Tom Wolfe’s Paean to the Middle Class

“The truth is that there is a common bond among all cultures, among all peoples in this world—at least among those who have reached the level of the wheel, the shoe, and the toothbrush. And that common bond is that much-maligned class known as the bourgeoisie—the middle class. These people are to be found not only in Boston, they are to be found in Bombay, in Benin City in Benin, West Africa, in Bonn in what used to be called West Germany, in Beirut, in Bermuda, in Barcelona.

They are all over the world, in every continent, every nation, every society, every culture, everywhere you find the wheel, the shoe, and the toothbrush; and wherever they are, all of them believe in the same things. And what are those things? Peace, order, education, hard work, initiative, enterprise, creativity, cooperation, looking out for one another, looking out for the future of children, patriotism, fair play, and honesty. How much more do you want from the human beast? How much more can you possibly expect?

I say that the middle class around the world—and it certainly flowers in this country—is the highest form of evolution. The bourgeoisie!—the human beast doesn’t get any better! The worldwide bourgeoisie makes what passes today for aristocrats—people consumed by juvenility who hang loose upon society—look like shiftless children. And we writers spent the entire 20th century tearing down the bourgeoisie!

The great H.L. Mencken, probably the most brilliant American essayist of the 20th century, started it with his term ‘the booboisie.’ Then Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio presented us with the oh-so proper, oh-so twisted mid-western preacher who in fact is a Peeping Tom. That formula has now been ground out and ground out and ground out until it takes the form of movies like American Beauty. We in the arts have been complicit in the denigration of the best people on earth.”—Tom Wolfe, Commencement Address to the Boston University Class of 2000