Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There

Rating:
Summary: fun, breezy, soft around the edges like overripe brie cheeze
Review: The author tries, but not too hard. Comes across like Hegel for Dummies. Broad analytic theme: '60s rebels meet '80s yuppies, Thesis meets Antithesis,and presto ! Synthesis ! Bobos. Look more closely, and it's not so simple. Multiculturalism and superficial inclusionism may be masquerades of new and subtle forms of domination. Whoops. There I go again, sounding like a disaffected polarizer. Now we know that all right thinking people have resolved their conflicts, and nearly the worst kind of mindset you can have is contentiousness, doubt, or the hardheaded inability to get with the program and massage every substantive issue in sight with cocoa butter. Perhaps the nurturing of a hipped up corporate culture is in fact a way of disguising the fact that your employer has found more subtle ways of encouraging you to work yourself to death, or the compulsive shopping binges may be poor trade offs for arrested emotional or spiritual development. Maybe. Who knows, maybe arrested development is a great thing if we'd only learn to see it in the right light. But, then again, the author might have concerned himself with issues like time poverty, as opposed to money poverty, or what the differences between deep, slowly acquired knowledge compared with instant information might add up to , in the long haul. He appears to be mildly ill at ease with the hollowing out of social life, but sees this as remedied by a felt need to return to traditional forms of community. But he neglects to consider what the differences between utilitarian rule following and real culture, whether literary, filmic, theatric, or musical, might add up to. An orderly 'burb tucked away in the evening hypnotized by television or pecking away on the internet, regardless of how many ethnic and spiritual doohickies and badges of cultural pretension they may have hanging around, is not the same as people discussing Bergman or Proust. Maybe it's the difference that Charles Tart noticed between brains and minds. The Bohos, at the best, had minds. The Bobos appear to have their share of brains, but not much mind. Their spiritual lives,if they could be called that, seem like a commercialized pantomime of mindfulness, knowing all the words but not catching the tune.

Rating:
Summary: Thin and dull
Review: Found this book even more boring and superficial than the people it describes.

Rating:
Summary: Social-Congratulatorian
Review: Brooks certainly isn't a social critic---at least not of Bobos. He LOVES Bobos. He thinks they're lovely, hard-working, practical and spiritual beings, who accidentally became wealthy, but he digs no deeper than the froth on a latte. Even so, I'm delighted to have read this self- congratulatory book about narcissistic people. I intend to read it again, and scribble fiercely in all the margins.

Rating:
Summary: On target jab
Review: Browsing through the reviews, it seems that the serious students of sociology are not amused by this romp: Hey, lighten up! Its a quick, breezy, and rib-tickling portrait of this class. "Bobo's" will replace the "yuppies". If the notion of "bobo's" really catches on, I can't wait to see what the advertises do. Renovation Hardware Beware!

Rating:
Summary: Trying to Celebrate the Rise of a New Upper Class...
Review: I read the cover flap of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, David Brooks's work of "comic sociology"--a (much funnier and wittier) updating of C. Wright Mills's The Power Elite. I chuckled at the cover flap's pointing out that the "Bobos"--bourgeois bohemians, Brooks's semi-acronym for America's new dominant class--regard extravagant spending on luxuries as vulgar, but extravagant spending on high-quality versions of "utilitiarian" necessities as praiseworthy.

I began chapter 1. Brooks was describing his reactions to reading the New York Times wedding announcements page:

"When America had a pedigreed elite, the [New York Times wedding announcements page] emphasized noble birth and breeding. But in America today it's genius and geniality that enables you to join the elite.... [On] the Times weddings page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds Ph.D.... and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude (you rarely see a summa settling for a magna--the tension in such a marriage would be too great)."

I (B.A. summa cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard, M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard) looked across the bedroom at my wife (B.A. summa cum laude in American Studies from Amherst, M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, J.D. from Harvard Law School).

I looked up at the $750 ceiling fan in our bedroom. (It is a true necessity in our un-airconditioned house for about two months a year--vastly more effective at cooling our top-floor bedroom than the old $200 ceiling fan it replaced).

I thought: "Bingo. This guy David Brooks has just reduced me to a sociological category." I thought "this is a book to pay attention to."

And it did turn out to be quite a good book.

