Class: A Guide Through the American Status System

by Paul Fussell

The bestselling, comprehensive, and carefully researched guide to the ins-and-outs of the American class system with a detailed look at the defining factors of each group, from customs to fashion to housing.

Based on careful research and told with grace and wit, Paul Fessell shows how everything people within American society do, say, and own reflects their social status. Detailing the lifestyles of each class, from the way they dress and where they live to their education and hobbies, Class is sure to entertain, enlighten, and occasionally enrage readers as they identify their own place in society and see how the other half lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Economics, Politics, History, Humor, Class

208 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 1992

About the author

Paul Fussell was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings covered a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commentary on America’s class system. He was an U.S. Army Infantry officer in the European theater during World War II (103rd U.S. Infantry Division) and was awarded both the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He is best known for his writings about World War I and II.

He began his teaching career at Connecticut College (1951–55) before moving to Rutgers University in 1955 and finally the University of Pennsylvania in 1983. He also taught at the University of Heidelberg (1957–58) and King’s College London (1990–92). As a teacher, he traveled widely with his family throughout Europe during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, taking Fulbright and sabbatical years in Germany, England and France.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't like to throw around the word "dated" when it comes to reading older books. It reflects badly on the reader. Oh, you mean a book written in the early 1980s does not 100% hold up in the 2010s? What a surprise. What's that? Technology and trends have changed over the past 30 years? You don't say. If that's your biggest concern while ignoring other facets of a book well then, my friend, YOU. ARE. LAZY. Judging by the comments for this book on Goodreads there are a lot of lazy and literal readers out there.

Fussell's tongue-in-cheek dissection of class in America does, in fact, hold up in many respects. It shows how bound we are to our class upbringings no matter how hard we try to pretend that class doesn't exist in this country. Yes, some of the examples are from another era and don't pack quite the same punch. But the basic argument holds up fine. And Fussell's acerbic humor saves what could have been a very dry study. He's very funny and witty about the pretensions of all class levels in the United States.

My one criticism with Fussell's analysis, however, is that he ends up coming off, ironically, as a an elitist. He ultimately seems to prefer status and traditions over the rise of mass culture. Everything "popular" is bad and cheap for Prof. Fussell. This is where the book, instead of being revolutionary, is actually quite reactionary.

[Dalena · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a good (if outdated) exploration of class in the US. It takes all of our ideas about ourselves and offers tongue in cheek anecdotes meant to take us all down a peg. I spent most of the book laughing and rolling my eyes while trying to figure out which class this guy belonged to. I think he is a high prole who has tried to escape into the class x category (that he made up himself).

Given the state of education and the downward spiral of the economy, I totally understand what he is saying about the "prolization" of America. Heretofore, I was calling it Britneyspearization or Disneyization, but his term is much better. Read this book to open your eyes to class in America (taking everything with a grain of salt), then watch Social Class in America on PBS (have another grain of salt), then read Working on the chain gang by Walter Mosley, and begin your journey in social consciousness.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look at what really makes up class distinctions in American society. It has nothing to do with wealth and everything to do with self-awareness and how one is raised, he effectively argues. It's a real eye-opener. I found myself analyzing what class I belonged too and am convinced that my family is not as middle-class as my mother led us to believe. The only downside to this book is the end. The author argues that there is a new class being formed in America, one made of people who are oblivious to their own class but also don't seem to adhere to the rules of any of them. He points to beatniks, hippies, artists, etc. etc. as part of this new class. While I agreed with him on this, what diminished the book is the author then egotistically claimed he was part of this "new" class and that the "new" class was better than everyone else. So the guy ended up coming off as an elitist snob in the end. Despite that, this book is listed as one of my favorites of all time and I recommend it (actually I pretty much thrust it) on everyone who comes my way.

[unnarrator · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG I READ A BOOK.

So admittedly this has Problems. It's dated, it's hideously white, and it's actually not social science—it's social criticism without the science part. Still I found it refreshingly bitter and cruel. Also uncomfortably DEAD-ON. Galvanizing to see how many (i.e. ALL) of the life choices I've justified as being aesthetic, etc., actually came straight out of crippling class anxiety. Excellent. And for my next self-excoriating experience....

There could have been no David Brooks, no Blognigger, no Stuff White People Like, without Fussell. I'm buying one for me and extras for my friends.

[ALLEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a wonderfully funny, persnickety dissection of the American class system, from "Top Out-of-Sight" through professionals and workers, all the way down to "Bottom Out-of-Sight." It is bound to raise smiles and hackles alike and provide at least temporary relief from current stay-at-home orders.

