Paul fussell Paul Fussel

Professor of British and American literature at the University of Pennsylvania, cultural critic, has taught at Heidelberg University in Germany, Connecticut College in the United States and Rutgers University. His works on American culture during World War II won the National Book Award of 1976 and the National Book Award of Winter. Paul fussell is now retired and lives in Philadelphia, USA.

Style not only created a publishing fashion of 1999, but also completed a cultural event, and its key word was "taste".

Beijing Youth Daily

Style is popular mainly because of its fun. The author's unique gentleness, meanness and cunning sharpness, coupled with good intentions and malice, alone give Style a unique "style".

new weekly

This is a very interesting book.

fashion magazines

This book provides a window for people to observe the living conditions and group characteristics of others. Maybe we can think about many possibilities of life interest while pursuing material things.

China youth daily

The uniqueness and value of this book lies in that it points out the ubiquitous style distinction.

World fashion garden

Style-With time, taste is the full expression of past lives. Who you are, you have good taste. You can't escape, and you can't tell.

Wen Wei Po

Just as people once talked about "kitsch" and "taste", a word style is popular in Beijing this year.

Translator's Foreword Life Taste: The Last Way Out of Social Hierarchy

There are many standards for reading, and fun is one of them. After reading for many years, I seem to pay more and more attention to the interest of a book. There are so many books on the shelf, which one should I read? Unless you are in a serious mood, you won't touch those great books. They are too heavy to be afraid of. However, there is also a kind of book that talks about serious problems, but it is very interesting to read. For example, talking about social class is not serious. It is a topic that makes people desperate when they think about it. The thinking on this issue has produced a large number of radical thinkers, and the spread of their ideas has triggered countless revolutions and wars. However, the book I want to recommend to readers is also about the topic of class, which reveals profound truth (at least I think so), but it is full of fun to read, just like drinking a cup of old wine, and its sharpness is wrapped in deep interest.

The original English name of this book is Class. In English, this word has the meaning of class, stratum and grade, as well as style and taste. Whether a person has "taste" or "class" does not mean his social status and class level, but whether he has taste and style. Therefore, the author's title is

The double meaning of the word "class" is to judge a person's social class according to his or her taste and style.

Paul fussell, a professor of literature at the University of Pennsylvania and a famous cultural critic, has taught at Heidelberg University, Connecticut College and Rutgers University. His monograph on American social culture during World War II won the National Book Award of 1976. He is an expert in British and American cultural criticism. He is good at studying and observing people's daily life. He has a sharp perspective, sharp language and good humor. After the book was published, it immediately caused a sensation in the United States. On the one hand, it received rave reviews, on the other hand, it was severely criticized by all sectors of society. Some people think that forssell exaggerated the class prejudice of the United States, lacked sympathy and moral support for the poor, was too mean to the weakness of human nature, and so on. In fact, the author knew people's reaction clearly before the book was published, just as the author wrote at the beginning of the book: "Today, as long as you mention the topic of social class, it is easy to anger others. ..... Recently, someone asked me what book I was writing, and I said I was writing a book about American social class. People will tie their ties immediately after listening to them, and then glance at the cuffs of their shirts to see if they are worn. Every minute, he quietly stood up and walked away. "

What is a person's social class symbol? In today's era, due to the general improvement of human life quality and the progress of social concepts, this question is not so easy to answer. It is often not your occupation, your residence, your table manners, how much money you can earn and how much property you have, but a series of subtle behavioral characteristics that you consciously or unconsciously present, which constitute your rank orientation in this world. The book in front of me is the most witty, interesting, spicy and irritating masterpiece on the topic of social class that I have ever read.

Admittedly, people's social class or status is not an easy topic. Who is tall and who is low? How to identify and what are the criteria for identification? The author did not answer these questions with academic social research, but bypassed the theoretical debate and analyzed and judged 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 what he can see and what he can hear, regardless of their race, religious beliefs and political views. The author believes that religious beliefs and political views are invisible, while race is visible, 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 is obviously those qualities that people naturally reveal in their daily lives. Therefore, when reading, don't regard this book as a monograph of academic research, but as a guide to observe the representation of social class.

