X Saved the World?

"Fussell believed in an escape pod from this tyranny of classhood: residence in a special American psycho-emotional space called 'category X.' (Fussell borrowed his notion from Matthew Arnold’s analysis of the three British classes—even a century earlier, Arnold was describing this fourth set of 'aliens.') Fussell’s Xs were essentially bohemians, the young people who flocked to cities in search of 'art,' 'writing,' and 'creative work,' ideally without a supervisor. Xs disregarded authority; they dressed down on every occasion; they drank no-name liquor ('Beefeater Gin and Cutty Sark Scotch betray the credulous victim of advertising, and hence the middle class'); they wore moccasins and down vests (in 1983, Fussell considered L.L.Bean and Lands’ End natural X clothiers); they carelessly threw out, unread, their college alumni magazines."

In The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh looks back to Paul Fussell's 1983 book, Class, to see if its categories still hold up.