Lovely thread - Right up my street!

A couple of notes:

"Motor cah" is the Anglo-Fogey name for an automobile. Is this interesting? (No.)

Golf is, by now, in England very declasse because so many people play it aspiring to climb a class or two. Yer real nobs now leave the game alone on the whole. Is this interesting? (No.)

Coolidge is spot on: It's only the Internet 'Trad' manifestation on another forum which has all this phoney-baloney class-ridden sillyness, and even there it is only confined to a certain minority. We just get to hear from them a lot that's why their POV seems dominant. Most 'Trads' are quite normal. Certainly in my RL experience on the US Eastern Seaboard I only ever came across really nice people who dressed and/or lived 'Trad' to whatever degree. The haughty princeling in the sack suit is just an internet fantasy IMHO. Why anyone would aspire to be such an unattractive creature is another question.

Hi Guys!

Brownshoe here, from the "other forum."  I've been lurking around here for a while to see what goodies Horace posts--was a little freaked out by some of the inter-forum antipathy, but that happily seems to have died down.

GFB--

That "Class" is a piece of work, huh?  A very funny, thought-provoking, and ultimately mean-spirited tome, I think.  Fussell's a wonderful writer, but unattractively cruel about the middle and lower classes and unbearably smug about his beloved "Xes," a group to which he clearly believes he belongs.  I say:  So you're prole or middle class?  You're in some wonderful company, if you look at just about any list of artists, thinkers, activists, or other people who actually contribute to society.

I agree with Longwing and Coolidge--adopting the TNSIL style is going to get you about exactly nowhere w/r/t social climbing.  It's a moribund style, and one's interest in it is necessarily largely curatorial.  I'm fond of my AAAC buddies, but I agree that worrying about getting all of the details of your lifestyle "correct" to fit into some imaginary social elite is misguided to the point bathos.  I do think that's a minority over there.

I love trad clothes because I love the way they look.  Taste--in clothes, art, whatever--is not inherent.  You pick and choose, based on all kinds of reasons.  It is the conceit of Fussell and others that these decisions are motivated purely by class imperatives, but isn't that pretty reductive?  I like trad clothes, old cars, good magazines, modest houses, old furniture--and comic books, indie rock, alternative comedy, old movies, and lots of other stuff based on aesthetics, personal experience, the influence of friends, etc.  Not because of what these things "say" about me, not to protect or establish social standing, not because my family has "always done things this way."

Kind of an American point of view, right?

By the way--Fussell's "BAD:  The Dumbing of America" is a great read, funnier than "Class" and with more deserving targets.

Last edited by Coolidge (2006-07-20 14:43:09)

I'm inclined to speculate that the bow tie is more trad than TNSIL.  Of course, my idea of what TNSIL is largely shaped by the New Yorker advertisements posted here.  Were there any bow ties featured in those adverts?

I've had another thought I have tried to forget, but the recent Apple commercials keep bringing it back:  Is trad simply a nerdy take on TNSIL (ducking to avoid flying tomatoes)? I'm certain there are many non-trads that would support this view.

Last edited by longwing (2006-07-23 09:03:37)