On one level, the book is about upper-class taste and style in America at the beginning of the twentieth century. It used to be that upper-class style was based on the display of wealth: the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island; the lines of Cadillacs; the power to import large chunks of Italian palazzi and install them on a hilltop. Now upper-class style has changed: it is based on the display of sufficient taste to know what the best is and to choose it--whether the best coffee, the best parka, the best food, the best building materials, or whatever. One knows enough to know that the best cup of iced coffee is a "a vente almond frappuccino made from the Angolan shade-grown blend with raw sugar." It is not OK to spend extravagantly on something for display along; it is OK to spend extravagantly on something that is useful in enhancing one's authentic personality.

Brooks believes that this new sense of taste and style is the result of the collision of the "Bohemian" culture of authenticity with the "bourgeois" culture of sober achievement, and that the "Bobos" are the first group that have found a way to be both authentic, spontaneous, and creative on the one hand and disciplined, industrious, and prosperous on the other.

The problem with this, of course, is that for most upper-class buyers a Range Rover is not a tool to use in off-road wilderness exploration (although it is for my uncle W. Bradford DeLong) but something to drive the kids to kindergarten. A Wolf range is used not to run a restaurant in your home but stand idle while people who work too late bring home Chinese food, or just go out to dinner. Brooks is well aware of this. His dissection of how necessary a well-stocked ice-axe section is to an outdoor-supply store that sells to Bobos who have only seen a glacier from the deck of a cruise ship is hilarious. The best parts of the book are those in which Brooks mocks the tendency of Bobos to buy state-of-the-industrial-art heavy-duty tools--of any kind--that will rarely or never see their designed-for use. The best parts expose the hollowness of the claim that upper-class style and taste combine Bohemian and bourgeois cultures: the bourgeois is there, but it is coupled not with Bo- but with Fauxhemianism.

Yet in spite of this--in spite of the social waste and onanistic narcissism of $15,000 slate shower stalls to get in touch with "nature"--in the last analysis Brooks approves of his Bobos. The book is not, at bottom, a critique but a celebration of Bobohood.

Why? Because Brooks is a conservative. And he faces the standard problem faced by conservatives in America. Conservatives like the past. They celebrate the wisdom in hierarchy and tradition. They celebrate order, and fight change. But in America the tradition is one of democracy and mobility. Our tradition is to be untraditional. Our stability is to always be turning society head-over-heels. Thus conservatism in America inevitably falls into incoherence, soon followed by a nervous breakdown--conservatives find themselves either calling for radical change in America to reduce democratic influences or celebrating our tradition of overturning traditions. Neither position is comfortable.

Brooks wants to celebrate America's aristocracy: those who, in a long passage he quotes from Edmund Burke's Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs, are:

"...bred in a place of estimation... see nothing low and sordid from one's infancy... taught to respect oneself... stand on such elevated ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the wide-spread and infinitely diversified combinations of men and affairs in a large society; to have leisure to read, to reflect, to converse; to be be enabled to draw the court and attention of the wise and learned, wherever they are to be found... to be taught to despise danger in the pursuit of honor and duty... to possess the virtues of diligence, order, constancy, and regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard to commutative justice: these are the circumstances of men that form what I should call a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation..."

For Brooks, because his Bobos are powerful, rich, and influential--and because he is a conservative--they must have the virtues that Burke ascribes to an aristocracy. Therefore Brooks must praise them.

But what is the connection between Burke's "natural aristocracy" (which existed mostly in Burke's own fantasies) and the SUV-driving, $500 hiking boot-wearing, satisfied lawyer who will drink only shade-grown coffee who is the ideal type of Brooks's Bobo? The resemblance between Burke's fantasy and Brooks's Bobo exists only in Brooks's mind. And it is the fact that Brooks cannot quite make the leap--cannot quite feel toward what he sees as America's new aristocracy the way a conservative should--that makes the book feel, in the end, a little bit unbalanced. Brooks cannot quite accept the fact that the idol he worships has such feet of clay, and that the feet of clay are so large...

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Observation but Fraught With Problems
Review: The book's premise is interesting but fraught with problems. Brooks describes and contemplates how two historically antipodal groups, Bohemians and the Bourgeoisie, have suddenly converged. While I will not devote this review to a criticism of Brooks' misguided historicism, ideological prejudices, or lack of theoretical rigueur, I will offer a mere, but I think revealing, example of the book's potential problems: a critique of the foundational elements of Brooks' premise. Bohemians and the Bourgeoisie are not and have never been conceptually equivalent categories. The Bourgeoisie are a class whereas Bohemians, while having a (historically variable) class character, are not a class, but a sub-culture. Cultures are autonomous entities that have (mutually deterministic) correspondences/relations/affiliations with class formations. These correspondence are always realigning and being renegotiated. When one considers these fundamental theoretical premises, Brooks' supposedly unique observation no longer seems surprising. There are, though, important and difficult questions that his observation inspires --- one, being, WHY at this particular moment do we see this alignment of bohemian cultural practices with the bourgeois class formation and the capitalist mode of production. I think that Brook's consideration of this question, as well as others, is too cursory and not theoretically sophisticated enough.

