Rants from an email I wrote to my friend, C, in reply to his question if I knew any works of fiction (or non-fiction) addressing the subject of class in current-day USA, akin to Balzac's novel, ‘Pere Goriot’, with its sharp emphasis on class differences in Parisian society

I can think of no books right away that deal with class conflicts and differences in current day America. The closest I have come to in my scattered fiction reading is Edith Wharton's work, such as "Age of Innocence", or Faulkner's work in which "class" shows up directly or indirectly. Bellow's "Augie March" can also be seen as a meditation on class mobility. But then none of this work has anything to do with current class conflict or differences.

On a quick level, this may be because class in America is (has always been?) in some fashion pegged to the degree of non-assimilation, and in the "good old days" (about which "conservatives" have wet dreams, and Disney runs its empire on) also to race. So if one looks for the "lowest" class in America, it would be the immigrant - Pedro, the leaf blower and grass cutter down the lane, at the bottom, with Palvayanteeswaran, the programmer, or Kim, the laundry shop owner, perched above Pedro, and the generic John Doe spread above them like a rain cloud.

It is my guess that spillage doesn't happen, much, between these diffuse classes to make fiction about. Besides, America with its pleasent hokum of "pursuit of happiness" (I have noticed that the latest Cadillac ads have borrowed this pithy slogan) makes talking about class impolite or impolitic. This also enables crafty folks like Bush -II, coming from a blue blood political dynasty, to cast themselves as regular beer drinking Joes, never mind all that expensive Andover- Harvard- Yale education.

The closet that recent fiction (which I have read or scanned) has come to talk about this subject is Lahiri's "Namesake" (the only parts I liked btw) - Gogol's yearning for his parents to approach the "classiness" of his (NYC's Upper Eastside) girlfriend Max's parents can be read as a desire to bridge class differences. Chang-Rae Lee's "Aloft" (which I was scanning last weekend at the Tampa airport) also seems to have taken a stab at this subject.

If non fiction is o.k., Linda Gordon's "Pitied but not Entitled" is a very good read. It deals with welfare reform and single moms, and did I say it was a good read? :) And fiction, "Vernon God Little" is interesting, it won the booker (but it is set in the states). It talks about media and class, but it is one of those "unique voice" novels :) I liked it but yeah...