I read the book perhaps 35 years ago. What struck me then was that perhaps a fair bit of what I took for intelligence in others (and what others took as intelligence in me) was a gift for mimicry of whoever it was set the standards.
The reviewer is correct to point out the weakness of the Class X bit; but then most of even the direst eschatologies leave someone to be saved. Why not the people that Fussell liked, worked with, wrote letters of recommendations for?
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