A few years back, a spate of articles came out in which the lead figures all detailed how the American Dream had turned nightmarish for them. To a person, these titular protagonists all detailed how insulating factors like college educations and white-collar jobs failed to swaddle them against the blows of layoffs and low-paying employment. The tone of these articles: helpless outrage, shot through with the veiled threat, This could happen to you too, Yuppie!
I had a hard time mustering much sympathy for the subjects of those articles, if only because I am perpetually irritated by the conceit that we are all entitled to live as well, if not better, than the generation that preceded us. These subjects seem to forget that America's perpetually rebuilt on the backs of upward strivers. The story of striving can be far more dynamic and interesting than the story of being a victim of one's assumptions.
A lot of these stories are collected in Alfred Lubrano's Limbo: White-Collar Dreams, Blue-Collar Roots.
When Lubrano gets out of the way of his subjects and lets them tell their stories -- about clawing free of family assumptions, about discovering the social and cultural codes that people use to include or exclude others from their peer group, about embracing working-class traits for competitive advantage -- this is a very good read.
Where it falters is harder to articulate. I wasn't quite sure who this book was addressing. Any blue-collar strivers might be tempted not to try college after reading, since people born to the middle class are depicted as soft, spoiled jerks. Think of Blaine in Pretty in Pink: he might as well be the mascot of the middle class here. Any white-collar reader is going to wonder why Lubrano romanticizes the blue-collar circumstances and behaviors that all his subjects are trying to flee. Even his condemnations -- apparently, the blue collar lifestyle is not big on embracing diversity or book-learnin' -- are softened by his willingness to detail the daily cruelties of the middle class.
It was refreshing to read about class in America from a perspective that's not unremittingly snobby (i.e. Paul Fussell), but this is still a very incomplete read. A few of the interview subjects give very compelling reasons for why they felt compelled to break out of their family's overwhelming expectations for them -- one talks about a childhood spent longing to connect to a more interesting world -- but overall, the book can also be taken as an argument for sticking to your own kind. Which is, I think, the exact opposite of the argument the author would like to make.
When it comes to illuminating the gap between the strivers and the coasters, the movie Rushmore nails it in one pivotal scene, where Herman Blume says:
You guys have it real easy. I never had it like this where I grew up. But I send my kids here because the fact is you go to one of the best schools in the country: Rushmore. Now, for some of you it doesn't matter. You were born rich and your going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you.
Limbo says this too. But it's less a cri de couer than a weary complaint: you'll have to have a strong backbone to push against the weight of privilege. I just wish Limbo let more of its subjects explain why they bothered to put their shoulder to the wheel and roll.
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