Lewis Lapham. Money and Class in America. (1988) (re-read)

     Lewis Lapham. Money and Class in America. (1988) A long and mostly witty rant, combined with semi-autobiographical anecdote, and social history and analysis. Like all good observers of the social comedy, Lapham is good at seeing the significant moment or comment, and having been born into the “equestrian classes”, he can see the rulers of America close up. His testimony rings true , truer than a library full of sociological analysis and statistics. Lapham has the ability of a good novelist to show the general in the particular. He knows when the mask slips, and the primitive animal within peers out, aware and frightened of death.
     The net effect is a portrait of a sad, confused, self-absorbed, and somnambulent bunch of fools. Only the fact that they wield so much influence, and that they can directly intervene in government, prevents one from giving in to the dual impulse to laugh and to pity.
     Lapham claims that the general wealth of the United States has infected the whole culture with the pathologies of the rich. He makes a good case. In particular, he notes the ability (if that’s the word) of the rich to persuade themselves that their view of the world is the only one, and that the rest of the universe is mere stage set for the drama of their lives. When I look at the current stumbling towards war with Iraq, Lapham’s perspective helps one understand the inexplicable. Only a nation or ruling class caught up in the fantasies of power could plan such a stupid venture. Bush and company talk as if they are playing a game on a large table in a dimly lit “library” while sipping bourbon and chatting languidly about next year’s golf or their neighbours’ indiscretions with their neighbours’ wives. One can almost see them pushing little metal figures around on the map spread over the pool table, occasionally congratulating each other on a particularly witty move.
     Lapham’s chapter on the corrosive effects of the love (and fear) of money, of the worship of Mammon, is worth the price of the book, which in my case wasn’t much (I bought this copy at Value Village). I suspect that Lapham based this book on his Harpers essays; there is some repetition, the kind that a person who repeatedly writes essays on the same themes is liable to produce. That’s really the only flaw of any consequence. **** (2003)