So what is the author's grade standard? After a lot of observation, the author thinks that it is people's tastes and lifestyles that determine people's social class, and these tastes can only be expressed in people's daily life. For example, a person's clothes, home furnishings, the style and pattern of the house, what car to drive, the decoration inside the car, what he likes to drink at ordinary times, what kind of leisure sports he likes, what TV and books to watch, how to talk and what to say, and so on. According to people's lifestyle orientation, the author divides American society into nine grades, and summarizes the differences of life tastes of these nine grades in bitter and sarcastic language.

I accidentally read this book for the first time from 1994. I have read it at least three times, and every time I read it, I will be interested in beauty.

We have a new understanding of the behavior characteristics of people from all walks of life in China, not only the ordinary people around us, but also them.

Celebrities, so-called celebrities. No matter how rich they are now, you just need to pay attention to his (her) clothes.

Then according to the standard put forward by forssell, we can judge what class they originally came from, and it is completely correct. Although the first edition of this book was published at the end of 1979, after carefully observing the lives of people around me, I found that many features revealed by the author are still valid in the United States in the 1990s, and people's lifestyles and interests have not changed much. The middle class still spreads chemical fiber carpets in their rooms every day, while the poor class still likes bowling. People who are used to drinking canned beer have gradually changed to drinking glass beer (not because of the change of taste, but because of environmental protection), but they have not changed to drinking dry wine or imported mineral water. I began to realize the author's sharp point of view. Once a person's taste in life is formed as he grows up, there will generally be no major changes. Even after conscious edification and training (I have to think of etiquette schools that are emerging all over the country, and people who have just graduated from etiquette schools are spitting), it seems that the results are minimal. It just reminds people that the sentence "It takes three generations to train a noble" is not that important, but it is not easy to change a person's lifestyle. Therefore, it is more consistent and effective to examine people's social class with life taste. A person can get rich overnight, but he cannot change his lifestyle overnight. This is why we often see rich people today, and their manners and tastes still remain the true colors of yesterday's "paupers".

Of course, the author did not mean to belittle some classes and raise others. In fact, the author laughs at people's vanity, arrogance, vulgarity and lack of taste on the issue of hierarchy. These characteristics are not the result of accidental choice, but have profound social and cultural roots. For example, according to the author's analysis, the most populous middle class in the United States is the most vain and snobbish class. Because they can be replaced at will like screws, they are the most insecure and anxious in life. Living in such a state of mind, the first thing is to get recognition from others and live in the eyes of others with dignity and safety. Therefore, their vanity and ostentation psychology are inevitably reflected in their food, clothing, housing, transportation and words. But ... in essence, most of them struggle from lower social classes, so they inevitably lack the advanced taste of life that only the rich can have, so what they pursue in life is only those items that lack personality and standards and can clearly show their identity. Obviously, the author is very disgusted with this rigid routine, unrestrained display and lack of creative lifestyle, so he reveals cynicism between the lines unabashedly.

Although the author's main purpose is to analyze and judge a person's social class through the characteristics of his external life, we can still strongly feel another dimension of the author's efforts, that is, to provide a new observation basis for the social hierarchy. In today's society, social classes have been established more by cultural standards, rather than simply by property and non-property, exploitation and exploitation, oppression and oppression. People can change their social status by improving their taste in life. On the other hand, money alone cannot improve a person's social status, but also must improve his cultural taste and lifestyle. People who have no taste can never change their original social class.

Another major feature of this book is that every reader can't help thinking about the life of himself and the people around him during the reading process, and then testing the social class of himself and others according to the characteristics of words and deeds put forward by the author, or feeling satisfied, or (more often) ashamed and ashamed, and even feeling a little inexplicable anger, because you find that what you have been pursuing is actually tasteless, and you are a person with no style. You will find that many people in the Zhou Dynasty are not as elegant 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, this book is unique and valuable, because it points out the importance of taste and style in social class division, because taste and life style can be cultivated and learned, just like money and property, the process of acquisition is often a process of spiritual and moral degradation. Through their own growth. With the improvement of taste, a person can reach a higher social status without having a lot of money.