Though Paul Fussell gained his academic reputation from THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY in 1975, this bijou he called CLASS established him as an essayist in the early 1980s and remains the best of his social analyses. (In fact, thirty-five years later, these observations are just as witty -- and occasionally infuriating -- as ever.)

Don't discount the merits of the puckish illustrations that have come with every edition: the middle-class homeowner "confronting a damning impurity" (looks like dandelion or chickweed) on his lawn, architecture-style facial line drawings of the blunt-featured, lower-class man (looking a good deal like Ronald Reagan) versus the upper-class man (think: Quentin Crisp). For all that, CLASS predicted the continuing demise of the lower-middle class, having suffered so much iniquity at the hands of "inflationary monetary policy and rip-off advertising."

Fussell does indeed identify with the "little people" but sooner or later, no matter how you're situated, he is going to piss you off royally! But, I believe, it is worth the insult for this witty, informed and now classic Cook's Tour of the complex American class system. I still think of this book and often specific lines when Fussell held forth on aspects of classiness such as the continuing pull of Anglophilia, including FDR's pince-nez and air of aristocratic magnanimity. Paul Fussell is gone, but CLASS in any edition remains required reading among fans of wit and humor. Don't miss it.

From the book:
Disdainful "Prole" sneers at oblivious Street Person:


Review revised and updated, May 1, 2020

[Elisabeth Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The greatest drawback to this witty little volume is that it was written over twenty years ago. Since it is a backhanded social commentary, it has lost some of its application. However, the writing of Fussell has lost none of its lustre. No matter how ridiculous the observation, it is justified with a voice full of entitlement. Here he expounds on his posit that the dog surpasses the cat as the pet preferred by the upper classes:
" Rousseau:'Do you like cats?'
Boswell: 'No.'
Rousseau: 'I was sure of that. It is my test of character. There you have the despotic instinct of men. They do not like cats because the cat is free, and will never consent to become a slave. He will do nothing at your order, as other animals do.'
Thus the upper orders' fondness for a species they can order about, like their caterers, gardeners, and lawyers, and one that fawns the more its commanded. 'Sit! That's a good boy.'
And insights that still ring true today:
"Not smoking at all is very upper-class, but in any way calling attention to one's abstinence drops one to middle class immediately."
Thus, this book does not cease to amuse and offend with its unapologetic elitism.

[Antonio Nunez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book some twenty years ago, and it struck me as most humourous and overall correct.

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 all 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 higher classes have many things in common, among them a deeply ingrained conservatism 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 years ago by the gentlemen's clubs: the right to keep women away from at least 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 and social habits as feminine and unsound. There is probably no significant difference in the prejudiced, deeply uncurious mindset of Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh and that of a pensioner his age living in Yorkshire. It is true that strident religious opinions, big hair of unnatural colour and painted nails, or toupees and poorly-fitting jackets are usually the predictor of lower-to lower middle class background, or that high professional qualifications, 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 following terms clearly conjure a mental image of a particular order of things? (a) barcalounger, (b) trailer park, (c) WWJD, (d) community college, (e) Tom Jones, (f) spam, (g) gin and tonic, (h) dinner jacket, (i) pesto, (j) 100% polyester, (k) white supremacy, (l) homemaker, (m) National Enquirer, (n) The New Yorker, (o) Nantucket, (p) Detroit, (q) credit card debt, (r) bodice-ripper, (s) short-sleeved dress shirt, (t) pocket protector, (u) hunting dog, (v) Armani, (w) Ivy League, (x) inner city, (y) Dairy Queen, (z) educator. Think of words like individual (pronounced "individjal") or expressions like people of colour. Those who disbelieve Fussell's arguments to identify social classes just haven't been paying attention, for there are signs everywhere that they are still alive and well.

