The Class System Needs Redefined
July 25, 2026
Larry and I were talking about the class system again. I told him that when I went to pick up a friend for a party, she asked if I wanted to drive or if she should. I said I did not mind either way. She asked what kind of car I had, and I said a 2015 CRV with 176,000 miles on it. “Not to brag,” I added for her amusement.
Larry laughed, and I reminded him of that scene in Dan Jenkins’ novel Limo, where some less-than-reputable regulars of a restaurant-bar in Manhattan are seated next to Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, “to protect them from any possible intrusions from strangers or drunks.” One of the regulars, “a horse player named Billy,” leans across Jackie’s lap and says, “Is it still snowing outside, Ari?”
I told Larry that my friend was making a 10-point turn to get her spotless white car off a torn-up street, and I, sitting with my hands in my lap in the passenger seat, asked her, “So, do you like your Audi?” He laughed harder. Larry and I have agreed for decades that the idea of the class system needs serious overhaul. We met as cubicle writers with humanities degrees in a large corporation. We knew a bit about literature, theater, and art, and aspired to do some of that stuff ourselves, but our time was mostly not our own and salaries were entry-level. Meanwhile, a local plumber had made so much money he bought a large, ranch-style house in a tony neighborhood nearby and put fake Corinthian columns across the front of it, scandalizing the gentry.
What could class mean now in America, where populists decry education as brainwashing, influencers look rich in things and lifestyles, and oligarchs spend their time pasting fool’s-gold to everything instead of governing for the benefit of the people?
Larry made his separate peace with class a long time ago by creating a business for customers with nostalgia and discretionary income; it lets him work from home and have loads of discretionary time. I manage my personal unpeace by living simply, by my wits. Am I richer than the heart surgeon I follow on Instagram? I think so, at least in time. He seems to love his work, as I do mine, and he admits modestly he is “well-compensated,” but he has punishing hours and more responsibility and stress than I can imagine.
“Anyone below the super-rich in America is B-grade or deeper,” Larry told me. “A B-grade writer, short on money, is equivalent to a person who lives in a big house but has a soul-crushing job.”
“What if I’m D-delta-grade?” I said.
He laughed. “Class also depends on what’s important to you.”
I told him there is a Chekhov story about a guy named Peter, born poor, who spends his whole life trying to get rank in the Russian military, because generals get to wear an impressive overcoat with a scarlet lining that everyone can see and admire. But he rises up very slowly, makes colonel only at 70, holds on for another five years, finally makes general, then immediately has a stroke and is forced to retire. Soon after, his wife dies, he loses his vision, and the woman hired to take care of him secretly rips the rich lining out of his coat after he is asleep and replaces it with cheap, machine-printed calico.
“Imagine the good general walking around town showing off his coat,” I told Larry. “Finding reasons to leave it open in the cold or wear it when it’s too warm. And no one tells him.”
“Oof,” Larry said. “My god.”
Where, for instance, in the class system would we now place the would-be intelligentsia, a word I have always hated even if it had been my only hope for relevance? We agreed such people are still mostly free in this society to have their say and even criticize but have little cachet. It reminded me of how my mother had little but her education in our poor little town, but everything we had smelled of cat piss.
“Yeah, you were nearly the lowest,” he said. “Almost Z-grade.”
“Au contraire,” I said.