In order to locate the social stratum to which the author belongs, the author puts forward the concept of "transfer stratum", that is, those who are tasteful, creative, thoughtful, influential and have a decent life but are not rich. This concept later became the cultural symbol of a new generation of Americans, such as the "yuppie" class in the 1980s and the "cultural alternative" class in the 1990s, which further deconstructed the traditional hierarchical society and opened up a new direction for the social stratification standard.

Degree.

Today's China is at a new crossroads of social stratification. The myth of an equal society has been broken for decades, and people's concept of social hierarchy is rapidly updated. The most powerful factor driving this change is money. The amount of money is redefining people's social status. Instead of bringing equality and social justice, money began to weave its own myths and legends, weaving people's life dreams, and at the same time, it did not hesitate to smash the expectations of a large number of people to get rich. Money has become an out-and-out social metaphor, an unattainable value symbol and a double symbol: it symbolizes all dreams about happiness and the bad luck of all people who chase money. So people don't understand: Is this the social ideal we want to achieve?

This is somewhat too pessimistic. In fact, in China, a new concept of social life has been or is being formed. More and more people feel that the endless pursuit of money can not bring real happiness, nor can it smoothly change their social status. It takes too much time, energy and creativity to chase money, but precious and unrepeatable life is quietly passing away. No matter how many depressing or exciting facts exist in reality, some people are rich and some people are trapped in poverty, but the quality of life of most people between these two poles is obviously improving. They are no longer poor, although they are far from reaching the income of the rich. It is this group of people who ask: Who are we? Which 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 puts forward a new standard of social stratification. Whether you like this standard or not, whether you admit it or not, having good taste and lifestyle can make people sit up and take notice of you immediately (except cultural hooligans and cynics). Fortunately, their number is decreasing compared with previous years, which makes you gain more respect and appreciation, thus improving your social status. Money is important, but money alone can't make you universally recognized, respected and appreciated. How do you spend your money, what kind of consumption you bring with it, and what characteristics these consumption make you present? These are the more important issues.

Although the author discusses the hierarchical phenomenon in American society, the globalization trend brought by the market economy and the deeper commercial and cultural influence of the United States on other countries in the world make the phenomenon described in this book find a sad counterpart 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 become a mirror, let China people see everyone's future or emerging vulgarity and ugliness, and then start to pay attention to cultivating taste and lifestyle, it may be time to avoid vulgarity in life.

Finally, I want to talk about the artistic features of this book. Paul fussell was originally from England and later immigrated to the United States. His wordpad has great personality, elegant words and long and complicated sentences, which is a typical British writing style. He uses a lot of satire in his writing, and his narrative is humorous, sometimes almost to the point of vitriol. Moreover, the observation and display of all aspects of American social life in the book is extremely exquisite, and it is impossible without keen insight and social criticism. This style can't be fully reflected in the translation. If I had not lived in America for a long time, I would never 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 want to say is that this translation is undoubtedly trying to show the author's ideological style, even if it can't fully reflect paul fussell's artistic characteristics.

Before I stopped writing, I couldn't help thinking of the French postmodern master roland barthes. When interviewed by reporters, he talked about his ideal life. He said: "A little money, not too much; A little power, not too much; But there is 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 the endless pursuit of money is not worth living because it lacks taste. So what is roland barthes eager to get a lot of leisure to do? He simply replied: "Reading, writing, socializing with friends, drinking (of course), listening to music, traveling and so on." In short, live a tasteful life. Therefore, after reading this book, everyone should seriously think about what kind of life they really want. At least one algorithm is smart: having money may not necessarily improve your social status (not economic status here, but social status), because there are always people in this world who don't care about your money. However, with lifestyle and taste, you will certainly get respect and appreciation from others, thus improving your social level.

Paul fussell's initial mourning for writing this book may be for this purpose.

Shi Tao

Beijing,1June, 998