Non-U USA
Jeffrey Meyers
Caste Marks: Style and Status in the USA Paul Fussell (Heinemann £8.95)
Rssell started as a conventional 18th- entury scholar, became known for his fine book, The Great War and Modern Me- mory, wrote a superficial study of modern travel writers, jumped up to social critic and media figure, publicly announced his conversion to homosexuality and recanted after a brief tour of bars and baths. Snob and name-dropper, he is a familiar of 'Kingsley' and 'Norman'. His schizoid life, teaching at plebeian Rutgers while living in patrician Princeton (nose pressed en- viously against the glass), intensified his sense of exclusion and perversely qualified him to comment on how taste, values, ideas, style and behaviour reveal or betray class distinction in America.
Though class is largely determined by wealth (Nixon began in a petrol station and transformed his daughters into debutantes; his family is an old one — or soon will be), Fussell defensively argues that discrimina- ting qualities are as important as money. He attacks the fable of American equality and states 'proles can do little to alter their class identity', but contradicts himself two pages later by maintaining that 'each gene- ration has to define the hierarchies all over again. The society changes faster than any on earth.' Since many Americans have been to university and few are well educa- ted, they tend to think they are as good as anyone else and respond aggressively to any hint of superiority. They introduce ser- vants to guests and do not believe that a duke is intrinsically better than a dustman.
Yet the classes clearly bear distinctive marks. The upper classes, who venerate the archaic and imitate British customs, tend to love the past, hate the present and fear the future. The lower classes, hot for science fiction and the latest technology, have precisely the opposite attitude. Fus- sell's generalisations — based on 'feel' rather than method — are convincing though obvious. The upper classes live in large hidden houses, indulge in yachting and polo, lack interest in ideas and flout the conventional canons of respectability. (I once shared a house with an Italian count who criticised the way I set the table, but farted at dinner because it 'helped his digestion'.) The middle-classes have lab- like kitchens and lavish lawns, play golf, strive for 'executive' positions, have a ter- ror of opinion, employ euphemisms, are anxious of offending and big on deodo- rants. The proles are suckers for religious fundamentalism, become airline stewar- desses, say 'have a nice day,' exhibit re- creational vehicles outside their houses and
cellophaned lampshades within, go bowling, drink beer in cans (they would be pounded to a pulp if they ordered an aperi- tif when out with the boys) and flaunt ma- cho bumper stickers ('If this truck's rockin', don't bother knockin").
When Fussell departs from the obvious, he tends to miss the nuances, for his eye is sharper than his wit. He says highly polish- ed cars are prole, but so are chauffeur- driven automobiles; he claims the upper classes dislike commerce, but many of them become stockbrokers; he insists that the names Brian, Jason and Matthew are favoured for their 'British "romance" overtones', but ignores The Life of Brian which sunk the first name, and the Greek and biblical origin of the others. The echt British names — Cecil, Neville, Nigel are extremely rare in America.
When discussing intentional class degra- dation, Fussell does not mention the taste (unknown here) for green hospital garb or explain the strange phenomenon of Negro students, elevated or torn from the prole class, who wear workman's overalls (made fashionable by Allen Ginsberg) which sym- bolise their father's bondage to sharecrop- ping and factories. He says almost nothing about sexual habits as class indicators (do you add or subtract points for sodomy and incest?) or about the inherent status conferred by residence on the east coast instead of the midwest.
As the ultimate arbiter of taste, Fussell casts Marx aside and calls for a class- transcending meritocracy. But his fussy de- lineations reveal his self-serving narcissism and his taste for vulgarities like Chrysler cars, down vests (anglice, Huskies), La- coste alligators, wrought-iron glass-topped verandah (always with an 'h') furniture, touch football, re-runs of I Love Lucy, stickers that announce 'I'd rather be sai- ling' and sexual euphemisms like 'Let's hide the salami'.
His book is composed of disparate snip- pets from both learned and popular autho- rities. On one page, he quotes from de Tocqueville, John Adams, Tom Moore, Walt Whitman, the philosopher Anthony Quinton, the comic Rodney Dangerfield and the Harris poll. This confusing mixture — not witty and perceptive, like Nancy Mitford's and Non-U' — falls between a sociological study and a Sloane Ranger guide to Greenwich Village. The book it- self is hideous and boasts small print, cracked letters, wavy lines and crude draw- ings (one prole looks like Auden after too many drinks).
The main fault is a nasty snobbery that imputes base motives to almost everyone . and equates bad taste with moral defects. He seems to want all the proles to subs- cribe to the New Yorker, wear Brooks Brothers suits and try to look like the middle class. Fussell's reactionary tract bit- terly concedes that in our time 'proles, who superficially look like losers, have a way of always winning'. Like Gore Vidal, he seeks vengeance and believes, 'It's not enough to succeed; others must fail.'
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