Nevertheless, I applaud the author for the core of his observations. Plus, he has a real talent for wit and neologisms.

There is a real need for Brooks or (preferably) someone else to follow this with a sophisticated and theoretically rigorous account of the BOBO phenomenon. I suspect that within the literature of the academy one might already find these types of accounts of the BOBO phenomena. I would appreciate any references to this literature or to sociological or cultural theory that might be useful to an advanced study of the BOBO phenomenon. Email any such information to [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Laugh Out Loud
Review: I received two great books for my birthday - "The Trillionaire Next Door" and "Bobos in Paradise", and they are both LOL funny. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Get you SUV out of my reading space
Review: Just what we need, a "scholarly" look at the bourgeois bohemians, or Bobo for short. It is hard to read this book without becoming increasingly irritated by the self congratulatory tone of the book. It contains a brief and interesting history of the bourgeois and bohemian beginnings in the United States. As it approaches present time, it become tedious and tiresome. Do we really care how conflicting it can be to choose the best of food, clothing, or even jobs. I don't. What's the point of the extended foray into the elite indulging in S&M and leather, no matter how earnest and sincere? I agree with another reader that the best parts are when Brooks touches on the drive to have the best or the professional model of something and his references to latte towns. All in all it is a tedious and irritating self congratulatory read that this OWUC (Overworked Underclass) female can do without! I donated my copy to the library.

Rating:
Summary: Give him credit!
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. While it was not "deep" and perhaps offered an ill-mixed "serio-comic sociology", it introduced some important issues. In particular, note the contrasts of the "bobo sensibilitities" of those bobos who Have Money (investment bankers, dot-commer, etc) vs. those bobos who Don't Have So Much Money (the real "bohemians", the academics, etc.) What is the role of money in all this, anyway? Do you have to Be Rich/Want to Be Rich to be a "Bo?" Are we just aging 60's-70's (80's?) professionals? I'd like a more serious approach to these questions, a "sequel" to what Brooks began. It reflects some significant questions about values, personal choices, media influences, etc. that deserve more serious discussion.

Rating:
Summary: Irresistible Humor Interspaced With Social Commentary
Review: David Brooks seemed torn between writing an outrageous satire and a serious commentary on class structure at the top in the U.S. When he is doing the former, this book is a lot of fun. When he is doing the latter, take a double cappucino to keep you awake.

His point is a subtle one that many will mistake. He is describing the arrival of an educational elite as the reigning class. Everyone will get the Bohemian part of BoBo -- we've all seen pictures of the Village in the 50s. It's the other Bo that confuses people. It stands for Bourgeois. To Brooks, Bourgeois is concerned with all the classic middle class values -- income, uprightness, proper appearance and behavior in public, and hard work.

His thesis is actually pretty good. Educated people have been conditioned since that first advanced placement class to look down on traditional patterns of the rich and powerful. When they become rich and powerful, they want to have a little fun with it, but have to put on a social mask to make it acceptable. A variety of things work: environmentally sound; politically correct; and not a status symbol of the old elites.

One of the funniest parts of the book for me was how status and money play off against one another. It's okay to make a lot of money, but you have to do it in a noncommercial way to be esteemed. A writer can have a best seller about ecology and have high status, while a script writer for a James Bond movie might make 100 times the money and have very little status.

The connection from where we were in the 1950s and earlier is much too long, and isn't really very necessary. The fundamental contradictions of the current lifestyle of BoBos has to be funny to almost everyone, including the BoBos.

The book could have done a lot more to talk about how the fusion of the two sets of ideals could be made better for all concerned. Hearing about the meetings of the leather-clad people to do B & D soon becomes tiresome. Surely all of this energy can be directed into something more wholesome!

Perhaps the funniest story in the book was about the woman who builds her dream house in Montana, and the Grim Reaper calls. I won't spoil it for you, but be sure to read that section near the end.

Enjoy, as you notice your own stalled thinking as a BoBo! If the hiking boots fit, wear them!