There are many standards for reading, and being interesting is one of them.After many years of reading, there seems to be more and more emphasis on the fun of a book.There are so many books on the shelf, which one should I read?Unless you're in a serious mood, don't touch those big classics.They are over-heavy and daunting.But there is also a class of books that deal with serious issues and are interesting to read.For example, talking about the issue of social hierarchy is not unserious. This is a topic that makes people despair when they think about it. Thinking about this issue has produced a large number of radical thinkers, and the dissemination of their ideas has led to countless revolutions and wars.But the book I want to recommend to readers is also about class topics, and the truth revealed is also very profound (at least I think so), but it is full of fun to read, like drinking a glass of vintage red wine, its sharp wrapping In thick fun.

The English original name of this book is "CLASS".In English, this word not only means class, class and rank, but also has the meaning of style and taste.To say whether a person is "classy" or whether a person has "class" is not to say whether his or her social status and class are high or low, but whether he or she has taste and style.Therefore, the author's title takes the double meaning of the word "CLASS", judging the social class he or she belongs to by the person's taste and style. Paul Fussell, a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania and a famous cultural critic, has taught at Heidelberg University in Germany, Connecticut College and Rutgers University in the United States.His monograph on American society and culture during World War II won the National Book Award in 1976.He is an expert in British and American cultural criticism. Tan is good at researching and observing people's daily life. He has a keen perspective, sharp language, and humor and kindness.Immediately after the publication of the book, it caused a sensation in the United States. On the one hand, it received rave reviews, and on the other hand, it also received fierce criticism from all walks of life. They believed that Fussell had exaggerated the hierarchical prejudice in the United States, lacked sympathy and moral support for the poor, and had no respect for human beings. The weakness is too vitriolic, and so on.In fact, the author was well aware of people's reactions before the book was published, as the author writes at the beginning of the book: "Today, you can easily provoke people simply by mentioning the topic of social class.  … I was recently asked Writing something, I said I was writing a book about social class in America. Immediately after hearing this, people tightened their ties and glanced at their shirt cuffs to see if they were frayed. Minutes later, Then quietly stood up and walked away."

What is a person's social class marker?In today's era, due to the general improvement in the quality of human life and the advancement of social concepts, this question is no longer so easy to answer.It is often not your occupation, your house, your table manners, how much money you earn or how much property you own, but a series of subtle behavioral characteristics that you present consciously or unconsciously. Mix it all up and it's what makes up your hierarchical orientation in the world.The book before me is the wittiest, funniest, poignest, and somewhat exasperating work on the subject of social class that I have ever read.

I have to admit that people's social class or status is not an easy topic.Who is higher and who is lower?How to identify, what is the standard of identification?The author does not use academic social research methods to answer these questions, but bypasses theoretical debates and analyzes and judges people's social class from the characteristics of people's clothing, food, housing, transportation, and daily discourse.According to the author, he only analyzes people's social class from "the information conveyed by the things that can be seen and the words that can be heard, without considering their race, religious beliefs and political views." The author believes that religious belief and Political views are invisible, while race is visible (skin color), but it is not the result of personal choice, so it is not within the scope of the author's investigation.What the author is really interested in are obviously those qualities that naturally flow out of people in their daily lives.Therefore, when reading, this book should not be regarded as a monograph of academic research, but as a guide to observing the appearance of social hierarchy.

So what is the author's grade standard?After a lot of observations, the author believes that it is the taste and style of people's life that determines the social class to which people belong, and these tastes and styles can only be manifested in people's daily life.Such as a person's clothes, home furnishings, the style and layout of the house, what car he drives, the decoration in the car, what he likes to drink, what cup he uses for drinking, what leisure and sports methods he likes, what TV and books he watches, how he talks , what to say, and so on.According to people's lifestyle orientation, the author divides American society into nine grades, and summarizes the differences in life taste of these nine grades with bitter and ironic language.

