I’m not talking about waist lines. The world is rapidly moving from Abs of Steel to Abs of Stool. I’m talking about the disappearing middle class in fiction.
It seems like all the interesting characters are either poor, working class or wealthy.
To a degree, this makes sense. As a sociologist, I know that the strongest correlation with criminal behavior is income. Poor people commit more crimes, partly because they feel the need to make up for their lack of success through normal channels, and partly because they feel no loyalty to a legal system that is stacked against them.
Even law-abiding poor people carry an appeal to writers and readers. The struggle for daily bread that drives The Grapes of Wrath makes a compelling story. While I don’t like the child abuse that lies beneath stories like The Color Purple, the elements of struggle are the same.
Rich people often commit crimes because they believe the rules don’t apply to them. People like Ken Lay and Bernie Madoff seem a little surprised when the FBI shows up with handcuffs. “Don’t you know who I am?” they ask.
At another level, we can take vicarious pleasure in the lifestyles of the rich and famous. When we read The Great Gatsby, we think, “I could handle that.”
Money enables people to delve into adventures that are forever beyond the reach of ordinary people. I know people who’ve gone to the Serengeti on a shoestring and I’m sure they had a marvelous time, but is there a book in that? I don’t know.
So where is the middle class in literature? We’re all muddling along, obeying the speed limit, paying our taxes, cutting the lawn. Who’s going to write about that? Who wants to read about that? We read to escape from the quicksand of boredom that swallows our daily lives. Reading about other people’s boredom probably won’t draw us out of our own.
I recently attempted to read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. I couldn’t finish it, which is unusual for me. I’ll read almost anything from cover to cover including the footnotes and the index. I suppose part of my problem with the story was that the characters were boring, middle class Americans, muddling through their boring, middle class lives. I didn’t need to read about that. All I had to do was put the book down and there my own life was, trying to swallow me whole.
Most of us would regard Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum as middle class. Her father is a retired postman. Her mother is perpetually obsessed with what the neighbors will think about her immaculate house and her insane daughter and mother. Stephanie’s adventures are partly driven by Ranger’s infinite supply of tainted money, and partly by the craziness of her low class clientele, but still she’s there because she’s in the middle of all that.
Part of this dilemma is the essential character of the middle class, which has been historically defined by conformity to norms and upward mobility. Middle class values have always been about aspirations to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. When we’re poor, we want what the rich have, and strive to get it, even if “it” is only a cheap replica of that Renoir we saw at the DIA. We strive by copying their manners, their fashion choices, their speech. We strive by going to college like only they could at one time, by getting a job with “prospects,” as Jane Austen might have written.
Middle class aspirations are also driven by a sense of injustice. “There, but for the wrong parents, go I.” Donald Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. All we tasted was dirt. We are dissatisfied with our lot in life and work to correct that through upward mobility.
In fiction, that nagging sense of injustice has crime-fighting potential. My middle class (working class, actually) protagonist, Frank Healy, is partly driven by resentment toward the unearned privilege of his betters. When they indulge in crime, he is there to challenge them, usually with the tools of poetic justice.
You, middle class readers, should be right there with me, cheering him on, even though he always steps over the legal line to mete out his punishments. Ultimately, Frank is still bound by a middle class sense of morality, so he is crushed by guilt over his own crimes. The guilt doesn’t stop him, but it does make him feel bad.
I hope he’s more likeable because his isn’t a total sociopath.
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