Fussell is very perceptive on many points. He notices that English spelling and mock-old-English words (parlour, kippers, jolly good) are short-hand for the higher social orders, and that this is used by real estate developers to get homebuyers to pay more just to live in a posher sounding address. He sees that many people seem to believe that college education irrespective of the actual college places them on a par with Ivy League graduates, and he sees it as a cruel ruse on the gullible and insecure (this is true everywhere: in the UK, many years after the polytechnics and teachers colleges were turned into universities Cambridge and Oxford 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 virtually the entire business, political and intellectual elite comes from a handful of institutes, notably ENA, HEC, Insead and the X), in spite of the fact that truly desirable employers, such as consulting firms only hire 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 notices that most people confuse the more visible upper middle class (called in the US the Preppies, in the UK the Sloane Rangers, in France les BCBG, in Latin America la gente bien, o la gente fresa) with the much more reclusive upper class, which one rarely sees, perhaps luckily, for they tend to be troublesome and violent (cfr., "The House of Hervey", by Michael de-la-noy: party girl Lady Victoria Hervey has had a high profile dalliance with gangster rapper P. Diddy). He sees the clear difference between the upper middle class "Patrician" mindset, and the upper class "Aristocratic" one (in order to tell them apart, when you think of the upper middle class, think XIX century, Victorian, prudish, earnest, hard-working, dark, and when you think of the upper classes, think XVIII century, Augustan, idle, colourful, cynical: it's Dickens, Balzac and Jane 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 deep Calvinist influence, whereas the South's (traditional California Land-owners or Alabama cotton-growers) is clearly Aristocratic (which is why only the South could produce William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom", and only the North could give forth "The Education of Henry Adams"). The US 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 the upper classes, but just create richer proles and lower-middle class people. While some people may think that because they are rich they are upper class, virtually no one else is fooled. Raul Gardini, formerly one of the richest men in Italy (who killed himself a few years ago), once said that he and Silvio Berlusconi were just very rich stiffs, whereas Gianni Agnelli was a prince. If we look at the people who benefitted the most from the bubble economy of the 90s (such as software experts, web designers, internet enterpreneurs, telemarketers, singers and dancers and sport idols), we will see that most of them don't even try to appear upper class by wearing Armani or Ralph Lauren clothes, driving Bentleys, taking up polo or hunting or buying a yacht. They are just happy to live it up, and don't much care to be seen as upwardly mobile.

Fussell was right when he wrote that Class was a very contentious subject in the US, that many more people thought of themselves as middle-class than was actually the case, and that simply discussing this matter was thought of as offensive. Reading some of the ratings for this book I have no doubt that this is the case. Some of the commentators appear personally offended by Fussell's opinions and think that "he's just a guy setting himself up as the standard for class, so we'll bring him down a peg or two". He does nothing of the sort. The only class with which he seeks to align itself is Class X, which is a bit like David Brooks' BoBos (Bourgeouis Bohemians), and he argues that only by stepping away from the class structure can we be totally free.

Some people may think that the social class structure is so undermined as to be nonexistent. That's not the case. Social classes are very robust, and, in way or another, manage to survive all economic or political upheavals (remember Milovan Djilas' book "The New Class", on the dominant bureaucrat/military class in Tito's officially Socialist Yugoslavia). In the US many people seem to think that money grants class. That is largely self-deception. As Fussell says, it takes at least three generations to produce a middle class person, and many more to produce an upper class one. Readers, do not berate the messanger for the message. To paraphrase Goldwater, "in your hearts you know he's right".

[Graeme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Fussell proposes nine classes for the United States instead of the obviously simplistic three or sociology's five: Top out-of-sight, Upper, Upper middle, Middle, High proletarian, Mid-proletarian, Low proletarian, Destitute, and Bottom out-of-sight. He explains, importantly:

One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it's not riches alone that defines these classes. "It can't be money," one working man says quite correctly, "because nobody ever knows that about you for sure." Style and taste and awareness are as important as money.

I would go further, and say that money has little to do with class. In fact, it confounds every discussion on this important but scrupulously avoided subject.

I grew up in a very young country that was colonized by criminals and jailers, populated by poor, uneducated immigrants, and retained an aggressive egalitarianism with a "Jack's as good as his master" chip on both shoulders, as one English wit wryly observed of Australians. Class and status are pervasive and not to be denied human constructs in every society, and pushing them underground merely perverted them, as it did for sex until recently. One perversion was that even some Top out-of-sight, Upper, and Upper middle Australians pretended to be mid-proles (operators) and low proles (unskilled labor) at least by their accents.

Fussell observes how the various classes look, live, consume, have fun, and how they spend their money on ridiculous crap. He is an astute and droll observer, quite often hilarious, with some sharp edges of contempt that wouldn't make it into a sociology textbook, sadly. He goes on to show that colleges and universities in the United States came to substitute for the European class structures abandoned by democracy.

In the absence of a system of hereditary ranks and titles, without a tradition of honors conferred by a monarch, and with no well-known status ladder even of high-class regiments to confer various degrees of cachet, Americans have had to depend for their mechanism of snobbery far more than other peoples on their college and university hierarchy.

