Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I've been working on a research project that's overdue, but it currently involves long stretches of waiting for BoyGeorge, my Windows NT machine, to react after a mouse click or a keypress, so I've had time to do a little reading while waiting.

It started out as just an assignment that didn't have enough hours authorized for it. After I turned in preliminary results, and an idea for how to speed things up, my boss authorized more time. For the next batch of results, he complained about a feature being missing -- one that I didn't know he needed, but that I can see the usefulness of now that he's mentioned it. Unfortunately, trying to break up the too-large-to-mail file which contains lots of irrelevant stuff I need to strip out, while retaining that feature, means a lot more detailed interaction with Acrobat (basically undoing most of the advantages of my little automation hack), and doing stuff that this little 100MHz Pentium with 80MB of RAM takes forever to chew through. (Note that this is with nothing else running on that machine -- everything else that I usually do on BoyGeorge is either on RuPaul, my Windows 95 machine, or temporarily put on hold.) ... Then I got sick. Not the flu or anything, just my fibromyalgia picking this week to get really bad. So that meant more time in bed wishing I could sleep and less time finishing up this research. Feh. (I need a faster machine and a faster net connection.) Anywho, when it takes a few minutes (literally minutes, sometimes several, usually a couple) between giving Acrobat a command and being able to give the next one, and several minutes to save the file in case it crashes Yet Again, well that's several pages of reading time...

There's a book I've been looking for since someone (Crash, I think?) mentioned it at Baitcon a couple of years ago. I finally got my hands on it thanks to the kindness of a stranger I bumped into at The Book Thing:

Fussel, Paul; Class; 1983, Ballantine Books (Random House), New York; LC Card # 83-12637; ISBN 0-345-31816-1

It's an examination of class structure in the US, which he breaks into nine classes arranged vertically, plus an "X" group which doesn't fit the vertical scheme. (The nine are: top-out-of-site, upper, upper-middle, middle, high-prole, middle-prole, low-prole, destitute, and bottom-out-of-sight. He explains that the lower-middle class got eaten by inflation and no longer exists.) He also explains why it's so difficult to move up or down from the class in which one was raised, and that although classes are associated with professions and income levels, money is not the ultimate determining factor. And that the American class structure is so different from the British one as to be utterly alien. He says a lot of things that make sense in an "oh yeah, I knew that, or would have if I'd ever thought about it that way" manner, and a lot of things that made me go, "Oh! Hmmmm," and I think I'm going to have to immediately read it a second time to see which bits I think he's right about on second reading and which were just very convincingly phrased. My gut feel so far is that he's got a pretty good handle on the subject and several useful things to say (as well as some amusingly catty comments), but there may be a couple of spots where he oversimplified or where things have changed over time (in the ten years before the book was published, when my observations about my own family were most pertinent, and in the twenty years since).

The interesting thing is that I think I understand my mother a lot better after reading this book. Some things about her which never quite made sense to me now seem to fit a class pattern. That's not something I expected to result from reading this.

But what I really wanted to read it for was his discussion of Category X, because that was what got my attention when I heard it mentioned at Baitcon.

"'X' people are better conceived as belonging to a category than a class because you are not born an X person, as you are born and reared a prole or a middle. You become an X person, or, to put it more bluntly, you earn X-personhood by a strenuous effort of discovery in which curiosity and originality are indispensable."

"X people are independent-minded, free of anxious regard for popular shibboleths [...] The readiest way to describe an X living room is to say that anything recommended in a sound home-furnishings magazine will not appear there. The guiding principle will be parody display [...] The X cuisine is seldom the pseudo-French or mock-British of the upper-middle class: it is more likely to be North African, or Turkish, or 'Indo-Chinese,' or vegetarian, or 'organic,' or 'health.' [...] Regardless of the work they do, the Xs read a great deal, and they regard reading as a normal part of experience, as vital as 'experience' and often more interesting. [...] Being entirely self-directed, X people persue remote and uncommonplace knowledge [...] [T]hey adopt toward cultural objects the attitude of makers, and of course critics. [...] with films X people are as interested in the styles of directors as of actors. Some members [...] enter from the upper class. Some [...] come from the proles, or even the destitute. [...] X people constitute something like a classless class."

In fact, Fussel explicitly states that he's thinking of "bohemians", artists, and celebrities when he starts speaking of category X. He states that people enter X-hood from any of the other classes, but proceeds to describe various attributes that imply having "made it" financially to be able to afford certain freedoms. Not so much being wealthy, but certainly having enough money to afford certain choices. "Being an X person is like having much of the freedom and some of the power of a top-out-of-sight or upper-class person, but without the money. X category is a sort of unmonied aristocracy." If we read his descriptions of the X lifestyle as being what X folks who can afford it do and what X folks just scraping by would probably do if they could afford it, but not what every X-person can manage, then his holding up Huckleberry Finn as an American X archetype makes a lot more sense.

Unfortunately, despite getting off to a good start, the chapter on X comes off as being smug, smarmy, and self-congratulatory on a second reading. Sort of like, "This is why I get to make all those amusing comments about all the other classes, I'm not any of those! My people are smarter and better read and groovier and more free and more sensitive and not brainwashed like everyone else. We're better, and if you want to be better too, you'll come join us." In fact, it was that tone that made me think I have to re-read the rest of the book more carefully, because it throws his objectivity regarding the other classes into question.

Still, the question remains: how does fandom fit in? (And note that I'm also thinking of the SCA and hacker culture, which overlap fandom but are not the same as it, when I speak of fandom.) Would Fussell have included fen in the X category if he'd known us? (I suspect he might, though it would require changing his description a bit to make it less "artsy celebrity" specific.) Or is fandom yet another "other"? Or are fen really of all the other classes, not their own category, but merely an exception to Fussell's various predictions that people of too-different classes can communicate politely but "can never be pals" because of culture differences? Because we do have just that sort of mixing in fandom constantly. A welfare recipient and a milionaire sitting down and speaking as social equals, is something that does happen at fannish parties, conventions, dinner outings, and the like.

The impact of being transgendered on class status is a whole 'nuther question brought to mind by Fussell's description of class, one that I'd like to see explored. (Hmm. Time for a web search to see what's been written about that. Suggestions welcome.)