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Purpose: The purpose of the BookNotes section is to post observations and reactions regarding books and articles that might be of interest to you. This is really a risky judgement call because ThinkPint has no way of knowing reader interests. However, there is a selection factor regarding site readers, and thus over time there is a chance that we might occasionally put you onto something that you would like to read, or rather not, as the case may be. You are welcome to make BookNotes somewhat interactive by posting responses to: remarks@thinkpint.com

BOBOS in Paradise, The New Upper Class and How They Got There, by David Brooks (2000), Simon & Schuster. "Put on your REI hiking boots, climb into your Range Rover, get your mocha at Starbucks and dive into this book to find out why you’re a BOBO and why you’re so happy," invites E. J. Dionne in a cover blurb. "The most delightful dissection of the brainy classes since A. C. Spectorsky’s The Exurbanites 40 years ago," adds Tom Wolfe.

David Brooks’ states that, "The members of the new information age elite are bourgeois bohemians. Or, to take the first two letters of each word, they are bobos." Brooks, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, is a sometimes guest on the PBS Jim Lehrer News Hour. Brooks is fun to read because he is as full of ideas, words and humor in print as on the tube. Brooks claims that the Bobos "define our age. They are the new establishment", which he defines in a positive sense. He, himself is a self defined member of the Bobo class and states, "We are not so bad." He admits relying on the ideas of the 1950s, the final decade of the industrial age. The contrast of "the upscale culture" of the 1950s and the upscale culture of today "is stark and illuminating. I found that many of the books that really helped me understand the current educated class were written between 1955 and 1965, when the explosion in college enrollments, so crucial to many of these trends, was just beginning."

I can really relate to that since it was during those years that I myself were being educated in college into the educated class. I am not surprised by the idea that in a general sense bourgeois and bohemian ideas can exist comfortably side by side. Actually, that mix was one of the main joys of being a student in those days. My late father-in-law understood. He often told me that, "You may be a democrat today, but as soon as you get some money you’ll become a republican." He was correct in the first instance, mostly because my parents didn’t have an extra nickel and believed that Franklyn Roosevelt was pure, but wrong in the latter. As soon as I became rich, I changed to independent. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I had become rich and republican.

Brooks is writing in Bobos in Paradise about a small upper slice of the current elite section of the social class distribution curve, mostly I would guess who live in the eastern part of the country. If true, it would not be surprising that most readers would not have experienced the kind of grossly excessive materialism of which he writes. Many people have seen ads in print and viewed TV referring to such high living life styles, but still have hardly a clue to its fragrance. If this is true, I image that much of his cutting, funny sarcasm would buzz right by them. If a good size proportion of the population minority of those at whom it is aimed are as culturally isolated and naive as I imagine, then his total "I really get it audience" is tiny. And, as others have suggested, one would think many observant people near and below the median of the food chain would be outraged by his snap shots.

Of the several reviews I read of Bobos in Paradise, none refer to Paul Fussell’s (1983)

Class, A Guide Through the American Status System, about which Publishers Weekly noted; "Fussell’s opinionated, astringently witty book vivisects the vaunted American classless society in the swift, elegant prose that distinguished his The Great War and Modern Memory, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award." Admittedly, Fussell took aim the bigger landscape, but reading Class provides a context for Bobos.

Fussell noted that, "In this book I am going to deal with some of the visible and audible signs of social class, but I will be sticking largely with those that reflect choice. That means that I will not be considering matters of race, or, except now and then, religion and politics."

Quoting Arthur Marwick, Fussell agrees with Brooks that "class...is too serious a subject to leave to the social scientists." Fussell develops the point: "It should be a serious subject in America especially, because here we lack a convenient system of inherited titles, ranks, and honors, and each generation has to define the hierarchies all over again. The society changes faster than any other on earth, and the American, almost uniquely, can be puzzled about where, in the society, he stands. 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. Belonging to a rapidly changing rather than a traditional society, Americans find Knowing Where You Stand harder than do most Europeans."

Fussell postulates nine classes in American, grouped at three levels. The first level of classes consists of: Top out-of-sight, Upper, and Upper middle. The second level has four classes: Middle, High proletarian, Mid-proletarian, and Low proletarian. The third level classes are: Destitute and Bottom out-of-sight. The first and ninth classes have many characteristics in common, not the least of which is that they are largely invisible. The Upper class live on old and inherited money. "The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed."

Even though only 18 years have passed since Fussell published his findings, I would want to fuss a bit with his scheme before trying to apply it to Brooks" Bobos. Social indices and variables have changed some, and it may be that, even while excluding the Top out-of-sight class members it would be necessary to dip a bit into the Upper middle as well as the Upper classes to corral most of the Brooks’ Bobos. That, however, should be challenging as well as amusing. It has been a few years since reading Class, and Bobos has reawakened an interest in doing it again. Bobos should be even more interesting in the context of Class.