The most perverse effect of this dependence was that college became a necessity for status, and that everything from dog-grooming services to churches were elevated to institutions of higher education. Alright, no dog-grooming.

Fussell then deals with language, social climbing and sinking, and the aptly named "prole drift." Finally, he proposes a very plausible and useful non-class: X. Although it's not a class he quickly starts describing the attributes of X people in remarkably familiar terms. I would claim to be an X, but I do not have a pet skunk or anteater, and I don't wear hiking boots, though I know someone who does.

I hoped that Mr. Fussell would go beyond the taxonomic classification of Homo sapiens into classes, and detail scientific research into the whys and hows, not just the whats. That is clearly a larger project for another day.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few books I have read that is a life-changer. Explodes the myth that one can change one's social standing in America at all - you can go from poor to rich, yes, but if you are born middle-class you will die middle-class.

Fussel both romanticizes and skewers each social stratum in America. Be prepared to cringe when he ridicules something YOU do. While many of the specifics used to illustrate his points are somewhat dated by today's standards, the broad concepts are spot on.

Once having read this book, you will see the country around you (assuming you live in the US) with completely new eyes.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the author's examples are outdated. I had always hoped he'd update that part of it, but he has since died.

But I think he gets at a basic illusion of American culture, i.e. that we live in a classless society. This is nonsense. Our socioeconomic status determines our class level and, unfortunately, upward mobility is not what is used to be, although the upper class likes to highlight the rare exceptions who attain it. And it's gotten harder because of the cost of college and indebtedness that results from this.

The reality, as well documented by Robert Reich and Thomas Piketty, is that the middle class is shrinking, not unlike in the late Roman Republic in which most of its middle class fell into plebeian status.

In 2016, I saw Marco Rubio, seeking the GOP nomination, say to a crowd: "If you are not already rich, you will be." Sorry, that's horse puckey. Although those have get-rich schemes to sell you, such as Tony Robbins, are only too happy to take your money so they can stay rich.

[Jean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow! I'm not even sure what to say. I've had this on my to-read list for 20 years, and think very highly of Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory. This book was a huge disappointment. At times I thought it must be tongue-in-cheek, but I'm afraid it wasn't. At times it seemed to be trying to be scholarly, quoting from other scholarly works (tho never giving actual citations--no footnotes or references of any kind in the book); sometimes it was somewhat humorous; at other times it was purely Fussell's personal opinion/bias spewing out. The tone was smug and condescending. There were some contradictions within his own arguments (e.g. personalizing/monogramming is solidly middle-class; LL Bean catalog is upper-middle, yet Bean offers loads of monogrammed items). A lot of it is dated--particularly when talking about television shows and fashion. In part the book seems to ride on the coat-tails of The Preppy Handbook, but he takes that at face-value and doesn't seem to realize that it was tongue-in-cheek. One thing he did get right--class is a touchy subject! I was amazed at my strong reaction to this book!

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my estimation, Paul Fussell has written a fairly humorous but now somewhat dated take on America's class system. This title was published in 1983 when I was still a high school student. I am now in my early fifties and the world has changed as dramatically as one would expect after 35 years. American society, especially recently, is, for me, like wandering into a surprisingly upsetting and charmless Twilight Zone episode. I keep imploring Rod Serling to emerge from the shadows, take a big toke on his Lucky Strike, and at least inform me that I have taken that detour into an unsettling world that may look somewhat like the reality I thought I knew...but is somehow completely and alarmingly different.

I am not sure if this is middle age...Trump's America...or a combination of the two. But I am now wandering the labyrinth of a Serling plot line or a Talking Heads lyric and I am generally lost and confused.

The world Fussell describes in this expose is that of my childhood and young adulthood. For context, the Preppy Handbook is mentioned within the pages rather often. Thus we can assume that the reader is expected to be familiar with this cultural touchstone of my adolescence. (I wonder how many Millennials or Gen Z could identify that book?) If one decides to pick up this title to understand how America's class system works, know that you are reading about the United States of the late seventies and early eighties.

