America's New Elite: 'Bobos' On The March. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, April, 2001 by Tom Phillips

Bobos in Paradise. David Brooks. Simon & Schuster. [pound]16.99/US$25.00. 285 pages. ISBN 0-684-85377-9.

In the 1960s we had hippies. In the 1980s we had yuppies. Now, in the twenty-first century, we have Bobos. And what are they? According to the American journalist, David Brooks, they are bourgeois bohemians, a new elite of well-heeled meritocrats whose values and lifestyle draw on two apparently antagonistic traditions: the idealism of the '60s and the materialism of the '80s. They have blurred the boundary between the 'establishment' and the counter-culture and produced a 'paradise' in which high-flying entrepreneurs can get away with dressing like rock stars and artists can invest in stocks and shares. They combine the enterprise of Wall Street with the style of Greenwich Village. Their favourite political ideology is the Clinton-Blair 'third way'.

Apparently Mr Brooks first identified Bobo-ism in the late 1990s when he noticed that formerly frowned-upon bohemians such as Jack Kerouac were being quoted in corporate advertising. Subsequent journeys to 'latte towns' over-run with trendy coffee houses and 'distressed' furniture stores have convinced him that America's upper classes are undergoing a significant transformation. The starchiness which characterized the East Coast elite in the 1950s has gone, he says. Members of the new upper class take home six-figure salaries and spend a fortune on 'professional quality' kitchen utensils but frown on those who buy gas-guzzling cars.

Blessed with job titles like Head of Inspiration, they spend their working lives writing 'mission statements' and trading intellectual capital. Leisure they take extremely seriously. It is all about self-improvement. Rather than holidaying in the Bahamas, they spend six weeks up a mountain. They regularly quote from novels by Toni Morrison. Although more liberal than their WASP-ish predecessors, Bobos operate a strict social code. Political correctness is de rigueur while offering dinner guests non-organic vegetables is a serious faux pas. Above all, they see themselves as responsible, moderate and community-minded. Even the Bobo sado-masochists at the Arizona Power Exchange sponsor charity events.

In documenting these trends, David Brooks remains poised between irony and enthusiasm. On the one hand, he celebrates the ceasefire in the war between bohemia and the bourgeoisie. On the other, he mocks pretence and excess. His description of the 'rules of shopping' and his 'how-to-succeed' guide for budding Bobo intellectuals are sharp and entertaining. As is the section on Montana -- the Bobos' adopted spiritual home.

Overall, Mr Brooks' assessment is positive. He welcomes the supposedly calming influence of the new establishment and attributes to it various improvements in American intellectual, corporate and political life. 'Bobos have begun to create a set of standards and mores that work in the new century', he says. 'It's good to live in a Bobo world'. To be fair, Mr Brooks tempers this resounding endorsement with criticism of the new elite's complacency but you still can't help feeling that the picture he paints is too rosy. Much of the culture he describes is dull, patronizing and mediocre. What's more, his basic thesis seems flawed. Rather than adopting the idealism he identifies with bohemianism, mainstream culture simply appears to have gone on doing what it's always done -- absorbing and marketing those aspects of the 'alternative' culture which don't really pose any threat.

This centripetal process -- from fringe to mainstream -- has been going on for centuries. It is how cultures move on. Flaubert's war cry may have been 'epater les bourgeois' but it didn't take long for his works to become essential reading for the middle classes. That America's meritocrats have started adopting beatnik ideas is hardly surprising. In thirty years' time, what's deemed dangerously 'bohemian' now will be entertainment for the establishment. The main problem with the book, though, is its tone.

At times, its author can be wildly funny. At others, he can be embarrassingly portentous. A glance at the acknowledgements page soon explains this. Bobos in Paradise originated in magazine articles. Presumably this is where the entertaining anecdotes about bohemian capitalists, $400 hiking boots and independent bookshops came from. It is the more serious analysis grafted onto this material which doesn't work. If this is what passes for social criticism these days -- and, according to backcover quotations from novelists such as Tom Wolfe, it does -- the Bobos' 'polite revolution' has already gone further than even Mr Brooks believes.