Official Preppy Handbook
by Lisa Birnbach · first published 1980
10mentions
1recommended by
10HN commenters
2019–2025first – last mentioned
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> The Official Preppy Handbook LOL, classic WASP literature. I haven't thought of this book since the mid-80s! It's a hilarious read.
on “Neiman Marcus files for bankruptcy” ↗…wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit of dressed-down prep fashion being expressed or imitated, at least by a certain set of the folks wearing it. Finance'd be the right crowd for that. [EDIT] that is, The Official Preppy Handbook. The sequel's called True Prep and is, again, awful, do not read it, it has none of the fun, well-voiced humor of the first, it's bad, bad, bad.
on “Patagonia Stops Selling Vests To Some Finance Firms” ↗I'd love something more recent that treated the same subject anywhere close to as well. The near-contemporary and somewhat-related The Official Preppy Handbook received a sequel some years ago, but it's lazy crap with none of the insight or wry humor of the original. Awful little scrap-book that got published based on the reputation (and sales figures, I'm sure)…
on “Americans Are Pretty Skeptical That Hard Work Will Pay Off” ↗…stably maintained by households under the top quintile (probably not under the top 10%, even), nor could the upper-middle (also upper, but largely upper-middle) described in the jokey-but-fairly-accurate Official Preppy Handbook, and those books are ~40 years old now. For one thing, both paint decent-or-better private prep school as key for that class, and that's never really been within the reach of the lower four quintiles,…
on “The Upper Middle Class Is Getting Squeezed” ↗$300k (household) isn't upper-middle, before the term became diluted to mean "middle, but with a little left over every month"—the upper-middle of Fussell's Class and The Official Preppy Handbook - Good private school for a kid or two (guess what one of the bribes to Thomas was...). Not gonna get away with much less than $25k/yr/kid, there, and it goes up from there. - Long vacations expensive…
on “Drugmakers Are ‘Throwing the Kitchen Sink’ to Halt Medicare Price Negotiations” ↗…your way up the ladder. Either way, that probably means family money. This phenomenon been mentioned, directly or obliquely, in IIRC all of: Bullshit Jobs (Graeber, 2018), Fussell's Class (1983), and The Official Preppy Handbook (Birnbach et al, 1980).
on “Writing books remains a tough way to make a living” ↗…those two classes “signal”. His upper-middle is basically professional-class (doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, finance) prep school sorts. Same as the main demographic covered in Birnbach’s The Official Preppy Handbook
on “Taking away iPhone made daughter a better person” ↗…Japanese interest in it extensively. First of seven episodes of theirs about Ivy: https://www.articlesofinterest.co/podcast/episode/338532f2/a... Fussell's Class and (especially) Birnbach et al's The Official Preppy Handbook also treat extensively of the style.
on “When Americana doesn't mean American” ↗It's a class-segregated sport in the US (not sure about elsewhere). This is called out in the tongue-in-cheek-but-mostly-accurate Official Preppy Handbook. For some reason it is "higher class" than racquetball, and, sure enough, racquetball courts are much easier to find in non-rich areas. Perhaps this is a case where the general principal from the same…
on “Squash to monetise players’ physiological data to attract more eyeballs” ↗The Preppy Handbook and maybe Class (I can't recall for sure) cover North versus South prep (upper-middle class) differences and if you're at least aware of Albion's Seed it's hard not to see it as Puritans/Quakers versus…
on “Book Review: Fussell on Class” ↗