Fussell dings everyone equally with the dry wit of the past. The humor was engaging enough for me because I recall that sort of tone. Upper classes are lampooned right along with the lowest of the low. The snobbery is a put on and nobody should take offense, no matter from what strata they came. Here are the social classes defined by Fussell and existing in our 'class free' American society:

Top out-of-sight
Upper
Upper middle

Middle
High-proletarian
Mid-proletarian
Low-proletarian

Destitute
Bottom out-of-sight

Fussell's uppermost and lowest castes are both 'out of sight' (and not because they are also 'groovy') The highest of the high and the lowest of the low both fly under the radar of the rest of the nation. The wealthiest of the wealthy have several residences, all hidden well away from the view of the masses. Either their mansions/estates are set so far back from the little traveled (or private) road that they can literally not be viewed from public throughways, or they are located on private beaches or islands. Highest uppers have private jets, drivers, and otherwise purchase their way out of any interaction with the hoi polloi. They have private entrances, VIP passes, social events by almost impossible to get invitation-only, etc. Conversely, the bottom most out of sighters reside in prisons or institutions/group homes. (although there are far fewer of the latter in today's America.) Prisons have burgeoned and been turned into a profit making industry while 'mental institutions' have been shuttered, turning some bottom out of sighters into 'destitutes' who are homeless and, therefore, living on the streets 'in sight' of society.

The Middle Class is the class that every American from the Gates/Zuckerberg/Bezos/Buffet club down to the guy who is renting a room above a cash for gold joint claims as their own. Americans find it shameful to admit they are either wealthy or poor. I believe this is one area that has shifted a bit since the publication of this book. Today's wealthy are shockingly callous to the rest of us and simply cannot be shamed into offering the Poor Little Match Girl even the shred of hope for seeing a doctor, getting her prescription filled, or lifting the minimum wage much above the level it was back in 1983 when this book was written. (adjusted for inflation) The uppers and upper middles have discovered the world of McMansions, 'gated communities', 'privatization of public utilities', 'charter schools' (unregulated ponzi schemes for the lower classes), 'private schools' (to keep their little darlings away from the unwashed), six digit college tuition (helping to ensure that college becomes, once again, 'special/elite' like it was in the 1940s) and permanent tax revolt. They conspicuously consume and foment the above mentioned social trends in an attempt to separate themselves from the rest of society as much as possible. They cannot truly achieve it in the way of the Top Out of Sight. But they have thrown down the gauntlet in 21st Century America and told the masses, "We are better, we are winners, we are walling ourselves off from you cretins."

Only in America do I have to listen to upper middle mommies who do not work and who reside in six bedroom homes with a Lexus and a LandRover in the driveway vent their spleens about how they 'can't afford' to pay an extra hundred bucks for a school levy. Perhaps this is how they hold onto their 'middle class' identification...using their greed as cover. 'Don't look at my lifestyle. I am really just middle class and I honestly can't afford to pay for....fill in the public need." They are fooling exactly nobody except themselves.

Today's down and outers are also getting rather pissed off. (Herr Trump of the Orange spray tan, business casual fascism and tacky impersonation of a 'tycoon' is a symptom of their anger.) The displaced people in America are owning their poverty and the three decade downward cycle of their lives and calling it like they see it. A loud and volatile segment of America is broke. You can read it in a headline every day now. Now we hear more about how someone 'used to have a good middle class life' when they were a kid but have subsequently fallen with little hope of recovery. -- Fussell's book mentioned nothing about this, although many of the adults in the 1980s were destitute as kids during the Depression. That generation just did not want to talk about it once life improved.

I recently read in another source that the Middle Class IS truly vanishing in America...but not exactly in the way we think it is. Instead of imploding completely (meaning that everyone is sinking), it is diverging into two paths. Some of the Middle Class are moving up (into the Upper Middle) and others are definitely sinking. Either way, not much is left of the 'true middle'. Oddly enough, although I emerged from a High Prole background and married a fellow Prole, by 21st century American standards we are quite Middle Class. We are not well off enough to live in a tony suburb (and have zero desire to do so) and we drive old used cars . Our old house has one functional bathroom. We shy away from 'entertaining' and feel anxious around the comfortably Upper Middles (and even some of the Middles who did not emerge from Prole childhoods.) Yet we have decent educations, professional jobs, a comfortable life and summer vacation trips. I work part time. We are the last of our kind.