From the first occasional reading of this book in 1994 to the present, I have read it at least three times, and every time I read it, I will gain a new understanding of the behavioral characteristics of people from all walks of life in American society, not just the ordinary people around me, And it also includes celebrity, the so-called social celebrity.No matter how rich they are now, you only need to pay attention to his or her clothes and demeanor, and measure them against the standards proposed by Fussell, and you can tell what class they originally came from, and they are exactly right.Although the first edition of this book was published at the end of 1979, after a little careful observation of the lives of people around me, I found that many of the characteristics revealed by the author are still valid in the United States in the 1990s, and people have not changed much in terms of life style and taste. The middle class still has chemical fiber carpets all over their houses, and the poor still like to play bowling.Although people who are used to drinking beer in cans have gradually switched to drinking beer in glass bottles (not because of a change in taste but because of environmental protection), they have not changed to drinking wine with a dry taste or imported mineral water.I began to realize the sharpness of the author. Once a person's taste in life is formed as he grows up, he will generally not change much, even after conscious influence and training (I have to think of the etiquette schools that are emerging all over the country, fresh out of etiquette school and spitting again), seems to have little effect just reminds one again of the saying "it takes three generations to raise a nobleman" is not so much aristocratic, but changes one's life Style is no easy task.It can be deduced from this that it is even a more normal and effective standard to use the taste of life to examine the social class to which a person belongs.A person can get rich overnight, but he cannot change his life style overnight. This is why we often see wealthy rich people today, whose behavior and taste still maintain the true qualities of yesterday's "poor laborers".

Of course, the author does not intend to belittle certain classes and elevate others. What the author actually mocks is the vanity, arrogance, vulgarity and lack of taste exposed by people on class issues.These characteristics are not the result of accidental selection, but have deep social and cultural roots.For example, the middle class, the class with the largest number of people in the United States, is the most vain and snobbish class according to the author's analysis. The reason is that because they can be replaced at will like screws, they feel the most insecure and live the most anxious life.To live in such a state of mind, the most important thing is to be recognized by others, and to live a decent and safe life in the eyes of others.Therefore, their love of vanity and love of showing off must be reflected in their basic necessities of life and words.but.In essence, most of them have struggled from the lower social class, so it is inevitable that they lack the advanced life taste that the rich will have, so what they pursue in life is precisely those who lack individuality. Items that are standard and can clearly indicate identity.The author obviously dislikes this kind of rigid conformity, unrestrained showing off, and lack of creativity in the way of life, so there is no concealment of cynicism between the lines.

Although the main purpose of the author is to analyze and judge a person's social class by using the external life characteristics of a person, we can still strongly feel another dimension of the author's efforts, which is to provide a new observation basis for social class division.In today's society, social class has been established by more cultural standards, rather than simply dividing by standards such as having and not having property, exploiting and being exploited, oppressing and being oppressed.People can change their social status by improving their taste in life.On the other hand, having money alone cannot improve a person's social status, one must also improve cultural taste and life style.A man without taste can never change his original social class.

Another biggest feature of this book is that every reader can't help but think about the life of himself and the people around him during the reading process, and then check the social ranks of himself and others according to the characteristics of words and deeds proposed by the author, or feel satisfied. , or (more often) feel ashamed and ashamed, and even feel a little inexplicable anger, because you find that what you have been pursuing all along lacks taste, and you turn out to be a person without much style.And you find that many people in Zhouyuan are not high-class people as you used to think; on the contrary, many of them can only be regarded as members of the middle class or even the poor class.This is undoubtedly an embarrassing thing.

In my opinion, the uniqueness and value of this book is that it points out the importance of taste and style in the division of social classes, because taste and style of life can be cultivated and learned, unlike money and property. In that way, the process of acquisition is often the process of a person's spiritual and moral degradation.through your own upbringing.With the improvement of taste, a person can reach a higher social status without owning a lot of money. In order to position the social class he belongs to, the author puts forward the concept of tone class, which refers to those classes who are tasteful, creative, thoughtful, influential, and live a decent life but are not rich.This concept later became the cultural identity of the new generation in the United States, such as the "yuppie" class in the 1980s and the "cultural alternatives" (alternatives) class in the 90s, which further deconstructed the traditional hierarchical society and created social stratification. Standards open up new dimensions.

