maybe, maybe not. See The Anti-Egotist for praise of non-snobs (his friend Kingsley Amis; Ian Fleming) and brickbats at snobs (Evelyn Waugh when behaving badly; Jane Austen).

The Amis attack on snobbery resumes in his essay on his own Colonel Sun and on Ian Fleming's James Bond fictions in general: Fleming may have his defects, but "not once, in the twelve books and eight stories, does Bond or his creator come anywhere near judging a character by his or her social standing." There's generic snobbery too to be guarded against. Many of those who denigrate spy fiction, "thrillers," Westerns, ghost stories, horror tales, whodunnits, and other popular narrative forms, are mere snobs affecting (as if instinctive) a socially advantageous leaning towards "serious fiction" and other manifestations of high culture. But actually, Amis is brave enough to say right out loud, "John D. MacDonald is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow."

-- The Anti-Egotist: Kinsley Amis, Man of Letters.

Class

Wartime

The Great War and Modern Memory

[rightofrush]

Interesting article. Middle class angst has long been noted and discused.

I remember reading some some 30+ years ago about class "markers".
The upper classes get sick, middle casses become ill. When two couples ride together in an automoble, lower classes ride with their spouses, middle classes ride men in front, women in the back. Upper classes ride with each other's spouses.

[oldsalt]

If you hear "My boy's taking lessons on the trombone," your smile will be a little harder to control than if you hear "My boy's taking lessons on the flute."

Hey, c'mon, unfair! The only reason I played trombone was because I had the longest arms in 7th grade! 7th position on the slide is a long way down when you're 12.

[untenured]

When two couples ride together in an automoble, lower classes ride with their spouses, middle classes ride men in front, women in the back. Upper classes ride with each other's spouses.

Interesting. Color me lower-class.

[Romulus]

Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education.

In a word, manners. The only problem with fraying cuffs (of which I have enough) is that most don't know how to carry it off. Sprezzatura was Castiglione's prescription, and not a bad one, either.

[Darheel]

Sure, but if you have no money at all, does that mean you are classless? No, class is a construct by social liberals throughout the ages to distinguish themselves from others they hate (classically). It has always been the case.

[LadyDoc]

Social class exists, but is fluid. That is why this is merely another PBS marxist commentary.

A better discussion is found in last months' Atlantic magazine, where a writer actually went to a small town and asked the people, and found that they didn't consider themselves inferior, and since prices were low, they lived comfortably and well. Of course, most teachers are local, so the kids don't learn marxism too much in the schools.

[Orual]

Very interesting article and there are so many quoted gems that it is difficult to choose amongst them. First, of course, we have social classes in the United States; to deny that is ridiculous. That some of those in the upper echelon may not possess the quality of "class" while many individuals in the middle and lower classes do, cannot be disputed.

I think the definition from the article is as close to the truth as we can get: His grouping of people by "like backgrounds," scientifically uncertain as it may be, is nearly as good a way as any to specify what it is that distinguishes one class from another. If you feel no need to explicate your allusions or in any way explain what you mean, you are probably talking with someone in your class. And that's true whether you're discussing the Rams and the Forty-Niners, RV's, the House (i.e. Christ Church, Oxford), Mama Leone's, the Big Board, "the Vineyard," "Baja," or the Porcellian.

And Harley's quote sums it up quite nicely:There,(meaning here in the US) inequalities of appearance are redressed by government plastic surgeons, but the scalpel isn't used to make everyone beautiful - it's used to make everyone plain.

[tpaine]

I posted a thread on the Atlantic article, here:

One Nation, Slightly Divisible

Address:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/577490/posts