The Prole levels were truly fascinating for me because I always thought I was raised 'Middle Class' (SEE! I am no better than the people I pick on elsewhere!) Yet, I find that, unavoidably, I am High Prole. And there were signs! My mom and dad were the first in their families to go to college. My dad, especially, was never more than Mid Prole growing up and was born Low Prole. Our house resembled much of what was described in Fussell's book, down to the lawn chairs on the porch (but minus the religious iconography.) Looking back on the romantic entanglements of my youth, I now discern that, although college educated with a masters degree, I never once seriously dated a man who did not come, as I did, from a Prole background. (There were a lot of us back in the 1980s...heading off to State Schools where the tuition was paid by our blue collar or lower status white collar parents.) My political leanings are mainly centered around the 'thus for the grace of god go I' mentality of someone who is 'barely' middle class and fears financial calamity constantly. I would never buy a luxury car, join a country club, employ a housekeeper, or send my kid to private school just on principle alone. I will never learn to play golf. I dislike nautical motifs. I abhor 'preppie' clothing. I shop sales, look for coupon discounts at the grocery store, and am unable to curtail my language or ribald sense of humor.

My husband and I might go to the orchestra and we may be members of the Museum of Art. We may read a lot and watch foreign films and eat organic food. We know how to blend in and act the part at work. But just beneath the surface, there are a couple of Proles just fighting to get out!

More accurately, perhaps, my husband and I attempt, very much, to be what Fussell labels as X People. He leaves this 'alternative' group for the end of his book. These are the eccentrics and the 'bohemians' who emerge from all of the other social classes to eschew the constraints to which they were born and try to live life by a very different set of rules and expectations. The addition of this last group was a pleasant surprise. I believe this is the strata where I have always felt the most at home.

I strongly feel that this book needs to be updated. If it was, it would make some very interesting reading for today's seismically shifting social scene. As it is, it provides a funny and occasionally provocative look at 20th century American social class structure. Most older readers will find themselves, their families and friends somewhere within the pages and will be able to relive certain eras in their pasts.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1983, Class is now wrong in some of its particulars, but still convincing in its generalities. As Fussell himself notes, “The things that conferred class in the 1930s — white linen golf knickers, chrome cocktail shakers, vests with white piping — are, to put it mildly, unlikely to do so today.” Similarly, attitudes toward things like smoking, higher education, and neckties have changed quite a bit since the '80s. But I think Fussell largely succeeds in his goal of identifying and excavating the layers of American social class system based on principles that are still convincing.

Fussell identifies nine distinct social classes* and proceeds to explore them from a perspective of work, clothing, housing, food, shopping, and more. Fussell’s contention is that class is not purely a function of money, but of how you get your money (inherited/earned), the degree of autonomy you have in your work (not needing to work/self-employed/a wage earner), and the type of work you do (white collar/blue collar/unskilled labor). Downstream from these are your confidence, manners, taste and other social markers. Downstream from these are the specifics, like whether you choose to purchase a sailboat or a powerboat.

What you might not expect is that Class is funny. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a legitimate exploration of the topic, but this book is also highly entertaining. A taste:

The general class rule about wristwatches is, the more "scientific," technological, and space-age, the lower. Likewise with the more "information" the watch is supposed to convey, like the time of day in Kuala Lumpur, the number of days elapsed in the year so far, or the current sign of the zodiac. Some upper-class devotees of the Cartier tank watch with the black lizard strap will argue that even a second hand compromises a watch's class, implying as it may the wearer's need for great accuracy, as if he were something like a professional timer of bus arrivals and departures.

Having read Class, it’s easy, though a bit weird, to start applying these principles in daily life. For instance, I went to drop off some chairs to be reupholstered and thought to myself, “This is a prole neighborhood.” (Having the chairs reupholstered is middle class.) I’m not sure there’s much of a takeaway beyond observational interest. Fussell stresses that it will inevitably be a laughable failure if you attempt to change your social class by imitating the behavior of another class. He also offers some thoughts about bohemianism as an escape from the class system, which seem silly in retrospect given that those behaviors were later absorbed by the upper middle class. I guess there’s not much to do beyond accepting your situation and enjoying the spectacle that is society.


*If you’re curious, the classes are: Top Out of Sight, Upper, Upper Middle, Middle, High Prole, Mid Prole, Low Prole, Destitute, and Bottom Out of Sight.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part of the project I'm working on has to do with social class, and for some reason or other, I think a random look at the library bookshelves, I found this 1983 treatise by Paul Fussell, an American literary and social critic.

I've since discovered it was quite famous in its day, and even though some of the cultural references are inevitably dated (he laments bookstore tables being filled with Ann Landers and Leon Uris, for instance), his observation rings true when he says Americans pay attention intensely to social class and inevitably have even more markers for it -- in everything from speech to what they buy to what they wear to what sports they follow -- because they are in a democracy than they would if they lived in a more officially stratified nation.

