The appearance of a book like Paul Fussell's ''Class'' is another sign of the times.
Experts tell us how to dress for success, how to decorate our houses (which we must be careful not to call ''homes''), how to pose as preppies and how to climb the corporate ladder without seeming to step on those just below us. Since there seems to be little hope - or fear, if you are at the conservative end of the political spectrum - of changing the system, what everyone wants to know is how to make his or her way through the maze. In eras like the present, boundaries, though they may be deplored, are generally accepted. Indeed, simply watching television was supposed to convert us to this blessed state. The message of the media was that we were all natives of a global village. There was no point in learning how to tell a Rockefeller from a Rockette or a genuine Indian Buddhist from Baba Ram Das. In the radical late 1960's and early 70's, popular gurus and guidebooks specialized in telling us how to merge our consciousnesses and unite male and female, East and West, young and old, rich and poor.
IT is characteristic of radicals to storm the barricades, to destroy or try to destroy barriers of sex, A Guide Through the American Status System.
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