One Of My Favorite Authors: Dead At 88
Paul Fussell’s 1975 study, “The Great War and Modern Memory,” about the First World War, is one of my favorite books, so I was sorry to hear that Fussell has died, at the age of 88. Fussell wrote many books in the wake of “Great War”‘s success. I especially enjoyed “Class: A Guide Through the American Status System†(1983), in which he divided American society into nine strata — from the idle rich (“the top out-of-sightâ€) to the institutionalized and imprisoned (“the bottom out-of-sightâ€) — and offered a comprehensive and often witty tour through the observable habits of each. Sample sentence: “Not smoking at all is very upper-class,†he wrote, “but in any way calling attention to one’s abstinence drops one to middle-class immediately.â€