Is it filled with snobbery, sarcasm and rampant traditionalism? Yes. Who else would write such a book, after all? But it also has trenchant writing and observations that still ring true, and I found myself looking in my inner mirror more than once.

A couple random examples:

"When proles (his word for working class folk, as in proletariat) assemble to enjoy leisure, they seldom appear in clothing without words on it. As you move up the classes the understatement principle begins to operate, the words gradually disappear, to be replaced, in the middle and upper-middle classes, by mere emblems, like the LaCoste alligator."

"At the very top, the food is usually not very good, tending, like the conversation, to a terrible blandness, a sad lack of originality and cutting edge. Throughout his pitiable book "Live A Year With A Millionaire," Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney records memorable meals, and they sound like this: 'Crab bisque, then chicken with ham biscuits, Bibb lettuce salad, and finally a huge ice cream cake.' This man, who could eat anything in the world he might fancy, from elephant cutlets to sorbets doused with rose water and garnished with little flakes of gold leaf, carefully records meals like this: 'Delicious dinner of fried chicken, green peas, salad and freshly baked cake.'"

"The middles cling to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings toward pomposity ... so terrified of being judged socially insignificant is your typical member of the middle class, so ambitious of earning a reputation as a judicious thinker, indeed, almost an 'executive,' that it's virtually impossible for him to resist the temptation constantly to multiply syllables."

Acidic and sometimes patently unfair, yes. But what fun.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, I read this because it was on the recommended reading list from a leadership conference I attended years ago. Much like the last such book I read (also this year), having read it, I'm not so clear on the reasons for it being on that list.

On one hand, the general analysis of class—specifically as applied to the U.S.—seems largely correct still, though slightly outdated (which doesn't affect the assessment of the highest classes, since anachronism is their hallmark to begin with). So in terms of being able to identify class status, I feel more competent to do so now than before I read it, for whatever that is worth.

On the other hand, the level of snark and cynicism, not to mention the number of references to The Official Preppy Handbook leads me to consider this to fit more in the category of Humor than straight Nonfiction. This became more true as I noticed the author's terribly bougy need to flagrantly display his erudition with references like "Ezra Pound's earlier observation that the pianola is rapidly replacing Sappho's barbitos." And the fact that Fussell evidently lived in Philly at the time, teaching literature at UPenn was the final straw convincing me that this is "Haha, only serious."

So, final analysis, I'll be stuffing this in a bucket of salt and donating it to the library labeled "Useful, but only marginally."

[Christopher McCaffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immensely refreshing.

[Omer Aziz · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that started off well and then took a quick nosedive. Picking up Paul Fussell's "Class," I thought I was picking up *the* classic book on social class in America. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I opened this thinking it was the definitive work on a very important topic. The book's opening chapter, outlining a typology of social classes, and distinguishing between "economic class" and "social class" was very useful. However, rather than fleshing out the thesis and analyzing the phenomenon of class in America, the author goes on to itemize what makes a prole a prole and an upper-class person an upper-class person, which classes read which magazines, what things people from each class have their homes, how they speak. It eventually became tedious and unbearable. What made this so disappointing is that Paul Fussell is a witty, ironic, and intelligent writer whose other books include an award-winning literary study of the response to World War One. The condescension latent in the writing is funny on the first, second, and third quips, but eventually becomes as overblown and dull as the thinking in the book in general.

[ExistenGuy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is pretty good. Written in a sarcastic tone it strives to detail the mannerisms of the classes categorized by the author, Paul Fussell. The observations are themselves pretty funny but dated, as the book was written in the 1980s. Regardless, some of them are pretty accurate. Like how the type of magazines you read can give away the class you are from - people who read Time magazine are in a higher class than the ones who read National Enquirer. And how if you can never see an upper-class home from the street, as they are hidden away from the "commoners". In the Appendix there is even a scoring guide to determine your class from the items you have in your living room (subtract 4 points if you have an artwork depicting cowboys.) Overall, a good read if you can laugh at yourself because a lot of the stuff will remind you of your upbringing.

[Shelby Sanford · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, i did not like this book at all...i put it up here as a warning to others interested in the book. It sounded good...but ended up being a book about how to fake high-class. One chapter actually focuses on purple being a sign of royalty and high-class. Generally, i found this book to be dated, irrelevant, and a contributor to the problem of social inequity in America.

[Camilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly insightful and thought provoking book.

