Book Review: Fussell on Class
13th July 2021
Paul Fussell will have none of it. He believes America has one of the most hypertrophied class systems in the world, that its formal equality has left a niche that an informal class system expanded to fill – and expanded, and expanded, until it surpassed the more-legible systems of Europe and became its own sort of homegrown monstrosity. He says he prefers the term “caste system” to “class system” when describing America, conveying as it does a more rigid and inescapable distinction, and that he uses “class” only out of respect for conventional usage.