China today is at a new crossroads in social class stratification.Decades of the myth of an equal society has been broken, and people's concept of social hierarchy is being rapidly updated.The most powerful factor driving this change is money.Possession of money is re-dividing people's social status.Instead of equality and social justice, money has begun to weave its own myths and legends, weaving people's dreams of life, and at the same time smashing the expectations of a large number of people without hesitation.Money has become an out-and-out social metaphor, a value symbol that cannot be desired, and a double symbol: it symbolizes all dreams about happiness, and symbolizes the bad luck of all those who chase after money.So people asked in confusion: Is this the social ideal we want to realize? Thinking this way is more or less too pessimistic.In fact, in China, a new concept of social life has been or is beginning to take shape.More and more people feel that the endless pursuit of money cannot bring real happiness, nor can they change their social status smoothly.Chasing money consumes too much time, energy and creativity, while precious and unrepeatable lives are quietly passing by.No matter how frustrating or exciting the reality may be, some people are getting rich and some are poor, but the quality of life of most people in between these two extremes is improving significantly.They are no longer poor, although they are nowhere near the income of the rich.It is this part of the people who ask: Who are we?What class do we belong to?If we don't like chasing money, where is our hope?What is our future?How far will this society go on the road of money rule? It is in this dimension that this book proposes a new standard of social stratification.Whether you like the standard or not, whether you admit the fact or not, having a class and a style of life instantly impresses people (except for the culture jerks and cynics. Happily, there are as many of them as before. fewer and fewer than a few years ago), earning you more respect and appreciation, thus increasing your social status.Money is important, but money alone will not get you universal recognition, respect and appreciation.How you spend your money, what kind of consumption it brings, and what characteristics these consumptions make you appear, become more critical issues. Although the author is discussing the hierarchical phenomenon in American society, the trend of globalization brought about by the market economy and the deepening commercial and cultural influence of the United States on other countries in the world make the phenomena described in this book possible. Find the counterpart of today's sorrow in China.The hierarchical dilemma of the United States yesterday and today may be the farce of China's life tomorrow.If this book can serve as a mirror, from which the Chinese can see the vulgarity and ugliness of each person in the future or emerging, so that they can start to pay attention to the cultivation of taste and life style, maybe there is still time to avoid the vulgar and low-level life taste. Finally, I would like to talk about one or the artistic features of this book.Paul Fussell was originally from England and later immigrated to the United States.His writing board is individual, with elegant and elegant diction, and long and complicated sentences, which is a typical British writing style.He uses a lot of irony in his writing, and his narration is humorous and witty, sometimes almost to the point of acrimony.Furthermore, the book's observations and demonstrations of all aspects of American social life are extremely subtle, which would be impossible without keen insight and social criticism.It is almost impossible for such a style to be fully reflected in the translation.If I did not have the experience of living in the United States for a long time, I would definitely not dare to translate this book.Fortunately, the two young translators have little error in grasping the author's language, which ensures the basic quality of the translation.What I'm trying to say is that, if it doesn't fully capture Paul Fussell's artistry, the translation is certainly a testable effort at presenting the author's style of thought. Before I stopped writing, I couldn’t help but think of the French postmodern master Roland Barthes. When he was interviewed by a reporter, he talked about the ideal life he hoped for. He said: “A little money, but not too much; a little power, but not too much; But you have to have a lot of leisure.” Money and power are indispensable for a person living in a commercial society, otherwise you will live without dignity and security.But a life of endless chasing money is also not worth it, for lack of taste.So what did Roland Barthes crave for with a lot of leisure?He simply replied: "Read, write, socialize with friends, drink (wine, of course), listen to music, travel, etc." In short, live a tasteful life.Therefore, after reading this book, everyone should seriously think about it, what is the life you really want to live?At least one algorithm is smart: having money does not necessarily increase your social status (here is not talking about economic status, but social status), because there are always people in this world who don't care about your money.But having a style and taste in life will inevitably be respected and appreciated by others, thus improving your social rank. Paul Fussell's original intention of writing this book may be precisely for this purpose. Shi Tao June 1998 in Beijing