[Kristen Northrup · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Margot Sheehan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A light and humorous book of sociological observation, imitating a similarly named and designed book published in England several years earlier and written by Dame Jilly Cooper. (Dame Jilly has not actually been knighted, but I habitually call her that.)

Fussell's Class was published in 1983, during a wave of snobbish humor books (The Official Preppie Handbook, The Yuppie Handbook, Items from Our Catalog). This is an important consideration, since one stumbling upon it for the first time several decades after its publication might well imagine it was a foundational work, rather than just one more light read in a particular genre.

Fussell's big book, The Great War in Modern Memory, is scholarly and dry, and gives no indication of the incisive wit and supercilious observation he would display in Class. After Class, though, he seems to have hit his stride with a clear, zippy prose in such later essays and books as Thank God for the Atom Bomb, and Wartime.

As for 'Class' itself: you can't take the book's social classifications too seriously. They are a retread of Dwight Macdonald's High- and Mid-Cult musings, and mainly display the prejudices of a highly educated, rather smug upper-middle-class American, one who has rather less money and mobility than he would like to have, but is nonetheless very happy that there are so many lower orders for him to look down on.

[Jesse Kraai · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm the guy who goes through life thinking that your clothes and money aren't that important. Mostly because I've been both rich and poor and it didn't make that much of a difference. At the least though this book convinced me that class is a fundamental lens you can apply to any situation, even to stuff that has nothing obviously to do with it, e.g. what do you think about science.

Here is a way of putting it: instead of asking what a person's will to power is, you can ask 'what is their will to class'.

The book has some key failings - but I do think Fussell's challenge was large. Consider that no one has done an interesting book on class since, that I know of.

-Race. I present not as middle class or whatever, but as an older white dude. That's what people see first. You have to talk about it.

The last chapter wants to say that we can escape the class struggle, while the preceeding says we cannot. It's an interesting contradiction really, because we don't feel bound to the struggle in our day-to-day. I don't. More explaining would have been good.

I also wanted more on language, and more distinctions. When Fussell couldn't deliver he bloviates. And we should blame some on his editor.

Great party trick: read this book in front of people. I did almost the whole book that way, took me months. People will get uncomfortable and great convos will be had!

I got turned onto this book by an appreciation by Dwight Garner in the Times.

[Don LaVange · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had read this book when it first came out (when I was still in high school), I might have likely majored in sociology. Then again, given the following passage and its importance to me, I probably would've still ended up studying linguistics:

"Regardless of the money you've inherited, the danger of your job, the place you live, the way you look, the shape and surface of your driveway, the items on your front porch and in your living room, the sweetness of your drinks, the time you eat dinner, the stuff you buy from mail-order catalogs, the place you went to school and your reverence for it, and the materials you read, your social class is still most clearly visible when you say things" (151).

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wicked-funny book about Americans and social classes. Class is a touchy subject, as the author states, and this book makes the reader uncomfortable, even as the reader is laughing. The author wrote that, when interviewing people for this book, the first thing they'd tell him is that in America we do not have social classes. Then they proceed to tell him which class each of their neighbors belongs to, and why. I bought my first copy of this a long long time ago -- I think it was stolen (or perhaps burned). Was glad to find it in trade paperback, so I could re-add it to my library.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, influential and sometimes very funny look at the class structure (he identifies 6) of the United States.

Fussell sees adherence to the class structure and the striving to rise through that structure as limiting our freedom and pulls no punches when talking about the various levels of class in the United States until he gets to the "creative class" in the last chapter in which he states that they are beyond class and are truly free. The reader can guess to which class Fussell self-identifies.

Written in 1983 but still relevant.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, this book is awful. Interesting topic, right? But apart from being completely dated, no insight or analysis beyond, 'proles wear trucker hats.' All descriptions of the upper middle class are culled from 'The Preppy Handbook.' I think it's supposed to be funny, but it is just obnoxious.

[Hank Stuever · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so late to reading "Class" that, by the time I actually did, much of it seemed old hat. That's mainly because Fussell's ideas traveled so well that so many people thought of them as their own.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

As any other class discussion, it begins fun and interesting and quickly becomes dull - main reason why most of them are either constrained to 5 pages of sociology studies or are lengthened by drama and petty fluff of romance novels.

The three stars don’t reflect the authors ability to write as he was quite clever and cheeky to the point the book comes off as satirical sometimes despite being sincere. It’s more a reflection of my own taste of the subject matter.

Warning though: it’s veeery dated. Still, worth giving a skim I believe.